I always love people who ask me uh why should I read books other than the Bible to which my usual response is why are

You talking to me when you could be praying reading of old books is a kind of lcit necromancy a phrase that I

Probably shouldn't use it's a way of talking to those that we can't otherwise talk to uh without doing terrible things

Uh I became Orthodox because I became convinced it was true and I could find Jesus there the body that came went into

The the tomb came out of the Tomb uh transformed uh all those things are true they're true true they're true in this

Sense uh that I as a philosopher would want to talk about truth it's okay to be

Proud of your heritage as long as you don't tell lies about it and as long as your love doesn't become

Disproportionate the existence of aliens is a really good example of how comfortable Orthodoxy can be with

Weirdness Orthodoxy is a church for um true Romantics who don't want to let

Romanticism consume them [Music]

Welcome to another episode of re-enchanting I'm Bel Tindle and i'm

Justin Bry and we are here once again to talk about re-enchanting our favorite

Topic wondering whether we are seeking it whether we're craving it whether we're in a disenchanted world and

Whether we're seeking something different and there's been some really interesting activity lately in the

Eastern Orthodox wing of the church that we thought was quite relevant to the topic that we like to discuss here on

Re-enchanting so joining us today is Dr John Mark Reynolds he's president of St Constantine schools and College and the

Author of numerous books including when Athens met Jerusalem an introduction to classical and Christian thought he's

Also the editor of the great books reader frequent blogger lecturer on a wide range of topics including ancient

Philosophy classical and home education politics faith and virtue now John Mark

Was involved in some recent research that made Global headlines showing a huge upswing in the numbers of young men

Entering the Eastern Orthodox Church precisely the demographic that is most absent in most churches so what is it

About this ancient Church stream that has reenchanted these young converts that's what we're going to be talking to

John Mark about today boy am I curious about this topic

John Mark hello it's lovely lovely to be with you um it's wonderful to be here

Before we dig into everything that Justin has just said we usually record

On top of lambus Palace library and so our first question is always somewhat of an OD to our re-enchanting home and we

Want to know what you're currently reading so for my job and for pleasure this is going to sound uh horrible but I

Read the Republic uh every semester so I'm working my way again through Plato's Republic but I'm also reading I and I

Just wanted to point out Alexander schan is to little red and they collected His

Radio broadcasts that really were done by Voice of America when communism was a thing in the Soviet Union and watching

The development of his ideas I read volume one I'm now on volume two is is really good and interesting I'm reading

A bio of the emperor Justinian uh that's the other thing in front of me and then

For my sins I'm reading William Shatner's boldly go so uh Le lest I be

Just utterly pretentious beyond belief well do you know what I am ashamed to

Say that William sh is boldly go is the only one of those i've

Read which really has humbled me somewhat to shake William shaner's hand

For half a second you know one of those long lines last year because uh I believed I needed to do that uh the best

Thing that Canada has ever sent the United States William Sher

Just a as a scholar of the classical world do you find that a lot of your

Reading is basically you're you're going back a couple of thousand years in in the people you're imbibing on a regular

Basis yeah I I think that that's true generally um you get in I got into this line of work I you know in my 20s

Because I love the ancient world I love thinking about the ancient world uh but I'm also one of those I was one of those

Crazy kids who became monomaniacal about some topic like circus fires and then

Had to know everything there was to know about circus fires or the death of the last Russians are less amusingly uh and

So I was also a big science fiction a fantasy reader and so I'm the kind of person that for fun will read Brandon

Sanderson no one will confuse as uh being a great author uh but he turn he

Turns out 700 page books the way most of us breathe uh and so I find that that's

Fun and that's good I once taught a class on vampire literature uh just for

Fun I don't even know that it was for credit and students came and and did that that was kind of the apex of the

Buffy the Vampire Slayer uh period of American life so started with Penny

Dreadfuls Barney the vampire uh and worked our way up to Buffy and more modern Renditions so I I find that uh

People who like doing what I like doing for a living pretty uh much need to read

Omnivorously like read everything and it's fun so when parents sometimes ask me what their kids should read uh get

Them to read uh which nowadays is a difficult thing to do and then um I

Found for example growing up reading the Narnia bugs or tolken I remember the day I was sitting on the school bus and I

Started Lord of the Rings having red Hobbit as a younger person and I realized in seventh grade that my entire

Weekend was gone like that was going to be the end of my weekend and in seventh grade you could do that right you could

Just spend the entire weekend go to church but spend the entire weekend reading Lord of the Rings which I I did

And kept reading I hate to admit I skipped all the Poetry when I was in seventh grade because why did told you

Put like really long boring poems in the middle of this action adventure book and

So as an adult of course I also found audio books are interesting this way this is the other tip I often give it's

Very good to listen to audio books in in books that you've read many many times so I find that I edit books for example

The Narnia books that I'd speedread every time through the parts of it I didn't like and an audio book will force

Me to listen to all of it and actually you discover oh I get it I read this book when I was in seventh grade the

First time and these are awesome and I should have paid more attention and i've been i've been you know spending decades

Editing the parts of the book I don't like I I love that I i've got our youngest is is currently in right in the

Middle of the Percy Jackson series there you go and and and so that's obviously introducing him in in that kind of way

To Greek mythology and literature and the stories and so on so he's having a great time you know always regaling me

On the Greek God of this and the Greek god of that um but uh I feel like it's you know he's probably a little bit he's

Not quite ready for you know the the fullon Greek classical stuff yet but it

It may be a way in you know and and that's that's that's important isn't it it is when you get to the Iliad and we

Should all get to The Iliad and you're thinking of that first line sing goddess of the wrath of Achilles pale's son

These won't be unfamiliar names so for a lot of us when we first read The Iliad just the names like who's the a guy and

Then oh no in the first page there are two a guys so how do I keep track of them all but somebody who grew up on

Percy Jackson will find a lot of the names really familiar and not have to do the maybe I'm the

Only one that does that with books like that but if they're unfamiliar names we tend to it's just a struggle to keep

Track of characters yeah and I found the same with nania it kind of it it

Softened the ground for for as you say Lord of the Rings which where which is the more meaty kind of stuff and then

You that might take you back to the other other other authors of of ancient times I have to say going from the

Dianis or bakus figure in I think it's Prince Caspian and then having to read

Uh uh like Greek portrayals of him uh in like the bakai uh is a little eye

Openening and you realize how how CS Lewis caused bakus to become saved or

Something he found found faith in Christ and became a b much better

God well um I this kind of leads us neatly actually into something that that

Is quite Central to what you do as president of the St Constantine School schools and college because I I believe

That's very much focused on what sometimes called classical education so I guess I guess having that kind of wide

Range of reading is why is that such an important value for you in terms of the the schooling and the curriculum that

You encourage well I think and this started really with st basil in the East this kind of tension that St basil

Presents in his orations to to young men heading off to a place like Plato's Academy Plato wasn't there but the

Academy uh historically uh where you're going to be reading Homer and you're going to be finding wisdom from Homer

And the fact that the church always thought you could do that that it was very exceptional and usually that person

Ended up in heresy who thought that you couldn't do that and so this kind of tension uh between here's a person that

We don't think gets everything right and in fact in The Iliad gets a good bit wrong seriously wrong but somehow this

Stream of wisdom uh we can receive it in ways that uh are preperatory and

Illuminating to the deeper wisdom that one finds in sacred scripture so for example when I wrestle with the Iliad

And I asked myself the question in the first line of The Iliad there's a tension where really the gods come

Between the hero and his own passion and what does it mean when I become separated from my own feelings I can

Kind of interact with Homer in ways that I'm afraid as a Believer I sometimes am

Too hesitant to do dialectically with scripture and it helps me do that uh

Scripture of course demands from us our hardest questions demands from us our hardest dialectical interaction but but

Sometimes it's like interacting my mom taught me to argue in a in a good way she just enjoyed uh examining everything

But there is a sort of appropriate piety when you argue with your mother where you know uh how much do you want to win

An argument I in fact never could win an argument with my mother so I didn't have to worry about it I but there is an

Approp piety even with religious texts that I think St basil would say to us

Okay learn to wrestle learn to wrestle learn to get wisdom from these sources

That are as flawed as you are in fact less flawed than you are I always love people who ask me uh why should I read

Books other than the Bible or other than sacred texts like the church fathers to which my usual response is why are you

