US Young Men Joining Russian Orthodox Churches Seeking ‘Absurd Levels of Manliness’

Young US men are join­ing Russ­ian church­es in a grow­ing con­ver­sion trend as Amer­i­can males seek tra­di­tion­al mas­culin­i­ty through Ortho­dox Chris­tian­i­ty. On 21 May 2025, BBC News report­ed that the Russ­ian Ortho­dox Church Out­side Rus­sia (ROCOR) is rapid­ly expand­ing across the Unit­ed States, pri­mar­i­ly dri­ven by young male con­verts reject­ing mod­ern Amer­i­can cul­ture and embrac­ing what they per­ceive as authen­tic mas­cu­line spirituality.

The arti­cle begins:

“A lot of peo­ple ask me: ‘Father Moses, how can I increase my man­li­ness to absurd lev­els?’ ” In a YouTube video, a priest is cham­pi­oning a form of vir­ile, unapolo­getic mas­culin­i­ty. Skin­ny jeans, cross­ing your legs, using an iron, shap­ing your eye­brows, and even eat­ing soup are among the things he derides as too fem­i­nine. There are oth­er videos of Father Moses McPher­son — a pow­er­ful­ly built father of five — weightlift­ing to the sound of heavy met­al. He was raised a Protes­tant and once worked as a roofer, but now serves as a priest in the Russ­ian Ortho­dox Church Out­side Rus­sia (ROCOR) in George­town, Texas, an off­shoot of the moth­er church in Moscow. ROCOR, a glob­al net­work with head­quar­ters in New York, has recent­ly been expand­ing across parts of the US — main­ly as a result of peo­ple con­vert­ing from oth­er faiths.

          Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c30q5l8d4lro

Key Points

• Father Moses McPher­son­’s Texas con­gre­ga­tion tripled in size over 18 months, bap­tiz­ing 75 new con­verts in six months
• Pew Research data shows Ortho­dox Chris­tians are now 64% male, up from 46% in 2007, indi­cat­ing a sig­nif­i­cant gen­der shift
• Many con­verts embrace home-school­ing and reject con­tra­cep­tion while seek­ing tra­di­tion­al gen­der roles and fam­i­ly struc­tures with­in their faith
• Some Amer­i­can Ortho­dox con­verts express pro-Rus­sia sen­ti­ment, view­ing Moscow as a bas­tion of true Chris­tian­i­ty against West­ern liberalism

The Russian Orthodox Church & Kremlin Bid for Global Leadership of the GNCA

Rus­sia is lever­ag­ing the Russ­ian Ortho­dox Church as a cen­tral pil­lar in its cam­paign to lead the Glob­al Nation­al Con­ser­v­a­tive Alliance (GNCA), using reli­gious author­i­ty and the pro­mo­tion of “tra­di­tion­al val­ues” to posi­tion itself as the ide­o­log­i­cal heart of a world­wide con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment. The Kremlin’s strat­e­gy relies on the Ortho­dox Church’s fram­ing of Rus­sia as a defend­er of Chris­t­ian civ­i­liza­tion, with Patri­arch Kir­ill cham­pi­oning anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and strict fam­i­ly norms to jus­ti­fy the Ukraine inva­sion and ral­ly sup­port among both domes­tic and inter­na­tion­al con­ser­v­a­tives, espe­cial­ly US young men drawn to anti-lib­er­al narratives.

This approach is part of a broad­er Russ­ian effort to build the GNCA around themes of nation­al sov­er­eign­ty, draw­ing sup­port from far-right par­ties in Europe and con­ser­v­a­tive fac­tions in the US, while also export­ing the Church’s influ­ence to regions like Africa to rein­force anti-West­ern sen­ti­ment. How­ev­er, these ambi­tions face resis­tance, as seen in Esto­nia, where new leg­is­la­tion com­pels the local Ortho­dox Church to sev­er ties with Moscow in response to con­cerns over Krem­lin-backed influ­ence oper­a­tions and the Church’s role in legit­imiz­ing Russ­ian mil­i­tary aggression.

Russia’s use of the Ortho­dox Church as a vehi­cle for ide­o­log­i­cal and polit­i­cal influ­ence under­scores its dual func­tion as both a spir­i­tu­al insti­tu­tion and a geopo­lit­i­cal tool, shap­ing the GNCA’s agen­da and deep­en­ing glob­al polar­iza­tion along con­ser­v­a­tive lines.

Exter­nal References:

1. A holy war. The Russ­ian Ortho­dox Church bless­es the war against the West

2. Moscow Uses Russ­ian Ortho­dox Church as Covert For­eign Pol­i­cy Tool in Ukraine and the West

3. How Rus­sia Weaponized Reli­gion in the War on Ukraine

4. The Nation­al Con­ser­vatism Alliance: An Oppor­tu­ni­ty for Russ­ian Influence?

Disclaimer

The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) employs AI through­out the post­ing process, includ­ing gen­er­at­ing sum­maries of news items, the intro­duc­tion, key points, and often the “con­text” sec­tion. We rec­om­mend ver­i­fy­ing all infor­ma­tion before use. Addi­tion­al­ly, images are AI-gen­er­at­ed and intend­ed sole­ly for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es. While they rep­re­sent the events or indi­vid­u­als dis­cussed, they should not be inter­pret­ed as real-world photography.