An exploration of Eastern Orthodoxy

A consistent religion amidst a world of change. But is that enough?

“We are unchanged; we are still the same as we were in the eighth century….Oh that you could only consent to be again what you were once, when we were both united in faith and communion!” - Aleksey Khomyakov

Ignatius of Maidstone had some interesting criticism regarding my post about the egalitarian ratchet effect. That post presents the argument that the egalitarianism at the heart of Christianity doubles down on itself and intensifies over time in a ratchet-like manner, reaching the point where we are today dealing with transsexualism and child sex reassignment surgery and with more horrors to come, and that the process will continue unabated unless society’s core values are transvalued, if ever.

The push for egalitarianism is codified in numerous biblical passages, such as “the first shall be last and the last shall be first” (Matthew 20:16), “There is neither Jew nor Greek; there is neither slave nor free; there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28 NKJV), "Whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister; And whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant" (Matthew 20:26-28), and “Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things — and the things that are not — to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him” (1^st Corinthians 1:27).

In other words, obliterate natural hierarchy and rejoice as equals, brothers and sisters in Christ! This was initially intended on a spiritual level to undermine the Roman Emperor’s claim to divinity, but in recent centuries evolved to mean on the physical plane as well.

The problem with this is that in this reality nothing is equal and nothing will ever be equal, which creates an endless amount of tension. Oh, equality isn’t here? Then that means racism, sexism, and all the other -isms are holding us back! We must double down and flatten and destroy those holding back utopia on earth, brothers!

One can see how this might present problems.

Now, Ignatius’s criticism is that the ratchet effect doesn’t apply to Eastern Orthodoxy, the second largest Christian communion worldwide with 260 million members. He wrote in the comments to that post:

The problem started in 1054, when the Western Church split from the Eastern Church [i.e. the East-West Schism or the Great Schism], believing that the West could function under an authoritarian pope, who himself owned land and property. Thus, the [Catholic] Church pivoted from concerns about Heaven and Eternity, and towards materialist endeavours. Their pontiff was no longer subject to obedience at a council of bishops.

Essentially, the Roman Catholics wanted to create a heaven on Earth. [Modern day liberalism] is the fruit of that.

Ignatius is right about this: Eastern Orthodoxy does not suffer from the egalitarian ratchet effect. Eastern Orthodoxy has not ratcheted much past the original transvaluation of values under Paul (which, as argued previously, was enormously radical and led to the destruction of Rome, but also offered reinvigorated meaning to its believers in a world that had descended into decadence).

Below is a chart visualizing the societal progression under egalitarianism in the West across time. More change to doctrine = more egalitarian.

Orthodoxy prides itself on offering a doctrine which is everlasting and unchanging. This can’t really be said for Catholicism, whose Scholastics adopted Aristotlean logic which led inexorably to Protestantism which then led in turn, via Unitarianism, to modern secular egalitarianism. Catholics also introduced substantial doctrinal changes since the Great Schism such as mandatory celibacy, papal infallibility and immaculate conception. Radical ecumenical and social justice-oriented changes were seen as recently as Vatican II, and the current Pope comes across as very liberal in both belief and action, with near-daily headlines like “Pope Francis Softens Vatican’s Ban on Blessing Gay Couples” and documents released like this. This has led to a collapse in faith among the laity.

That isn’t to say that everyone in the Catholic Church leadership is liberal, though. According to the wonderful Archbishop Vigano, the Catholic Church has been infiltrated by a “Deep Church” pushing “heresy, sodomy and corruption.” He states,

“There is a very strict relationship between the doctrinal crisis of the Church and the immorality of the clergy, that scandalously reaches up to the highest levels of the hierarchy. But it is also apparent that this crisis is being used by the ultra-progressive wing not only to impose a false morality together with a false doctrine, but also to irremediably discredit the Holy Church and the Papacy before the faithful and the world, through the action of its own leaders.”  Viganò added that a “gay lobby” has “infiltrated into the Church and that is literally terrified that good pastors will shed light on the influence that it exercises in the Secretariat of State, in the Congregations of the Roman Curia, in the Dioceses, and over the entire Church…[Pope] Bergoglio has surrounded himself with compromised and blackmailed personalities, whom he has no qualms about getting rid of as soon as they risk compromising him in his media image.” Viganò said that “these three elements – heresy, sodomy, and corruption – are so recurrent that they are almost a trademark of the deep state and of the deep church.”