Talking to me when you could be praying I mean it's obviously it's obviously

Better to talk to God than it is to talk to me uh have mercy on me a sinner uh

But humans crave human interaction and Homer was a human and the reading is a

Kind reading of old books is a kind of lcit necromancy a phrase that I probably

Shouldn't use it's a way of talking to those that we can't otherwise talk to uh

Without doing terrible things like calling up the dead and so we have a kind of chronological loneliness I don't

Think think humans realize we're talking about re-enchantment but part of that is in the world as I understand it was

Meant to be I should be able to go see father Adam eventually given the billions of people who would want to be

Talking to him and interact with him or mother Eve I but I'm cut off from that

Generation uh I'm cut off from the 18th century uh I think you know the last

Victorian died sometime during my lifetime and at that moment I became cut

Off from a certain kind of experience in literature that I really wish that I could experience I tell some of my

College students go talk to a World War II veteran now there are almost none of them left and when you're my age and

It's 150 years since the in since World War II you'll be one of the last

Repositories uh living repositories that can report on the experience of having lived through the second world war

That's a loneliness you know that's a loneliness my great-grandfather fought on the union side of the American Civil

War I was recently in Richmond giving a talk at a conference and had to report that the last time John rolds was in

Richmond he was a prisoner of war uh in Virginia uh during the Civil War but I

Can't talk to him I'm cut off from his experience his experience of being in the prison uh in Richmond and that's a

Part of this disenchantment and books help with that books are the only appropriative Pala of cure which is why

I think God left us holy books yeah oh there's so much that you just said that i've never thought about

Chronological loneliness I think I'm going be thinking about that phrase for a long time we had a chat with historian

Sarah irang Stonebreaker she talks about having like

Almost like this Priestly role when it comes to history and how we live in an ahistorical age and how we are so much

Poorer for it and so she just had this lovely story this lovely anecdote she shared with us where

She when she had her daughter she had all of her family and her husband's family come and say stories over her

Daughter as a way of saying this is who you are these are the stories that have brought you to this place so I guess is

It also to varying degrees is it also about a sort of a belonging and an

Identity and these are the stories these are the people this is the wrestling these are the atrocities these are the

Flaws yes if we disconnect ourselves from them we're living in an ahistorical age and that sort of means we're in a

Way disconnected from the circumstances that make us who we are and and we tend to rewrite history so that if one

Watches like a historical movie I it's very frustrating to me to watch I know

Uh younger adults no longer watch Cameron's Titanic it's a of a particular period as much yeah I watched it on

Sunday no there you go but as really cares about the Titanic which by the way

Had lots of Eastern Orthodox uh passengers on it uh coming from Lebanon and Antioch who never make the cut in

Movies uh somehow they never make the cut as passengers in the in movie but look it's terribly romantic and is a

Terribly romantic person I love it but notice that the sensibilities in the film are very much people talk and act

However perfect the costuming is as if they're what in the 1990s early 2000s

They carry that kind of moral framework and I'm old enough to have had a great aunt who was fabulously old when I knew

Her who grew grew up eating bread paid for by my great great-grandfather's civil war pension Grand Army of the

Republic pension and talking to her often uh Illustrated to me attitudes

That were impossible to recover and then even historians when I talk to them can't recover uh when I was a little boy

Very old men would get up in Appalachia in West Virginia where I'm from and sing songs uh moved by the spirit that no one

Knew anymore and the kind of Dron Irish drone sound uh is impossible to recover

Uh and I heard it no one recorded it and those songs are lost uh forever uh

Because we can't recapture I was once talking to my great aunt for example and she was still upset about hippies in the

1960s in the 80s like they she was still upset by them but the thing that she

Could never understand I I don't want to get too explicit for a family show was people burning certain underwear and I I

Think my mom's generation would have the reaction of how inappropriate that was

Her reaction was why people wore like French nasty women's undergarments

Because she grew up like in the late 19th early 20th century uh where chefs

And other things existed and this whole notion that we spent a lot of money male and female on undergarment she couldn't

Get her head around it that's what she was offended by so even trying to figure out what would have offended my great

Aunt I think even a historian we lose track of of like the bizarre

Sensibilities I I shouldn't call them bizarre I mean maybe they're better than ours uh because once that person is dead

Uh the kind of framework they grew up in is dead too and no matter how hard we try no matter how hard I try I turn

Plato into a 21st century human at my great risk and Peril because then i'm

Not interacting with anything other than my own head it it's like going to sacred scripture and somehow uh sacred

Scripture turns out to be the Republican or Democratic party at prayer here in the United States either direction so

Flatten scripture uh that I no longer can be challenged by it uh in any way

Shape or form I'm sorry you got on a rant there well well no it's it's good but it leads me into the next question

Which is is is that perhaps part of the attraction then of Eastern Orthodoxy for you because in a sense it is

Obviously in embedded in so many ways in a tradition that goes back essentially

Unchanged for for a long time and and perhaps is is harder to sort of um

Create a sort of 20th century kind of version of it in a sense when you're essentially doing and saying the same

Things that people did thousand years ago began life kind of poorly uh and and

Drifting away uh Plato was very helpful in bringing me back to Faith uh Plato

Existed in a kind of suburb where I could come back to Faith and so uh I came to the conclusion over time uh

Nothing I have wonderful parents I had a wonderful Church experience uh I didn't leave anything because it was terrible

Or awful uh eventually my dad and mom also became Orthodox but it's actually painful as the first person in my family

To become Orthodox to have any sense of Separation because they were so awesome and I wasn't so you know how everybody

Blames their parents for their problems I could never do that I I blame them for being unable to blame them uh for my

Problem I but as a person in need of Mercy uh I think that Christians need to

Realize you minimally need a church that can both handle the questions of a Nobel lat the questions of a first century

Palestinian and of course Orthodoxy is a church where the Liturgy is still set in Aramaic uh Jesus could understand the

Liturgy uh in one small Valley hopefully that Valley Will Survive the turmoil of this present age uh and it needs to be

Able to handle the questions of you know the yaya the grandmother uh or the grandfather who may be simple uh in one

Sense in their faith and being able to do all of those things at once really Narrows down the possibilities and I was

Neither interested in going to the church of head knowledge where you know a phd in philosophy we would sit around

And discuss the problem of evil my background is analytic philosophy uh nor did I want to go to a church uh

Where I had to shut my brain off at the door and of course kind of person that would listen to this uh would be like

That uh I wanted to be able to learn from my nana uh because no Reynolds up to my dad's generation had access in 400

Years uh we came from actually White Chapel uh over uh to a place called

Jamestown uh in the 17th century uh we were the stupid people who didn't buy

Slaves and plant tobacco and kept moving West becoming ever more poor and obscure

Uh and unimportant uh but I wanted to be able to be in communion and be in a

Place that could also that simple faith in one way intellectually that was so

Rich in my grandparents that I could never if I'm ever as holy as they were uh that would be something it needed to

Be a church that included all those things and I won't make you a list of of possibilities there but Orthodoxy was

Certainly one of them and then you have to ask yourself the question best you can uh who's right about certain

Important issues uh where is the fullness of the faith to be found and I came to the conclusion that it was in

Orthodoxy but one thing I liked is that Orthodoxy doesn't proze it uh makes converts simply by

Being here we are uh in fact sometimes this is to a fault uh when I first uh

Visited a Greek Parish they said well you're an English-speaking person you've been in the US for a while why don't you

Go down to the street to the English speaking Church uh sometimes Orthodox people will come to the US and attend I

This is actually knew a medical doctor who did this she attended a Presbyterian Church for decades finally came to my

Dad who was a pastor in another denomination and said somebody needs to call the Bishop my pastor just denied

The Virgin birth and dad had to explain that in fact all churches in the United States weren't roughly Orthodox and so

You know I had to explain the whole whole thing to her and it was made her sad in uh and so Orthodoxy was for me

The best option because it could capture the wholeness of church history it was talking to the first century and was

Talking to the 21st century uh and it struck me as true it could handle

Science it could handle literature uh it wasn't denying any part of human

Reality can you I actually think that uh

Orthodoxy might be the most represented stream of Christianity in our podcast perh perhaps um we've had Martin Shaw uh

Paul Kings North Jonathan pajo all of whom are we adult convicts to Orthodoxy and I was just looking back over their

