The Telegraph, January 2025
Young, single men are flocking to the Orthodox church after discovering the “masculine” Christian religion through online influencers. Some converts said they felt disillusioned with the “feminisation” of the Protestant church and were attracted to the “authenticity” of Orthodoxy, which they claim pushes them physically and mentally. Priests are now planning to open new parishes to accommodate the “tsunami” of young men who have converted since the pandemic. They say that most of the new converts found the Orthodox church by watching YouTube videos or listening to podcasts.
Matthew Ryan, a former atheist, found Orthodoxy after he saw a comment about good and evil on YouTube after “hitting rock bottom”. The science teacher, 41, who had moved to Salt Lake City in 2022 to escape New York’s “draconian” Covid rules, began researching the Bible. This eventually led him to a one-hour YouTube video in which a Protestant visits an Orthodox church and speaks to a priest. “I watched that, and I was like, OK, this makes a lot of sense,” Mr Ryan said. “What really drew me to Orthodoxy… was the structure, the guidance, the authenticity and the historicity”, he said.