Not exactly a ringing endorsement for the state of the Catholic Church.

Now, the Bible is unambiguous in condemning homosexuality. Comparing the extent to which a population within countries dominated by Orthodoxy or Catholicism believes homosexuality is “morally wrong” in accordance with the Bible, then, should be a decent proxy for assessing the laity’s susceptibility to doctrinal changes and liberalism. Here are the results:

Poland, considered one of the most conservative Catholic countries in the world, is rapidly en route toward legalizing gay marriage as part of its deal with the Devil for economic improvements in return for selling its soul within NATO (1999) and the EU (2004):

As part of this trend Poland just elected a pro-globohomo government.

The Orthodox Church doesn’t really have the liberalism-slippage issues that plague Catholicism. It has other issues which we will discuss, but not these. It offers a religious stability of dogma that, in this world of incessant, radical change, is admirable and commendable. Among other reasons, this has made the religion more attractive to those on the American right who are looking for a religious solution to the degeneracy of the West and who see Catholicism and Protestantism as unworkable.¹ I believe that this line of logic was at least part of the reason that led Roosh on his religious journey after the sad cancer death of his sister to Orthodoxy (first to Armenian Orthodoxy and then to Russian Orthodoxy), although he has since adopted rigid ideological guardrails enforced at rooshvforum.com where he is the final arbiter on what is Orthodox approved and what is Orthodox forbidden. Uh, thanks I guess, Roosh, for banning all unapproved discussion from your followers. The narrowing of the scope of ideas he is willing to contend with is sad to see and speaks to a rigid mind living in great fear [update: he’s now shutting down his forum].

Anyway, I wanted to do a more in-depth examination of Orthodoxy and give a fuller response to Ignatius, and had some ideas to what I viewed as its strengths and weaknesses, so I turned to the book The Orthodox Church (1963) by Timothy/Kallistos Ware which offered a clear and concise history, its benefits, the reasons from their perspective for the Great Schism, and his understanding of the ongoing challenges that the Church faces. It offers a strong summary of the Church and I recommend it, and some of the ideas it presents are discussed below.

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Pre-Schism Background

The Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches were united as one until the Great Schism. They both continue to accept the first seven ecumenical councils as legitimate. These counsels generally related to controversies surrounding the nature of Jesus in relation to God (most importantly the condemnation of Arianism), the structure of the Church, the relation of the various regional apostolic sees to each other (Rome was first among equals until the Schism; then Constantinople became first among equals), and whether the worship of icons were acceptable or heretical idol worship.

The Theotokos of Vladimir, one of the most venerated of Orthodox Christian icons of the Virgin Mary

It is hard to understand for those of us raised in the secular, liberal, nihilistic west devoid of meaning, but the Church at the time provided an all-encompassing world perspective that grounded its followers and gave him a reasoning for his suffering:

Not without reason has Byzantium been called ‘the icon of the heavenly Jerusalem’. Religion entered into every aspect of Byzantine life. The Byzantine’s holidays were religious festivals; the races which he attended in the Circus began with the singing of hymns; his trade contracts invoked the Trinity and were marked with the sign of the Cross. Today, in an untheological age, it is all but impossible to realize how burning an interest was felt in religious questions by every part of society, by laity as well as clergy, by the poor and uneducated as well as the Court and the scholars. Gregory of Nyssa describes the unending theological arguments in Constantinople at the time of the second General Council: ‘The whole city is full of it, the squares, the market places, the cross-roads, the alleyways; old-clothes men, money changers, food sellers: they are all busy arguing. If you ask someone to give you change, he philosophizes about the Begotten and the Unbegotten; if you inquire about the price of a loaf, you are told by way of reply that the Father is greater and the Son inferior; if you ask ‘Is my bath ready?’ the attendant answers that the Son was made from nothing.’