Episodes and seeing what they said drew them and so for Martin Shaw it was that he didn't want a tradition that was

Going to be too easy on him for him he wanted to be stretched um for Jonathan

Paso it was various things but he pulled out the beauty and for Paul Kings North he said something really interesting he

Said that it's the strength of Orthodoxy and he said that two things have happened it's faced a lot of persecution

And it's always been in sort of a position of not having a huge amount of power not being hugely represented etc

Etc and then he said and I'm going to quote him is that it hasn't been hacked about by humanism or mity so he sort of

Says you know it hasn't had to bend with the Reformation the enlightenment or the Renaissance and so to any of those in

Particular like ring a bell with you or is it just all of those things I was just really interested by those

Different answers I think there's truth to that so there are pockets of Orthodoxy that haven't interacted but

Russian Orthodoxy for example has whole streams that did interact and try to deal with the Renaissance because of

Course the birth of science which came more from the western parts of the world out of medieval Catholicism nobody

Rejects and so uh coming to terms with that uh in the parts of Orthodoxy that because of the uh kind of Exile of

Orthodox thought that came with ottoman conquest and even the Russian experience

Of being conquered by the Mongols uh did uh delay this kind of development and

The strength of that is that it meant that um Orthodox thinkers could develop different approaches to how to deal with

Modernity with how to deal with the birth of science so what is science is a

Question that maybe Orthodox thinkers particularly in Russia came to later in time uh as science developed as the

Scientific Revolution developed and came up with alternative answers with other answers but I actually would like to

Stress the commonality uh all Christianity the Orthodox Church is born

Out of the experience of uh Jesus of Nazareth who lived in Palestine and who

Spread the word in that Eastern land and then the church grew uh in places like

What we would call turkey today Asia Minor the great churches of the Book of Revelation into Greece and then spread

West of course famously Paul to Rome I and the commonality of all of that

Orthodoxy never stopped that great conversation even when it was being conquered but I I will say this as a

Person of my age belonging to the church uh that in the 20th century produced probably the most Martyrs uh in

Christian history was also appealing to me I I I was going to say for for the

Benefit of those who perhaps have not exper experienced an Eastern Orthodox worship service maybe have just a few

Ideas in their head about you know the somewhat ornate robes or or sort of uh

You know types of churches that that are often examples of that could could you give us sort of a lay Person's Guide to

What you typical service might be that you might attend I I will only introduce to caveat that I'm a philosopher not a

Theologian and I don't even play a theologian on television so I'm not uh

If my priest calls me and yells at me uh not going to give you a theological description but a lay person's uh

Experience uh I think and and maybe this is because I'm a platonist uh the

Eastern Orthodox church has the Liturgy has stayed in contact with both the head

Uh the human heart and the sensual experience the physical experience of

Worship so probably the first thing that I would have noticed as I first came to

A typical Orthodox Church were the smells The Sounds the ornateness the

Gilding the way the light comes generally does the Orthodox Churches don't use stained glass uh my own uh

Home Parish uses a kind of see-through Stone uh or clear glass and the way the

Light interacts with all the gilding uh that's there is very intentional uh it

Isn't uh to be fancy it's there to draw every part of my sensibility into

Worship because I'm a physical being uh you stand up a lot in an orthodox service most traditional Orthodox

Churches didn't have pews or places for anyone other than older older older people to set and the older people never

Set they're the ones that never set because they've been standing up for decades uh that kind of even exhaust J

Uh also then secondarily for the heart the Orthodox liturgy doesn't generally change and where it does change with the

Passage of time I anyone watching his podcast knows the church calendar so in a very similar way very similar Church

Calendar we journey through the Life of Christ we journey through the life of saints many of whom are illuminated

Around us as a kind of window to Heaven uh as we reflect on and ask uh as that

Great cloud of witnesses we ask them to cheer us on from Paradise uh this also

Engages our hearts uh it's the very unchanging that when you first go to an

Orthodox church it's very interesting it's and so sometimes people want to rush to convert because it's cool to go

Uh and the first lend that you go through is kind of cool well I'm suffering for Jesus and I'm giving up all these foods but the nice thing I

When I became Orthodox you know did a good degree worked hard written a little bit no one in Orthodoxy cares that I

Exist uh because they're the Church of centuries of Millennia and you know if

I'm not going to say anything that anyone cares about uh and so that's a

Good thing right uh the church endures the church contains a great cloud of witness is and so my intellect can

Engage with those people and the Liturgy itself will hold up to intellectual

Engagement uh and thought and so all of this goes together what I was going to say is eventually when the newness of

The Liturgy wears down the hard work the labor which is what liturgy means really

The labor of the Liturgy the fact that man I wish we had different Linton disciplines and some of them are drawn

From like the first and second century we're eating poor people food and poor people food has changed why can't we

Have Cheetos because in West Virginia that was what we ate it's poor Mountain Dew and Cheetos it's poor people food

Why don't we fast with it but of course the church could care less about my opinion and by the church I mean the

Church living and dead Universal a living Bishop could no longer get up in the morning and say except for a

Dispensation for me for medical reasons or something oh yes we're going to change the fasting rules of the church

Because John Mark wrote a clever article in you know some philosophical Journal it's just not going to happen no there's

No one equipped to do it yeah and and and what's interesting to me then coming

To sort of you know one of the core reasons we asked you on here is that given that the church has never been

Trying to kind of capture the culture it's it's been very happy to just do what it's always done um it hasn't

Really indulged in celebrities it hasn't really um you know changed much it's not

Been Evangelistic as you say um in that sense there's been this extraordinary

Rise in the number of young people especially young men yeah wanting to adopt Eastern Orthodoxy um so I know

That uh an Institute that um you're part of um has you know done some of the the

The key research on this that was later um featured in some global news articles

And so just just tell us about this research you did what you found out and and and then we'll talk about some of

The the reasons why perhaps we're seeing this right St Constantine College I i've been a college professor my whole career

And then decided it would be good to establish like micro colleges where people could experience dialectical I

What in an English context might be described as Oxbridge style education one-on-one tutorials that were

Affordable and in the American context that's exceedingly rare uh and so that's kind of the mission of the college and

Then simultaneously the college began to want to study things you get a group of academics together and they want to do

Research and so one thing we wanted to research right away was the longevity of conversions that's what started the

Process uh as waves of converts came do they stick I you don't just decide one

Day to become Orthodox and immediately sign a card and you're Orthodox uh usually it takes a couple years before

Your priest will suggest okay you should become an Orthodox Christian since since we don't believe you know uh anglicans

Are going to hell uh and you know there's not a rush in the door we want to make sure people understand uh we

Think we think we're the church that that's not to be like overly ecumenical uh but we don't rush people in and what

We discovered was there's a real stickiness that most despite what some people might think uh converts stay uh

And they endure they stay involved in church in fact converts may stay more involved in church than some cradle

Orthodox uh do the stickiness is greater uh in that we discovered and we're still

In the early days of this you know uh the research is limited but it's it's good quality uh we've had statisticians

Look at it uh and we'll keep growing the research is that we discovered married

Couples with children uh convert at a very high rate but the highest rate of

Conversions uh and single women convert uh at a lower rate than married couples but they do convert but uh single men

Are the highest group of converts uh equaling uh married couples or surpassing them in some cases and we

Begin to think about how to try to explain that I have actually a different explanation than most people give and

And it is that in the American context uh in general and I'm not fit to tell

You why this is true men are not doing well they don't go to college in as high a rate uh as women do and good for women

You don't want to suppress the number of women that are going to college uh they're not going to grad school at the

Same rates as women uh and and they exhibit uh antisocial behaviors in a

Much higher rate than women do and if you think about people who convert uh if

Your life and worldview is working for you you're not necessarily looking around uh you know you're looking to fix

The things that aren't working for you but if in general you know you go to college you're doing pretty well you've got a decent job then you're not looking

For you know what's wrong what's broken in me uh and so uh I think the male

Population single male popul uh it's no big insight to say that in the US context at least it's not doing

Very well and so if you're in a group that's not doing very well looking around and saying what's wrong with me

What is truth is there a way out of this pit I and often uh this leads to very

Bad answers so for example i've had to interact with I don't want to say students because I I don't want to

Identify uh anyone so i've had to interact with young men who are attracted to Nazism and fascism and over

The whole course of my career i've had many students attracted to bolism or extreme views of Marxism but for the

