![\"Christian](\"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/St_Andrew_Orthodox_Church_Riverside_01_900x418.jpg\")
by James Fite –
\nReligion has been losing ground in American society for years, and there are many reasons for the decline. But one modern trend is driving believers away from their church homes \u2013 and right into the ancient arms of Eastern Orthodoxy. <\/p>\n
As churches \u201cget with the times\u201d and change their long-held, scriptural beliefs in favor of fitting in with what secular society says is right, more Christians are becoming disenfranchised with their ever-more progressive religion. Eastern Orthodox Christianity, however, is happy to welcome them home.<\/p>\n
Religion and Politics \u2013 The March of \u201cProgress\u201d<\/strong> Today, numerous churches have abandoned these principles<\/b>. Many Anglican, Lutheran, Episcopal, Methodist, and Presbyterian churches, among others, now allow women to be ordained as full members of the clergy. The United Methodist Church, for example, began ordaining women in 1956, and today, there are close to 12,000 clergywomen.<\/p>\n Many now also allow gay marriage and openly gay clergy despite clear biblical prohibitions against it. In 1972, the United Church of Christ was the first to ordain openly gay pastors. It was also the first to call for full inclusion of transgender clergy \u2013 and it certainly wasn\u2019t the last. Even the Vatican has allowed priests to bless same-sex unions. Many of these churches have also jumped on the bandwagon to apologize for their \u201cracist roots.\u201d<\/p>\n This incremental bowing to \u201cprogress,\u201d as inevitable as it may have been, has gone so far that even belief in God is now optional. For more than eight decades, the United Church of Canada, our northern neighbors\u2019 largest Protestant denomination, has allowed openly gay men and women to lead ministries. In 2013, however, it was revealed that Gretta Vosper, the woman who has led Toronto\u2019s West Hill United Church since 1997, is an atheist.<\/p>\n \u201cI do not believe in a theistic, supernatural being called God,\u201d Vosper told The Guardian in 2016, as the church was reviewing her beliefs to see if she was fit to lead. \u201cI don\u2019t believe in what I think 99.9% of the world thinks when you use that word.\u201d She considers God just a metaphor for goodness and a life lived with compassion and justice. After the review, Vosper was initially deemed unfit and almost defrocked \u2013 but then, in 2018, she and the church reached an agreement that allowed her to remain a minister even without belief in or sermons about God. \u201cThis doesn\u2019t alter in any way the belief of The United Church of Canada in God,\u201d the church announced afterward, confusing many.<\/p>\n The Modern Exodus and a Boom for Orthodoxy<\/strong> There are numerous reasons for this decline. Many Americans don\u2019t attend church or consider themselves to be very religious because their parents \u2013 regardless of their own personal beliefs \u2013 didn\u2019t prioritize faith and church attendance. When children aren\u2019t taken to church or shown much consideration for God by their parents, they\u2019re far less likely to prioritize belief in their own lives. And this apathy for religion grows with each generation.<\/p>\n Then there\u2019s politics and progressive ideology.<\/b> Much of the modern exodus is due to churches not changing their policies \u2013 or, at least, not doing so fast enough to suit increasingly socially liberal Americans who see scripture as misogynistic, homophobic, racist, or just outdated and bigoted in general. But many others are leaving their churches \u2013 if not Christianity entirely \u2013 because they feel their faith eroded by these changes.<\/p>\n Has God changed his mind? Was the church wrong to begin with? If the answer to either of these questions is \u201cyes,\u201d then how reliable are Christianity and the Bible? If it\u2019s the modern progressive churches that have it wrong, what good are they to a true believer? For many, there seem to be no good answers \u2013 and so, church membership declines.<\/p>\n But that\u2019s not the end of the story.<\/b> While progressive religion drives Americans away \u2013 especially young men \u2013 a recent survey of Orthodox churches around the nation published by the Orthodox Studies Institute shows a 78% increase in converts compared to pre-pandemic levels in 2019. While men and women have historically converted in more or less equal numbers, the report shows that far more men have joined since 2020.<\/p>\n \u201cThe last four to five years have been a massive uptick,\u201d Father Josiah Trenham<\/b> of Saint Andrew\u2019s Orthodox Church in Riverside, CA, told the New York Post. \u201cIt\u2019s showing no sign of tapering off. If anything, it\u2019s increasing still \u2026 It\u2019s happening massively in untold numbers all over the country.\u201d<\/p>\n Why is this happening? \u201cThe feminization of non-Orthodox forms of Christianity in America has been in high gear for decades,\u201d Father Trenham explained. \u201cMen are much less comfortable [in those settings], and they have voted with their feet, which is why they\u2019re minorities in these forms of worship. Our worship forms are very traditional and very masculine.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s this very reliance on tradition \u2013 largely unchanged over the centuries \u2013 that draws many believers to Orthodoxy. One convert interviewed by the Post, Bailey Mullins, explained that he had noticed many denominations getting \u201cco-opted by politics.\u201d \u201cI wanted to be somewhere that was stable and that wasn\u2019t going to change,\u201d he said. \u201cIt felt very ancient, and that was not something I\u2019d experienced elsewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cEverything\u2019s changing. Protestant churches are changing. The Catholic Church is changing. The culture is changing. The government is changing,\u201d lamented Mullins. \u201cPeople want something that is historic and not going to change. They want something that\u2019s stable and sound and is not built on sand.\u201d<\/p>\n Stable and sound<\/b> \u2013 while those words may have once described most churches across Christendom, they\u2019re nowhere to be found in progressive religion today.<\/p>\n
\nChristian values were long considered to be conservative in America \u2013 and those values have always been a point of contention (dare we say, contempt?) for the more secular left, especially so-called progressives. From a scriptural point of view, men are men, women are women, and marriage is between one man and one woman. Furthermore, 1 Timothy chapter three and Titus chapter one lay out the requirements to be a church leader or elder \u2013 think priest, pastor, or deacon \u2013 and, surprise, those requirements don\u2019t fit into the progressive worldview.<\/p>\n
\nBack in March, Pew Research revealed that eight out of every ten Americans they polled said religion is losing influence in public life. As the report points out, 80% is the highest it has ever been in their surveys.<\/p>\n