There were certain ongoing issues between the Rome and Constantinople, and these came to a head in 1054 with the Great Schism, which put each out of communion with the other and which continues to this day.

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The Great Schism

The two primary causes of the Great Schism of 1054 were (1) Rome’s ecclesiastical doctrine of Papal supremacy, where Catholics believed the Pope can issue dictates to the other episcopal sees, versus the Eastern Orthodox view that Rome was merely the first among equals (“primus inter pares”) like a well respected older brother; and (2) the Filioque, which was a singular word that the Catholics added to the Nicene Creed. For some the addition of the word implies a serious underestimation of the Father's role in the Trinity; for others, its denial implies a serious underestimation of the role of the Son.

Ware states that there were other issues too. There were language differences, both written and spoken (Greek vs. Latin), political differences (recognition of the Holy Roman Empire), structural differences (the Pope supplied order in the West after barbarian invasions weakened secular rule, while the secular Byzantine Emperor maintained law and order in the East), and the degree of division between clergy and laity, among others.

These issues culminated in the representative of the Pope’s excommunication of the Constantinople Patriarch, followed by counter-excommunication, which caused the Schism. But relations really soured after the massacre of the Latins in Constantinople (1182) followed by the Fourth Crusade (1202-1204), where the Crusaders took and sacked Constantinople, killing an estimated 2,000 Orthodox civilians.²

The Entry of the Crusaders into Constantinople (Eugène Delacroix, 1840).

The theology of the Churches drifted apart as the Catholics replaced their faith-based tradition with that of rationalist Scholasticism, which tried to reconcile Christian beliefs and traditions with that of Aristotle, whose works had been reintroduced into Christian lands by the Muslims (the Christians had previously burned or lost almost all of Aristotle’s works). Their acceptance of Aristotle’s philosophy eventually led to the Renaissance, then to Protestantism and then to secular liberalism, as previously described here.

New Catholic disciplines and doctrines were gradually introduced after the Schism, including mandatory clerical celibacy (not required by the Eastern Orthodox if already married before being ordained), papal infallibility and immaculate conception. Meanwhile, the Eastern Orthodox leaned into mysticism via Hesychasm. Eastern Orthodox theologians charged that, in contrast to Eastern Orthodox theology, western theology was based on philosophical discourse which reduces humanity and nature to cold mechanical concepts. To the Orthodox the nature of God and reality was outside the ability of man to formulate into reason.³

Nonetheless, there were two failed attempts at reconciliation between the Churches, one in the 13th century and one in the 15th. Constantinople eventually fell to the Muslims in 1453 and the population gradually converted to Islam due to the onerous nature of Dhimmitude (or were massacred in the Armenian Genocide). The heart of Eastern Orthodoxy shifted to the Russian Orthodox Church where it remains today, surviving the horrors of communism despite relentless persecution⁴ and the political cravenness of top leadership.

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The structure, politics and demographics of the Church today

Each country with an Orthodox Church is national in character, modified to fit the local customs of the region. Its liturgy is conducted in the local languages and the religious texts are translated into those languages. In other words, they are ethnic Churches.

These ethnic Churches are self-governing to a degree. This Lutheran Witness article provides a decent background on the Orthodox structure and the current schismatic issues affecting the Church, despite an otherwise liberal, pro-western slant:

Autocephalous churches each elect their own leader and have full authority to operate as independent church bodies in all matters. Autonomous churches have some authority regarding internal self-governance but rely on a mother church (one of the autocephalous churches) in many matters, including the appointment of a leader….

Currently, there are 13 — or maybe 14, 15 or 16, or maybe more — autocephalous churches within Eastern Orthodoxy. There are 14 about which everyone agreed until quite recently: Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, Russia, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, Georgia, Cyprus, Greece, Poland, Albania and the Czech Lands/Slovakia.