First time I began to run into college age people who were attracted by uh

Really bad forms of fascism not the misuse of of the term but they you know wanted mine comp for Christmas uh as a

Christmas present an English version they were uh but it was because it's very evil thing but they were looking

For something different and since the establishment didn't seem to like them and since the establishment rightly I

Will underline hates Nazis they begin to look at well am I hated like the Nazis

And is there some truth there so I think Orthodoxy eventually for those who kept

Thinking and pursuing the truth engaging in the truth you you come to Jesus because Jesus is the center of the

Christian faith and having come to Jesus where can I experience Jesus in a Timeless uh way that will minister to

The whole person we talked about how the Liturgy engages head heart and hands the

The body and I I think eventually uh young men explore that uh inside of

Orthodoxy the other Advantage we have in the US is people are very familiar with other forms of Christianity and they

Carry the burden of that familiarity I we have our own mistakes you only have

To look at Russia and the Ukraine to avoid any sense of Orthodox triumphalism uh but in the US context

People can kind of uh I i'll quote the vice president the previous vice president unburdened by what has been

And they can see what might be so I think there's some of that as well I most people in the US still haven't

Heard of Orthodoxy and I get asked all the time if I'm Jewish uh for example I

There are college programs that will study the Middle East and not making this up and they'll have a lot of Jewish

Scholars great that's good they should they'll have a lot of Islamic scholars great that's good they should

Uh but there are no Christians uh involved there are no Christians engaged uh in a church that has endured in the

Middle East since the time of Jesus uh because we just don't appear on anyone's radar and there's an advantage to that

Yeah that's so interesting particular what you said about the fact that it's

Like your your rituals your practices your tradition is timeless and so I guess the attraction then is if if a if

A demographic of people are feeling hated by their culture well here's a place that looks nothing like my culture

What rest what Freedom what sort of yeah what newness I I love your explanation

There because I read the the Articles so there's an article by the New York Post I believe and then that was also picked

Up by um and of course the New York Post would never be Sensational as so it's always well this was my issue because I

Read that and I didn't love it you know because it was no I didn't love it either no because it was saying you know

All of the it was basically saying that they were all of these men were looking for a traditional and a masculine form

Of uh of Christianity and I got the traditional part and now that you've

Explained it I get that even more like something that's Timeless something that's ageless something that feels like

It connects you something that breaks down that that chronological loneliness that you were talking about and it feels authentic and stey and unshakable but

Then I was like but what does masculine mean in that context I I don't like that at all as a

Framing because I think if you come to the church it's the wholeness of the human person it is what is it to be a

Man what is it to be a woman can I find answers to that and and if anybody's converting to Orthodoxy uh out of some

Kind of uh bro culture uh Orthodoxy itself will rapidly I mean I I have a

Prayer rope on my wrist and the prayer that I pray most constantly in the Orthodox pray constantly is Lord Jesus

Christ Son of God have mercy on me a sinner uh so you're unlikely uh to

Become you know get an exalted view of yourself or uh put down other people uh

Because Christianity is essentially the greatest uh virtue is love the greatest virtue is charity and so i'll point out

What people skip over uh maybe the biggest group of people to convert to

Orthodoxy are younger married people with children if you look at our own study and younger married intact

Traditional families of course mean there's a man and a woman uh involved in the family uh I think it's an

Interesting question why not as many single women uh convert to Orthodoxy uh

And that's the more interesting question to me than that every other category of people in the US are tempted to to

Convert to Orthodoxy and I think again the Temptation is to fit whatever you

Know preconceptions you have about the way the church should look and give easy answers to those questions so I don't

Really have an answer to that question other than to suggest that conversion itself is difficult people don't rush to

Convert to something they don't know and so you have to be looking for something different you have to be looking for

Something new and so uh I would wonder if it doesn't correlate with social satisfaction or dissatisfaction more

Than anything else I I I I get the sense too from some of the young converts i've

Spoken to who have gone in the direction either of a sort of quite traditional Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy that

That it's it is the the kind of um as you said earlier B um the the kind of

Strength but not in the sense of a kind of masculine domineering but but of kind of the the rigor that it requires that

That that is what's attractive it's it's difficult it's not it's not to kind of just hey just come along and we'll just

Give you a sort of a slight sheen on your life and some tips on on how to live your best life it's kind of it's

It's entering something that's quite different that demands something of you uh that that can be quite difficult to

Understand actually not necessarily easy and but there's something that in an odd

Way that often goes against all of our kind of Seeker friendly Evangelistic advice that we've been bu very often in

The western church is actually more attractive interestingly and especially I think yes to some of these young men

Who perhaps feel like as as B was saying it it's different to what's on offer already in the culture um

I guess go ahead if you go to a regular Parish I think the other problem is uh

It would be like having read X or Twitter uh which I'm no longer on right now uh but having read it during the

Election and decided how the election was going to go based on the people represented on Twitter or x uh or your

Favorite social media platform uh or by people for example who listen to talk radio uh back in the day when talk radio

Was big and I did know guest hosting and things like that they would always tell me if you're friends like the show it

Will fail uh because it's a mass Market uh movement and so when you're talking about tens of millions of people uh I

Think sometimes we're too tempted because so easy to quantify to go on social media and look at those converts

And turn them into the norm uh as opposed to the young married couple who

Was looking for a church that wasn't selling them something that was in a product that just wanted to express the

Faith once delivered to the apostles and I want to say something about timelessness you know the Liturgy itself

Has slowly evolved over time you know if you dropped into first century Palestine

No one was doing the Liturgy of St John chrysis right uh exactly as it's done uh

It grew out of Temple worship it grew out of the synagogues uh prayers were added over centuries uh the point is and

And B you kept captured this really well is that the Liturgy is timeless in the sense that the entirety of church

History right back to the first century and some of the most ancient prayers in the Liturgy can be found and it isn't

Changing with the minute it's changing with the century I and so you know I I

Had a mentor who said there's some big social issues that are going on right now and the mind of the church needs to

Reflect on them and we'll let you know in 300 years what we think uh

And and so as a dialectically based analytic philosopher I want to think about it and write a paper and tell you

Uh not what you should think but enter into dialogue with you but the church Universal isn't sitting in dialogue with

Me uh it's saying okay here's what we've received this is what's true it has to

Be applied to your life it has to be applied to the 21st century um we're a church of the vernacular I wherever

We've gone we've translated the Liturgy into the of the people so we're a church that

Changes in a sense but it isn't in a marketing sense like oh no we're not

Going to be relevant to the year 2025 and I I I I got this from listening to

An interview with Father Andrew dck who you may be familiar with John Mark who's one of one of the sort of works with us

In side yeah Pat so he's he's he's a he's a priest in the Orthodox church and

And he was just saying you know being asked about this you know upsurge in young men entering parishes uh he said

Well we we were as confused as everyone else we hadn't changed anything we wen't doing anything differently suddenly all

These young men were just showing up and there was no kind of you know people were asking have have you has there been

Some big Evangelistic you know uh campaign and he said no that that just wouldn't work in Orthodox circles um yet

At the same time you know something is obviously driving these young men to go and go to all the bother uh or these you

Know young couples or whoever to to find their local Orthodox Church I wonder how much you think um the the influence of

Some of those names we mentioned earlier like Paul Kings North Martin Shaw Jonathan Pou especially alongside his

His friend Jordan Peterson you know who are obviously reaching a lot of these young men

And do you think that's having an influence on it obviously it obviously is I mean if anybody's talking to

Millions of people and Orthodoxy becomes an option that for Orthodoxy particularly in the North American

Context is a big deal I if you say you're Orthodox in the United States

Most people still have no clue what you're talking about and sometimes i'll just say you know the churches you're

Always praying for because someone's killing people Christians that's us we're almost always the group uh that

You're praying for uh because someone is killing us uh and so that sometimes

Helps people but like I said we're we're almost invisible and so for someone

Who's very prominent that has a platform to millions of a certain kind of person to even put us on the radar is

Immediately going to lead to a curiosity that a local Parish isn't used to uh you

Know they're plugging Along being faithful uh but the other thing is so this is where I'm going to be uh naughty

In a way uh I became Orthodox because I became convinced it was true and I could

Find Jesus there uh and so uh people come and they're curious and they're

Engaging in the niyam Creed and they're wrestling with it and it's said every week and they're trying to understand it

But it then it isn't just intellectual they're told go fast go get your body in

Shape uh great lint is coming up and I know there are people that look forward to it but I'm a Reynolds and that means

We like to eat as as I show demonstrate and so that's a hard discipline for me

Because the foods I like best are the foods you get rid of uh during Lent uh but it's good for me it's good for my

Soul and so it's that kind of thing that people come to say and I'm not making

Any claims about any other traditions this is where I can find the fullness of Faith uh we know where the church is

We're not making a statement about where the church is not that reminds me of something Justin

You say quite frequently actually but about Christianity as a whole is there has to be an element to which it's only useful and it's only attractive because

It's true so I like that that's the base answer because I think it's true

We're also a church of Miracles I mean we're a church of weeping icons and

Hagiographies that if you look at one way of looking at history would be the intercession of the Saints and how

They've held us back from uh nuclear Annihilation uh now I don't Advocate

Historians in a secular context always work that way but the possibility of the

Miraculous Orthodoxy doesn't deny it but it also doesn't become crazy about it uh

So that you know any local person who decides something some woo woo thing has occurred we all rush over and take a

Look at it uh again we'll say well in a hundred years we'll really know what

Father soand so and his weeping icon were up to and and then we might canonize the person uh that that will be

Cool uh and so as a a church that you know every Church does Celebrity and

Gets bitten by it it's not that we don't do it but there's no money in it inside of Orthodoxy and so uh we don't atttend

We don't usually get as many grifters I I I was going to say though the that

That aspect of Orthodoxy which is obviously that that kind of openness to the Supernatural and to miraculous the

Weird as as one of our guests on our first season put it Tom Holland he he again is a good example of something who

While he hasn't gone to Eastern Orthodox he has very much been drawn to very Anglo Catholic tradition right um in in

A conversation I shared with him about a year ago he talked about the fact that the thing that brought him closest

Actually to conversion was actually a prayer uttered actually to the Virgin

Mary in in and that this led you know a series of events happened that that led

To him being cleared of a cancer diagnosis now he says that it's the

Weirdness actually that he thinks is actually quite attractive to people now people aren't looking for a sort of very

Rationalized humanistic version of Christianity and I think that's sometimes the mistake again that our

Seeker sensitive movement makes is that we have to kind of play down all all of the the strangeness and the weirdness

That but actually you know from his point of view people are actually looking for that now I don't know if that's your your experience no it is and

I so I i'll repeat I think you would find the church where Miracles can occur

And are recognized to have occurred and be occurring and where again the most

Rigorous scientific imagination can also live and flourish and grow uh so that

Pre-revolutionary Russia was no Paradise but also our image of it is sometimes uh

We get it through a Soviet propaganda but if you take a look you know they were producing First Rate chemists Nobel

Quality chemists and also producing Miracles uh uh inside of a a whole

Culture it was deeply defective or the Russian Revolution wouldn't have occurred but there is something there

Where we can say say is it possible to be in a church where when this is in a

Western context but it's a saint recognized by both churches I'm being a tourist walking through Milan doing my

Thing and I look over to my left and there is St Ambrose laying there

Investments I older than Augustine obviously uh St Ambrose pray for me uh

And I have to say as a normal human being my first reaction was not Holiness it was yeah

Like there's a dead guy over in a glass case what in the world but then as a

Person who loves history and the hity of the church for example which Ambrose did and the conversion of Augustine uh

There's the guy for whom the cathedral around me was built and he

Endures my sinfulness my work your work all of our

Works will be gone and Ambrose will be there uh being weird uh and you know I

Walked into one Monastery in the East and eventually uh you decay in the

Cemetery the way they be bury you in the Eastern tradition and there are stacks of your bones as you go in and then I

Realize uh me too and so there's a weirdness at that level where death is

Something that the Orthodox view as an entryway to the other world but aren't

Weirded out by we're not freaked out by it and yet we allow it to remain

Other like I I we're not like the strange adults who have gotten really

Into Halloween and a kind of gross Gothic skulls everywhere uh kind of

Thing but we're also comfortable around uh death and the human body so that

There was Ambrose praying for me uh in a great Cathedral and as an orthodox person I went from this kind of yeah to

Yah that's awesome and so I think that's Orthodoxy works well that way it's not

The only uh branch of Christianity that has that effect but lots of branches of Christianity don't do that at all

They're either purely rationalistic or they really really really don't want you to think about

Miracles yeah I think as you were speaking another

Possible um draw came to me in that I am becoming more and more convinced the

More people I'm speaking to the more people I'm interviewing the more I'm writing I'm becoming more and more convinced that we are desperate to knock

Ourselves off the top of the cosmic pyramid like we are so longing to give

Up our place as at the top of the food chain to not be the biggest and most

Powerful thing that we know and I think you can kind of see symptoms of that everywhere but I think I think there's

Something about your tradition in particular that reminds us that there is

A good kind of small and we are it you know that there's a good kind of finite

And we are it I mean you know let's yeah when you look at the good God who is essentially unapproachable and

Undescribable and everything we say about God is the best thing that we can say but we can never capture God in his

Essence we can say true things about God and about what God did in the person of Jesus Christ there's a real history

Jesus really lived and died the body that came went into the tomb came out of the Tomb uh transformed uh all those

Things are true they're true true they're true in this sense uh that I as a philosopher would want to talk about

Truth uh but there's a Transcendence that then you're right puts me in my place that says uh the existence of

Aliens is a really good example of how comfortable Orthodoxy can be with weirdness so we don't have a view about

Aliens but I think my secular friends who want to believe in aliens and I'm a science fiction fan really want somebody

To come and put us in our place and also make it so we don't destroy ourselves

Like give us some kind of Enlightenment or some kind of hope that there's some more rational civilization Orthodoxy on

The other hand has a menu of explanations for what could be occurring if we had a first encounter uh with

Another race my suspition is and and I I don't say this to be cute but given how

People behave that if we have a a first encounter it's likely pilgrims coming to

Bethlehem to see where the Incarnation occurred and they finally made it uh

Right around Christmas and so that will be remarkable uh but it will again if we

Met uh other intelligences it would still give us a longing for the

Transcendent because those other intelligence even if they had space travel wouldn't be sufficient to ground

The love that moves the heavens and the furthest Stars uh it would still be inadequate it would still be finite I I

Once gave a talk to a group that believes in a finite God I we don't have to get into the which group it was and

The problem I felt was not even their history or some problems some anomalies

In their holy book they were used to hearing that the problem is that I I am

So flawed and began my life in such a flawed way but I want to love my wife hope

Transcendently uh and that love is great but it isn't infinite but it points to

This great possibility of a love that is total that is absolute and maybe it

Doesn't exist but whenever humans have heard about it they've longed for it and so the mere possibility that it could

Exist means any intelligence that we ran into that was finite any intelligence

That we ran into that was finite would be inadequate to ground this the horrible film Indiana Jones 4 the

Crystal Skull one uh will evidentally the Russian woman has never read a fairy tale so she has to know everything I I

Have A Little Bit of Sympathy for that uh in that she's looking for something

Big enough to ground everything and everything includes an all the past and

All the possibilities and all the loves that could ever be and also that can

Last long enough to redeem human suffering uh the human suffering that was on Titanic was awful we've talked

About Titanic um and so you need time for love to begin to heal wounds and we

Need a Transcendent love that has an infinite amount of time to give meaning to things that I wouldn't even dare to

Attach meaning to now even though that was 1912 it's still too soon for any human apologist to try to say well it's

Okay that that happened and that suffering occurred uh because of trit Reason ab and

But over the plenitude of time with an Infinity of Love there is hope in the

Human heart that such suffering can find meaning well just bringing things back

To the finitude of time because we are running out of time oh certain about here as well but we um I mean back to a

Very more praic sort of aspect of this because you you've talked we've talked about you know some of the reasons why

We're seeing young people young men especially drawn to Eastern Orthodoxy um the kind of crisis among young men that

You you mentioned at the beginning John Mark um the weirdness that we've talked about that very many people are looking

For the the kind of that the the sense of humility that that Bell mentioned that people perhaps actually don't want

To be at the top of the food chain and recognize their finite I mean another

Aspect of this and it links I think to the young the kind of masculine identity crisis if you like is is the vibe shift