In 2019, amid mounting tensions between Russia and Ukraine, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople granted autocephaly to the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, which had formerly been a daughter church of the Russian Orthodox Church. In retaliation, the Patriarch of Moscow declared the separation of the Russian Orthodox Church from Constantinople — a significant schism in Eastern Orthodoxy since nearly half of its adherents fall under the umbrella of the Russian Orthodox Church (110 million in Russia and its subsidiary churches). A schism of this magnitude has arguably not occurred since the Eastern Church splintered from the Western Church in A.D. 1054. If this declaration leads to a lasting divide, then the Russian Orthodox Church can no longer be considered an autocephalous church of Eastern Orthodoxy but will have the same standing as the Oriental Orthodox Church, which broke from the established church in A.D. 451 (long before the Great Schism).

This seems like a big deal, especially considering the issue is taking place in the heart of Orthodoxy itself:

The Orthodox dominate Eastern Europe

Ukraine, after all, has 35 million Orthodox believers, which is the third most numerous Orthodox country in the world, making up 13.4% of the global Orthodox total. Roosh views the creation of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine by globohomo in 2018 as as an attempt to sow division and weaken the Church with the intent of undermining and destroying it. Actions like Zelensky signed a law on July 28, 2023 changing the date of the Christmas public holiday in Ukraine from Jan. 7 to Dec. 25 as part of the efforts to "renounce Russian heritage" give credence to his perspective.

In terms of Orthodoxy’s reach, despite growing in absolute numbers to 260 million adherents today, its percentage of Christianity’s total has fallen significantly since 1910 and continues to fall:

Today, just 12% of Christians around the world are Orthodox, compared with an estimated 20% a century ago. And 4% of the total global population is Orthodox, compared with an estimated 7% in 1910. Fewer Orthodox in post-Soviet republics consider religion to be ‘very important’ in their lives.

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The strengths and weaknesses of Orthodoxy

This section will review Orthodoxy in light of the neoliberal feudalism framework. Jesus said to judge a tree by the fruit that it bears, so I think it is fair to look at the real world results of Orthodoxy based upon its successes and struggles and not from a deontological perspective. This isn’t meant to be a comprehensive or final analysis.

Positives

• Orthodoxy as a “real” religion. A serious monotheistic religion is going to be exclusionary to other belief systems and hold its own perspective as the “true” religion. Those that do not have an exclusionary worldview, that are open to secular humanism and relativism and ecumenism, are inevitably going to have a demoralized, non-reproducing laity who will shed followers to globohomo as the religion, skin-suited and hollowed out, suffers a quiet, drawn out death. Every Protestant denomination suffers from this and Catholicism and Anglicanism increasingly do as well. The more a religion changes its doctrines over time (such as Mormonism acting under outside pressure), the more it can be molded to conform to societal whims. Orthodoxy has had the same doctrines and practices as it has had since the Schism, although it still has internal conflicts such as with the Old Believers, and it should be applauded for its stability.

  As part of its resistance to globohomo, most Orthodox believers support traditional views of gender norms in marriage. Compare Orthodox countries’ views on this to Catholics:

• Orthodoxy’s healthy outlook. This is a corollary to the above; a healthy religion will see itself positively and wish to spread its beliefs to others, both on a personal and an institutional level. While the Church supports a separation of Church and State by encouraging a secular ruler to decide on secular matters (Famuli vestrae pietatis, also “Render unto Caesar what it’s Caesar’s”), unlike in the West they believe such a secular ruler should promote the Orthodox religion. In other words, the Orthodox do not suffer from the demoralization that plagues the West. Again, compare the Orthodox to Catholic countries:

• Orthodoxy is correct that the changing doctrines of non-Orthodox Christianity has corrupted and destroyed western civilization under the guise of rationalism. Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart has a great article addressing head-on Nietzsche’s criticisms of Christianity here. He agrees with Nietzsche and Heidegger’s interpretations to an extent but he believes that modern nihilism is not the final form of Christianity but merely the result of it’s receding, that Christianity was so great, and so fully conquered the Hellenistic Gods that came before that there is simply no room to go back to them, and that all there is to be done is re-embrace Christ and Orthodoxy. He writes:

  The word “nihilism” has a complex history in modern philosophy, but I use it in a sense largely determined by Nietzsche and Heidegger, both of whom not only diagnosed modernity as nihilism, but saw Christianity as complicit in its genesis; both it seems to me were penetratingly correct in some respects, if disastrously wrong in most, and both raised questions that we Christians ignore at our peril….