That we've been seeing in culture with the election of Donald Trump the rise of more kind of populist and National

Nationalistic kind of forms of government in different parts of the world and so a lot of people have linked

This this move um especially young men kind of want looking for a more traditional kind of grounded historic

Maybe form of faith that that ask more of them that it's it's tied into that

You know as as we we've kind of as perhaps people are rejecting the the quote unquote you know more woke

Progressive kind of uh agendas of of previous governments and shifting in a

More right Direction I mean is there some truth in that that that that's kind of partly where that that I think and

You know and I I don't think it's bad I I think all of us come to the truth uh

In partly Noble reasons partly defective reasons sometimes partly bad reasons

Like we're stumbling our way towards the light uh when a scientist makes a great discovery uh and then we benefit from it

We don't quiz their motivations and and re eject a discovery because we did you know they had bad they wanted to get

Rich and so they developed this wonderful product we don't we don't throw it aside so I do think that there

Are mixed motives for people coming but I would like to say something good um

Orthodoxy says take my Phil helenismo and I I love Greek culture I

Can't be a Greek I wish I could be I also love Russian culture I wish I could

Be Russian and I can't be I'm just I am like I'm so boringly Anglo-Saxon when

They ran if you're from West Virginia like everyone in her marries that if I went to a certain part of White Chapel

If it's endured I bet I could find a relative uh uh and so it's very strange

And it's okay to love your folks now this is a very lesser love

This is a very lesser love and it is been perverted in jillions of ways

There's no place in the church for jingoism a great American expression for you know loving your country

Inappropriately but to love your folks to love where you came from to love your family to love your extended family to

Love my home state of West Virginia and Appalachian culture recognizing all its flaw and Appalachian culture certainly

Has entered a a a kind of dark period a terrible period where we used to produce

Wonderful folk music and now we're producing opioid addicts uh and some of this was done to us and some of it we've

Done to ourselves but it's okay for me to be proud to be a West Virginia it's okay for me to look

With pride to that and Orthodoxy uh which can fall into kind of ethnic evils

Uh also though has a strong sense of we're going to do the service in Romanian because you're Romanian and

It's okay to be Romanian uh is a strong streak inside of Orthodoxy uh and I

Think people find it appealing now I don't know what to call that politically but but I think we so reacted in the

20th century to the real evils of jingoistic nationalism particularly in

Germany and Italy uh that we got to the point where when when I went to school

And they did where are you from in the United States the point is you're from like 50 different places and we'll

Celebrate all of them and when I was asked where my folks came from all I had was Great Britain and it actually was

Humiliating like people were what's wrong with you this is the most boring like map of where you're from uh

Possible but I I think inside of Orthodoxy someone would come and say it's okay it's okay to be proud of the

Fact that your family came from Great Britain in fact just from England I we're not British we English only and I

Will only tell you in fifth grade that was kind of in the American context a shameful experience in the kind of

Schools I went to because you should be you know 15 different groups of people

People and that's a glorious thing in the US and so I think people find that appealing uh it's okay to be proud of

Your heritage as long as you don't tell lies about it and as long as your love doesn't become

Disproportionate yeah that's so fascinating that's so I could go on and

On and on talking about this unfortunately the great aunt that I told you about would tell you that I can go

On and on and on you want I can only tell you people from the 19th and early 20th century were the bluntest people I

Ever met when I gained weight she would just come in and she would say you are fat uh but she also asked me once if I

Had ever heard of anyone talking themselves to dub and so it's possible I can do it I think I could do it too so

Let's just because honestly I want to ask you more about mysticism I want to ask you more about the emotional um

Intelligence all oh there's so much but um this has been the most beautiful

Beautiful conversation Orthodoxy is a church for um true Romantics who don't want to let Romanticism consume

Them that's a of putting it yeah I like it well

Thank you so much it's been it's been lovely uh i've learned a lot over the last hour of conversation and um uh and

All the best is you continue to document this interesting renewal and Revival in

Orthodox circles as you say it's a long game in Orthodoxy and we'll see what this brings and and on what the outcomes

May be but for now um thanks for being our guest and telling us about the the re-enchantment that Eastern Orthodoxy is

Bringing in many Western circles thanks for being our guest today Jo Mark yes and just to thank you our wonderful

Listeners and viewers um I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as Justin and I did um if you would like to

Subscribe review like do all of those helpful things um we would be so appreciative also as ever you can be a

Part of making these convers ations happen all of the information you would need is at scen andun seen.com

Uh but for now I guess reluctantly it's time for us to say goodbye we will see

You next time all right thank you see you next time goodbye

I always love people who ask me uh why should I read books other than the Bible to which my usual response is why are

You talking to me when you could be praying reading of old books is a kind of lcit necromancy a phrase that I

Probably shouldn't use it's a way of talking to those that we can't otherwise talk to uh without doing terrible things

Uh I became Orthodox because I became convinced it was true and I could find Jesus there the body that came went into

The the tomb came out of the Tomb uh transformed uh all those things are true they're true true they're true in this

Sense uh that I as a philosopher would want to talk about truth it's okay to be

Proud of your heritage as long as you don't tell lies about it and as long as your love doesn't become

Disproportionate the existence of aliens is a really good example of how comfortable Orthodoxy can be with

Weirdness Orthodoxy is a church for um true Romantics who don't want to let

Romanticism consume them [Music]

Welcome to another episode of re-enchanting I'm Bel Tindle and i'm

Justin Bry and we are here once again to talk about re-enchanting our favorite

Topic wondering whether we are seeking it whether we're craving it whether we're in a disenchanted world and

Whether we're seeking something different and there's been some really interesting activity lately in the

Eastern Orthodox wing of the church that we thought was quite relevant to the topic that we like to discuss here on

Re-enchanting so joining us today is Dr John Mark Reynolds he's president of St Constantine schools and College and the

Author of numerous books including when Athens met Jerusalem an introduction to classical and Christian thought he's

Also the editor of the great books reader frequent blogger lecturer on a wide range of topics including ancient

Philosophy classical and home education politics faith and virtue now John Mark

Was involved in some recent research that made Global headlines showing a huge upswing in the numbers of young men

Entering the Eastern Orthodox Church precisely the demographic that is most absent in most churches so what is it

About this ancient Church stream that has reenchanted these young converts that's what we're going to be talking to

John Mark about today boy am I curious about this topic

John Mark hello it's lovely lovely to be with you um it's wonderful to be here

Before we dig into everything that Justin has just said we usually record

On top of lambus Palace library and so our first question is always somewhat of an OD to our re-enchanting home and we

Want to know what you're currently reading so for my job and for pleasure this is going to sound uh horrible but I

Read the Republic uh every semester so I'm working my way again through Plato's Republic but I'm also reading I and I

Just wanted to point out Alexander schan is to little red and they collected His

Radio broadcasts that really were done by Voice of America when communism was a thing in the Soviet Union and watching

The development of his ideas I read volume one I'm now on volume two is is really good and interesting I'm reading

A bio of the emperor Justinian uh that's the other thing in front of me and then

For my sins I'm reading William Shatner's boldly go so uh Le lest I be

Just utterly pretentious beyond belief well do you know what I am ashamed to

Say that William sh is boldly go is the only one of those i've

Read which really has humbled me somewhat to shake William shaner's hand

For half a second you know one of those long lines last year because uh I believed I needed to do that uh the best

Thing that Canada has ever sent the United States William Sher

Just a as a scholar of the classical world do you find that a lot of your

Reading is basically you're you're going back a couple of thousand years in in the people you're imbibing on a regular

Basis yeah I I think that that's true generally um you get in I got into this line of work I you know in my 20s

Because I love the ancient world I love thinking about the ancient world uh but I'm also one of those I was one of those

Crazy kids who became monomaniacal about some topic like circus fires and then

Had to know everything there was to know about circus fires or the death of the last Russians are less amusingly uh and

So I was also a big science fiction a fantasy reader and so I'm the kind of person that for fun will read Brandon

Sanderson no one will confuse as uh being a great author uh but he turn he

Turns out 700 page books the way most of us breathe uh and so I find that that's

Fun and that's good I once taught a class on vampire literature uh just for

Fun I don't even know that it was for credit and students came and and did that that was kind of the apex of the

Buffy the Vampire Slayer uh period of American life so started with Penny

Dreadfuls Barney the vampire uh and worked our way up to Buffy and more modern Renditions so I I find that uh