  Christianity, however, was a slave revolt in morality: the cunning of the weak triumphed over the nobility of the strong, the resentment of the many converted the pride of the few into self-torturing guilt, the higher man’s distinction between the good and the bad was replaced by the lesser man’s spiteful distinction between good and “evil,” and the tragic wisdom of the Greeks sank beneath the flood of Christianity’s pity and pusillanimity. This revolt, joined to an ascetic and sterile devotion to positive fact, would ultimately slay even God. And, as a result, we have now entered the age of the Last Men, whom Nietzsche depicts in terms too close for comfort to the banality, conformity, and self-indulgence of modern mass culture.

  Heidegger’s tale is not as catastrophist, and so emphasizes less Christianity’s novelty than its continuity with a nihilism implicit in all Western thought, from at least the time of Plato…Nihilism, says Heidegger, is born in a forgetfulness of the mystery of being, and in the attempt to capture and master being in artifacts of reason…Scandalously to oversimplify his argument, it is, says Heidegger, the history of this nihilistic impulse to reduce being to an object of the intellect, subject to the will, that has brought us at last to the age of technology, for which reality is just so many quanta of power, the world a representation of consciousness, and the earth a mere reserve awaiting exploitation; technological mastery has become our highest ideal, and our only real model of truth….

  I should admit that I, for one, feel considerable sympathy for Nietzsche’s plaint, “Nearly two-thousand years and no new god”—and for Heidegger intoning his mournful oracle: “Only a god can save us.” But of course none will come. The Christian God has taken up everything into Himself; all the treasures of ancient wisdom, all the splendor of creation, every good thing has been assumed into the story of the incarnate God, and every stirring towards transcendence is soon recognized by the modern mind—weary of God—as leading back towards faith. Antique pieties cannot be restored, for we moderns know that the hungers they excite can be sated only by the gospel of Christ and him crucified. To be a Stoic today, for instance, is simply to be a soul in via to the Church; a Platonist, most of us understand, is only a Christian manqué; and a polytheist is merely a truant from the one God he hates and loves….

• Orthodoxy allows already-married men to become ordained: This seems like a reasonable position to take and would likely dramatically lower priest molestation rates, to the extent those scandals have not been overblown by globohomo.

• Decentralization: The trends of humanity on a historic timeline are toward ever-increasing centralization and control, so to have a decentralized religious structure able to absorb pressures imposed on any particular country or region (such as the atheist Soviet Union’s control over Eastern Europe, or Islam’s control over Constantinople) is a benefit.

• A balance of energies: Society and individuals are best served by an energy that mixes egalitarian and inegalitarian energies. Orthodoxy offers a degree of such balancing with its rigid adherence to tradition, whether or not one agrees that the specific balance it achieved is the correct one.

• The potential for revolutionary change: Perhaps I am not understanding his perspectively clearly, but it seems like Rolo Slavskiy, who is a lapsed Orthodox, thinks that Orthodoxy has the potential to undergo a mystical Ghost Dance rebellion as a way to check the power of globohomo.

• The focus on suffering and mysticism: Russians have always focused more than other nations on the nature of suffering, and that focus in conjunction with Orthodoxy seems to be an interesting focus for such a fallen world. One loses family, friends, health, mental and physical abilities as one ages; war, plague, starvation, all sorts of calamities happen. The nature of reality is suffering and beyond human understanding. Life is about letting go of attachments and control and diminishing the ego, which is the attraction for the ascetic ideal. That being said, this is also a negative, as the Orthodox tendency to over-emphasize suffering is the quintessential component of life-denying slave morality.

  

  “Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan on 16 November 1581”, painting by Russian realist artist Ilya Repin made between 1883 and 1885. It has been called one of Russia's most famous and controversial paintings, and reflects the typical Russian approach toward suffering.