People who like doing what I like doing for a living pretty uh much need to read

Omnivorously like read everything and it's fun so when parents sometimes ask me what their kids should read uh get

Them to read uh which nowadays is a difficult thing to do and then um I

Found for example growing up reading the Narnia bugs or tolken I remember the day I was sitting on the school bus and I

Started Lord of the Rings having red Hobbit as a younger person and I realized in seventh grade that my entire

Weekend was gone like that was going to be the end of my weekend and in seventh grade you could do that right you could

Just spend the entire weekend go to church but spend the entire weekend reading Lord of the Rings which I I did

And kept reading I hate to admit I skipped all the Poetry when I was in seventh grade because why did told you

Put like really long boring poems in the middle of this action adventure book and

So as an adult of course I also found audio books are interesting this way this is the other tip I often give it's

Very good to listen to audio books in in books that you've read many many times so I find that I edit books for example

The Narnia books that I'd speedread every time through the parts of it I didn't like and an audio book will force

Me to listen to all of it and actually you discover oh I get it I read this book when I was in seventh grade the

First time and these are awesome and I should have paid more attention and i've been i've been you know spending decades

Editing the parts of the book I don't like I I love that I i've got our youngest is is currently in right in the

Middle of the Percy Jackson series there you go and and and so that's obviously introducing him in in that kind of way

To Greek mythology and literature and the stories and so on so he's having a great time you know always regaling me

On the Greek God of this and the Greek god of that um but uh I feel like it's you know he's probably a little bit he's

Not quite ready for you know the the fullon Greek classical stuff yet but it

It may be a way in you know and and that's that's that's important isn't it it is when you get to the Iliad and we

Should all get to The Iliad and you're thinking of that first line sing goddess of the wrath of Achilles pale's son

These won't be unfamiliar names so for a lot of us when we first read The Iliad just the names like who's the a guy and

Then oh no in the first page there are two a guys so how do I keep track of them all but somebody who grew up on

Percy Jackson will find a lot of the names really familiar and not have to do the maybe I'm the

Only one that does that with books like that but if they're unfamiliar names we tend to it's just a struggle to keep

Track of characters yeah and I found the same with nania it kind of it it

Softened the ground for for as you say Lord of the Rings which where which is the more meaty kind of stuff and then

You that might take you back to the other other other authors of of ancient times I have to say going from the

Dianis or bakus figure in I think it's Prince Caspian and then having to read

Uh uh like Greek portrayals of him uh in like the bakai uh is a little eye

Openening and you realize how how CS Lewis caused bakus to become saved or

Something he found found faith in Christ and became a b much better

God well um I this kind of leads us neatly actually into something that that

Is quite Central to what you do as president of the St Constantine School schools and college because I I believe

That's very much focused on what sometimes called classical education so I guess I guess having that kind of wide

Range of reading is why is that such an important value for you in terms of the the schooling and the curriculum that

You encourage well I think and this started really with st basil in the East this kind of tension that St basil

Presents in his orations to to young men heading off to a place like Plato's Academy Plato wasn't there but the

Academy uh historically uh where you're going to be reading Homer and you're going to be finding wisdom from Homer

And the fact that the church always thought you could do that that it was very exceptional and usually that person

Ended up in heresy who thought that you couldn't do that and so this kind of tension uh between here's a person that

We don't think gets everything right and in fact in The Iliad gets a good bit wrong seriously wrong but somehow this

Stream of wisdom uh we can receive it in ways that uh are preperatory and

Illuminating to the deeper wisdom that one finds in sacred scripture so for example when I wrestle with the Iliad

And I asked myself the question in the first line of The Iliad there's a tension where really the gods come

Between the hero and his own passion and what does it mean when I become separated from my own feelings I can

Kind of interact with Homer in ways that I'm afraid as a Believer I sometimes am

Too hesitant to do dialectically with scripture and it helps me do that uh

Scripture of course demands from us our hardest questions demands from us our hardest dialectical interaction but but

Sometimes it's like interacting my mom taught me to argue in a in a good way she just enjoyed uh examining everything

But there is a sort of appropriate piety when you argue with your mother where you know uh how much do you want to win

An argument I in fact never could win an argument with my mother so I didn't have to worry about it I but there is an

Approp piety even with religious texts that I think St basil would say to us

Okay learn to wrestle learn to wrestle learn to get wisdom from these sources

That are as flawed as you are in fact less flawed than you are I always love people who ask me uh why should I read

Books other than the Bible or other than sacred texts like the church fathers to which my usual response is why are you

Talking to me when you could be praying I mean it's obviously it's obviously

Better to talk to God than it is to talk to me uh have mercy on me a sinner uh

But humans crave human interaction and Homer was a human and the reading is a

Kind reading of old books is a kind of lcit necromancy a phrase that I probably

Shouldn't use it's a way of talking to those that we can't otherwise talk to uh

Without doing terrible things like calling up the dead and so we have a kind of chronological loneliness I don't

Think think humans realize we're talking about re-enchantment but part of that is in the world as I understand it was

Meant to be I should be able to go see father Adam eventually given the billions of people who would want to be

Talking to him and interact with him or mother Eve I but I'm cut off from that

Generation uh I'm cut off from the 18th century uh I think you know the last

Victorian died sometime during my lifetime and at that moment I became cut

Off from a certain kind of experience in literature that I really wish that I could experience I tell some of my

College students go talk to a World War II veteran now there are almost none of them left and when you're my age and

It's 150 years since the in since World War II you'll be one of the last

Repositories uh living repositories that can report on the experience of having lived through the second world war

That's a loneliness you know that's a loneliness my great-grandfather fought on the union side of the American Civil

War I was recently in Richmond giving a talk at a conference and had to report that the last time John rolds was in

Richmond he was a prisoner of war uh in Virginia uh during the Civil War but I

Can't talk to him I'm cut off from his experience his experience of being in the prison uh in Richmond and that's a

Part of this disenchantment and books help with that books are the only appropriative Pala of cure which is why

I think God left us holy books yeah oh there's so much that you just said that i've never thought about

Chronological loneliness I think I'm going be thinking about that phrase for a long time we had a chat with historian

Sarah irang Stonebreaker she talks about having like

Almost like this Priestly role when it comes to history and how we live in an ahistorical age and how we are so much

Poorer for it and so she just had this lovely story this lovely anecdote she shared with us where

She when she had her daughter she had all of her family and her husband's family come and say stories over her

Daughter as a way of saying this is who you are these are the stories that have brought you to this place so I guess is

It also to varying degrees is it also about a sort of a belonging and an

Identity and these are the stories these are the people this is the wrestling these are the atrocities these are the

Flaws yes if we disconnect ourselves from them we're living in an ahistorical age and that sort of means we're in a

Way disconnected from the circumstances that make us who we are and and we tend to rewrite history so that if one

Watches like a historical movie I it's very frustrating to me to watch I know

Uh younger adults no longer watch Cameron's Titanic it's a of a particular period as much yeah I watched it on

Sunday no there you go but as really cares about the Titanic which by the way

Had lots of Eastern Orthodox uh passengers on it uh coming from Lebanon and Antioch who never make the cut in

Movies uh somehow they never make the cut as passengers in the in movie but look it's terribly romantic and is a

Terribly romantic person I love it but notice that the sensibilities in the film are very much people talk and act

However perfect the costuming is as if they're what in the 1990s early 2000s

They carry that kind of moral framework and I'm old enough to have had a great aunt who was fabulously old when I knew

Her who grew grew up eating bread paid for by my great great-grandfather's civil war pension Grand Army of the

Republic pension and talking to her often uh Illustrated to me attitudes

That were impossible to recover and then even historians when I talk to them can't recover uh when I was a little boy

Very old men would get up in Appalachia in West Virginia where I'm from and sing songs uh moved by the spirit that no one

Knew anymore and the kind of Dron Irish drone sound uh is impossible to recover

Uh and I heard it no one recorded it and those songs are lost uh forever uh

Because we can't recapture I was once talking to my great aunt for example and she was still upset about hippies in the

1960s in the 80s like they she was still upset by them but the thing that she

Could never understand I I don't want to get too explicit for a family show was people burning certain underwear and I I