• The ability to deal peacefully with the Jewish population. Eustace Mullins, in his book “New History of the Jews”, argues that Jews and Christians can coexist peacefully in society based on the example of the Byzantine Empire without expulsions or pogroms: 

  The history of the Jews demonstrates two things; first, that there has never been a reconciliation between them and their hosts; second, that no nation has ever succeeded in barring them permanently…in every case where the Jews were expelled from a nation, often under conditions of great suffering, within a few years, the Jews have returned!  Again, one can find no parallel in the historical record of other groups, this strange compulsion, this incredible persistence in putting their heads into the lion’s mouth again and again….

  In all of recorded history, there was only one civilization which the Jews could not destroy.  Because of this, they have given it the silent treatment.  Few American college graduates with a Ph.D. degree could tell you what the Byzantine Empire was.  It was the Empire of East Rome, set up by Roman leaders after the Jews had destroyed Rome.  This empire functioned in Constantinople for 1,200 years, the longest duration of any empire in the history of the world.  Throughout the history of Byzantium, as it was known, by imperial edict, no Jew was allowed to hold any post in the Empire, nor was he allowed to educate the young.  The Byzantine Empire finally fell to the Turks after twelve centuries of prosperity, and the Jews have attempted to wipe out all traces of its history.  Yet its edicts against the Jews were not cruel; in fact, the Jews lived unmolested and prosperously in the empire throughout its history, but here alone the vicious cycle of host and parasite did not take place.  It was a Christian civilization, and the Jews were not able to exercise any influence…

  It was Ezra Pound who launched upon a study of Byzantine civilization, and who reminded the world of this happily non-Jewish land.  From the Byzantines, Pound derived his non-violent formula formula for controlling the Jews.  “The answer to the Jewish problem is simple,” he said.  “Keep them out of banking, out of education, out of government.”  And this is how simple it is.  (Out of media too would be a critical addition).

Negatives

• Orthodoxy seems to always be losing. Its center of religious belief and administration, Constantinople, was overrun by Muslims in 1453, and Orthodox believers living there gradually converted to Islam or were massacred in the Armenian genocide. The Soviets imprisoned, terrorized and murdered countless Orthodox and suppressed the religion. Now globohomo has cleaved off Ukrainian Orthodoxy and skin-suited it for their own ends, while Azerbaijan repeatedly seizes the territory and murders those living in ultra-weak Armenia (which may escalate to genocide). The decentralized centers of power, while a positive for reasons discussed above, is also a negative because it makes them politically weaker than if the Church was centralized. Furthermore, its acceptance of a secular “Caesar” ruler governing secular affairs puts them always, to an extent, at the mercy of secular governments.

  

  Mehmed the Conqueror enters Constantinople, painting by Fausto Zonaro

  Perhaps the nature of suffering is a good thing; perhaps God wants to keep His followers in pain and downtrodden so they pray with devotion. As Ware writes about the Soviet calamity:

  What effect did communist propaganda and persecution have upon the Church? In many places there was an amazing quickening of the spiritual life. Cleansed of worldly elements, freed from the burden of insincere members who had merely conformed outwardly for social reasons, purified as by fire, the true Orthodox believers gathered themselves together and resisted with heroism and humility. 'In every place where the faith has been put to the test,' a Russian of the emigration writes, 'there have been abundant outpourings of grace, the most astonishing miracles - icons renewing themselves before the eyes of astonished spectators; the cupolas of churches shining with a light not of this world.' 'Nevertheless,' the same author rightly adds, 'all this was scarcely noticed. The glorious aspect of what had taken place in Russia remained almost without interest for the generality of mankind….The crucified and buried Christ will always be judged thus by those who are blind to the light of his resurrection.’ It is not surprising that enormous numbers should have deserted the Church in the hour of persecution, for this has always happened, and will doubtless happen again. Far more surprising is the fact that so many remained faithful.

  Still, for non-religious outsiders perpetual losing isn’t really a point of sale to becoming a believer.

• The ethnic nature of the religious communities makes it difficult to join. The countries with the most adherents are Russia, Ukraine and Greece, and their liturgy and writings are conducted in their national languages. This can make conversion very difficult for non-ethnic outsiders.

• Orthodoxy’s rejection of Aristotelian logic makes it weak technologically. A religion that is static and unchanging seems like it will always lag behind in the times, which may be a good thing (as it resists the egalitarian ratchet effect) but it also makes it susceptible to falling behind technologically, which requires a belief in the power of transformative and rapid change to advance. As Kaczynski wrote, "The conservatives are fools: They whine about the decay of traditional values, yet enthusiastically support technological progress and economic growth. Apparently it never occurs to them that you can’t make rapid, drastic changes in the technology and the economy of a society without causing rapid changes in all other aspects of the society as well, and that such rapid changes inevitably break down traditional values.” Orthodoxy avoids this criticism by not enthusiastically supporting technological progress or economic growth, at the price of remaining on the losing side of conflicts.

• The static nature of Orthodoxy may inhibit personal growth. The same criticism can be made to personal growth and our ability to understand the world. Brett Andersen has posited a life-affirming philosophy buttressed by the latest scientific advances, rooted in human psychology and human nature, reflecting Nietzsche and Heraclitus that everything is change except for change itself, and that values and perspectives must themselves evolve over time. If Andersen is correct, a static, dualist perspective only holds people back from the process of complexification which lies at the heart of the universe and our relation to it.

• The nature of belief. Orthodoxy presupposes belief in its suppositions that can be difficult for those with evidence-based minds to accept on faith. The resolutions of disputes such as the Arian conflict, Nestorius’s dispute with Cyril, and the debates surrounding the use of icons are perplexing. One is expected to take on faith that they resolved in the form and manner in which God wanted, as opposed to resolving by chance or from majority rule/power politics.

  The Orthodox deontological way of thinking is not one that comes naturally to those pursuing cause-and-effect analysis, nor does it exactly match up with my own observations which sees reality as metaphysically infused with malevolence. The basic nature of reality is that living things can only survive by eating other living things, which is a nightmare, and reality is therefore likely controlled by the Demiurge. Despite some commonality between classical gnosticism and Orthodoxy, my observations are at odds with the view of a loving, omnipotent God in control of both material and spiritual reality, or that the God of the Old Testament is the same God as the God of the New Testament. Additionally, most of what we know about the life and philosophy of Jesus himself comes from Paul of Tarsus, who likely crafted his narratives as part of a non-violent revenge strategy against Rome.

• There is no way from within the religion to disprove it. This criticism applies to all religions, but as Rurik Skywalker has pointed out, any time the Orthodox lose or suffer a calamity they always default to one of two explanations: (1) it’s all part of God’s plan, just have faith; or (2) God is punishing His believers for lacking sufficient faith. I personally have a lot of beliefs, some very strongly held, but I could name plenty of conditions under which my faith would be shaken. For the Orthodox, what are the conditions, if any, under which they could lose faith? As I explained to Ignatius of Maidstone, if Orthodoxy was entirely wiped out, would that mean to him that the religion was false? I can look back on polytheistic ancient Hellenism and conclude that the wiping out of all the old Gods either means that those old Gods never existed or otherwise that they have receded from the world. What are the conditions under which his faith could or would be shaken?

• The doctrinal disputes seem silly and inconsequential. The perspective that differences in small minutia in doctrine, such as using two versus three fingers for making the sign of the Cross in their dispute with the Old Believers, or the addition of the one word Filioque to the Nicene Creed, are seen as having enormous theological and spiritual consequences, but as an outsider they seem quite silly.

• Some of the trends in Orthodox countries are concerning. For example, look at the changes in acceptance of legal gay marriage among younger adults in Greece and other Orthodox countries. How resistant will it be long-term to globohomo?

  

  Uh oh.

  Or look at Russia: “Russians are much less religious, at least in terms of active practice, and the ROC is less influential than the Catholic Church. Abortion is legal, while it is not in Poland.”

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Conclusions

Orthodox Christianity offers an attractive, unchanging stability to its followers and a comprehensive, non-nihilistic worldview. Orthodoxy in both its Christian and other Abrahamic forms presents an exclusionary monotheistic framework that will survive into the future as everything non-Orthodox gets subsumed by globohomo secular materialism. But given its drawbacks, I am not convinced that Orthodox Christianity is likely to succeed in the material realm against globohomo now or in the future. Whether that matters is up to you.

Thanks for reading.

1. Orthodoxy in any belief system is likely to exhibit similar resistance to globohomo secular egalitarianism, which is easy to see based on a group’s fertility rates. Orthodox Judaism and conservative strains of Islam have much higher fertility rates than mainstream society, as do the Amish. Mormons traditionally had much higher birthrates than normal Christians but their birthrates are plummeting.

2. As a side note, it is interesting how Catholics and the Orthodox handled heresy and power struggles differently. Catholics were quick to burn heretics at the stake, such as the Cathars and the Knights Templar, while the Orthodox, who rarely did the same (such as with the Old Believers and their leader in Russia), were quick to mutilate their political opponents in Byzantium.

3. Also see the positions of Aleksey Khomyakov, who co-founded the Slavophile movement and became one of its most distinguished lay theoreticians. The Russian religious philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev located Khomyakov's significance in his attempt to free Christianity from rationalism. As he wrote in his 1912 book, Aleksei Stepanovich Khomiakov:

Khomiakov will be eternally remembered, first and foremost, for his statement of the problem of the Church and his attempt to reveal the essence of the Church. Khomiakov approached the essence of the Church from within, not from outside. First of all he did not believe that it is possible to formulate a concept of the Church. The essence of the Church is inexpressible; like all living organisms, she cannot be encompassed by any formula, is not subject to any formal definitions. The Church is, first of all, a living organism, a unity of love, ineffable freedom, the truth of the faith not subject to rationalization. From the outside the Church is not knowable or definable; she is known only by those who are within her, by those who are her living members. The sin of scholastic theology was that it attempted to formulate rationalistically the essence of the Church; that is, it attempted to transform the Church from a mystery known only to believers into something subject to the knowledge of objective reason.

4. Ware, p. 155:

When the Bolsheviks seized power in October 1917, the Church of Russia found itself in a position for which there was no exact precedent in Orthodox history. The Roman Empire, although it persecuted Christians, was not an atheist state, opposed to all religion as such. The Turks, while non-Christians, were still worshippers of One God and, as we have seen, allowed the Church a large measure of toleration. But communism is committed by its fundamental principles to an aggressive and militant atheism. A communist government cannot rest satisfied merely with a separation of Church and State, but it seeks either by direct or indirect means to overthrow all organized Church life and to extirpate all religious belief. ‘The Party cannot be neutral towards religion,’ wrote Stalin. ‘It conducts an anti-religious struggle against all and any religious prejudices.’…

All seminaries and theological academies were ordered to be closed down…All Church buildings, lands, and moneys were declared to be national property…From 1918 until 1938, churches were methodically desecrated, closed, and destroyed, often against the wishes of the overwhelming majority of the population and at times in the face of their active opposition…

In the years between the two World Wars the Christians of Russia underwent sufferings which in extent and in cruelty equalled anything endured by the early Christians…At one time as many as 150 bishops were in prison at the same moment (before 1917 the total number of diocesan and assistant bishops in the Russian Empire was less than 130). In 1918 and 1919 alone, about 28 bishops were killed; between 1923 and 1926 some 50 more were murdered by the Bolsheviks. Parish clergy and monks also suffered severely: by 1926, according to information supplied by a bishop living in Russia at the time, some 2,700 priests, 2,000 monks, and 3,400 nuns and other ordained persons had been killed, while emigre writers today calculate that since 1917, among priests alone, at least 12,0000, and possibly far more, have been executed or have died through ill treatment..It will never be known how many laity suffered impoverishment, prison sentences, or death because of their faith. In the words of the Archpriest Avvakum: ‘Satan has obtained our radiant Russia from Good, that she may become red with the blood of martyrs.’