Think my mom's generation would have the reaction of how inappropriate that was

Her reaction was why people wore like French nasty women's undergarments

Because she grew up like in the late 19th early 20th century uh where chefs

And other things existed and this whole notion that we spent a lot of money male and female on undergarment she couldn't

Get her head around it that's what she was offended by so even trying to figure out what would have offended my great

Aunt I think even a historian we lose track of of like the bizarre

Sensibilities I I shouldn't call them bizarre I mean maybe they're better than ours uh because once that person is dead

Uh the kind of framework they grew up in is dead too and no matter how hard we try no matter how hard I try I turn

Plato into a 21st century human at my great risk and Peril because then i'm

Not interacting with anything other than my own head it it's like going to sacred scripture and somehow uh sacred

Scripture turns out to be the Republican or Democratic party at prayer here in the United States either direction so

Flatten scripture uh that I no longer can be challenged by it uh in any way

Shape or form I'm sorry you got on a rant there well well no it's it's good but it leads me into the next question

Which is is is that perhaps part of the attraction then of Eastern Orthodoxy for you because in a sense it is

Obviously in embedded in so many ways in a tradition that goes back essentially

Unchanged for for a long time and and perhaps is is harder to sort of um

Create a sort of 20th century kind of version of it in a sense when you're essentially doing and saying the same

Things that people did thousand years ago began life kind of poorly uh and and

Drifting away uh Plato was very helpful in bringing me back to Faith uh Plato

Existed in a kind of suburb where I could come back to Faith and so uh I came to the conclusion over time uh

Nothing I have wonderful parents I had a wonderful Church experience uh I didn't leave anything because it was terrible

Or awful uh eventually my dad and mom also became Orthodox but it's actually painful as the first person in my family

To become Orthodox to have any sense of Separation because they were so awesome and I wasn't so you know how everybody

Blames their parents for their problems I could never do that I I blame them for being unable to blame them uh for my

Problem I but as a person in need of Mercy uh I think that Christians need to

Realize you minimally need a church that can both handle the questions of a Nobel lat the questions of a first century

Palestinian and of course Orthodoxy is a church where the Liturgy is still set in Aramaic uh Jesus could understand the

Liturgy uh in one small Valley hopefully that Valley Will Survive the turmoil of this present age uh and it needs to be

Able to handle the questions of you know the yaya the grandmother uh or the grandfather who may be simple uh in one

Sense in their faith and being able to do all of those things at once really Narrows down the possibilities and I was

Neither interested in going to the church of head knowledge where you know a phd in philosophy we would sit around

And discuss the problem of evil my background is analytic philosophy uh nor did I want to go to a church uh

Where I had to shut my brain off at the door and of course kind of person that would listen to this uh would be like

That uh I wanted to be able to learn from my nana uh because no Reynolds up to my dad's generation had access in 400

Years uh we came from actually White Chapel uh over uh to a place called

Jamestown uh in the 17th century uh we were the stupid people who didn't buy

Slaves and plant tobacco and kept moving West becoming ever more poor and obscure

Uh and unimportant uh but I wanted to be able to be in communion and be in a

Place that could also that simple faith in one way intellectually that was so

Rich in my grandparents that I could never if I'm ever as holy as they were uh that would be something it needed to

Be a church that included all those things and I won't make you a list of of possibilities there but Orthodoxy was

Certainly one of them and then you have to ask yourself the question best you can uh who's right about certain

Important issues uh where is the fullness of the faith to be found and I came to the conclusion that it was in

Orthodoxy but one thing I liked is that Orthodoxy doesn't proze it uh makes converts simply by

Being here we are uh in fact sometimes this is to a fault uh when I first uh

Visited a Greek Parish they said well you're an English-speaking person you've been in the US for a while why don't you

Go down to the street to the English speaking Church uh sometimes Orthodox people will come to the US and attend I

This is actually knew a medical doctor who did this she attended a Presbyterian Church for decades finally came to my

Dad who was a pastor in another denomination and said somebody needs to call the Bishop my pastor just denied

The Virgin birth and dad had to explain that in fact all churches in the United States weren't roughly Orthodox and so

You know I had to explain the whole whole thing to her and it was made her sad in uh and so Orthodoxy was for me

The best option because it could capture the wholeness of church history it was talking to the first century and was

Talking to the 21st century uh and it struck me as true it could handle

Science it could handle literature uh it wasn't denying any part of human

Reality can you I actually think that uh

Orthodoxy might be the most represented stream of Christianity in our podcast perh perhaps um we've had Martin Shaw uh

Paul Kings North Jonathan pajo all of whom are we adult convicts to Orthodoxy and I was just looking back over their

Episodes and seeing what they said drew them and so for Martin Shaw it was that he didn't want a tradition that was

Going to be too easy on him for him he wanted to be stretched um for Jonathan

Paso it was various things but he pulled out the beauty and for Paul Kings North he said something really interesting he

Said that it's the strength of Orthodoxy and he said that two things have happened it's faced a lot of persecution

And it's always been in sort of a position of not having a huge amount of power not being hugely represented etc

Etc and then he said and I'm going to quote him is that it hasn't been hacked about by humanism or mity so he sort of

Says you know it hasn't had to bend with the Reformation the enlightenment or the Renaissance and so to any of those in

Particular like ring a bell with you or is it just all of those things I was just really interested by those

Different answers I think there's truth to that so there are pockets of Orthodoxy that haven't interacted but

Russian Orthodoxy for example has whole streams that did interact and try to deal with the Renaissance because of

Course the birth of science which came more from the western parts of the world out of medieval Catholicism nobody

Rejects and so uh coming to terms with that uh in the parts of Orthodoxy that because of the uh kind of Exile of

Orthodox thought that came with ottoman conquest and even the Russian experience

Of being conquered by the Mongols uh did uh delay this kind of development and

The strength of that is that it meant that um Orthodox thinkers could develop different approaches to how to deal with

Modernity with how to deal with the birth of science so what is science is a

Question that maybe Orthodox thinkers particularly in Russia came to later in time uh as science developed as the

Scientific Revolution developed and came up with alternative answers with other answers but I actually would like to

Stress the commonality uh all Christianity the Orthodox Church is born

Out of the experience of uh Jesus of Nazareth who lived in Palestine and who

Spread the word in that Eastern land and then the church grew uh in places like

What we would call turkey today Asia Minor the great churches of the Book of Revelation into Greece and then spread

West of course famously Paul to Rome I and the commonality of all of that

Orthodoxy never stopped that great conversation even when it was being conquered but I I will say this as a

Person of my age belonging to the church uh that in the 20th century produced probably the most Martyrs uh in

Christian history was also appealing to me I I I was going to say for for the

Benefit of those who perhaps have not exper experienced an Eastern Orthodox worship service maybe have just a few

Ideas in their head about you know the somewhat ornate robes or or sort of uh

You know types of churches that that are often examples of that could could you give us sort of a lay Person's Guide to

What you typical service might be that you might attend I I will only introduce to caveat that I'm a philosopher not a

Theologian and I don't even play a theologian on television so I'm not uh

If my priest calls me and yells at me uh not going to give you a theological description but a lay person's uh

Experience uh I think and and maybe this is because I'm a platonist uh the

Eastern Orthodox church has the Liturgy has stayed in contact with both the head

Uh the human heart and the sensual experience the physical experience of

Worship so probably the first thing that I would have noticed as I first came to

A typical Orthodox Church were the smells The Sounds the ornateness the

Gilding the way the light comes generally does the Orthodox Churches don't use stained glass uh my own uh

Home Parish uses a kind of see-through Stone uh or clear glass and the way the

Light interacts with all the gilding uh that's there is very intentional uh it

Isn't uh to be fancy it's there to draw every part of my sensibility into

Worship because I'm a physical being uh you stand up a lot in an orthodox service most traditional Orthodox

Churches didn't have pews or places for anyone other than older older older people to set and the older people never

Set they're the ones that never set because they've been standing up for decades uh that kind of even exhaust J

Uh also then secondarily for the heart the Orthodox liturgy doesn't generally change and where it does change with the

Passage of time I anyone watching his podcast knows the church calendar so in a very similar way very similar Church

Calendar we journey through the Life of Christ we journey through the life of saints many of whom are illuminated

Around us as a kind of window to Heaven uh as we reflect on and ask uh as that

Great cloud of witnesses we ask them to cheer us on from Paradise uh this also

Engages our hearts uh it's the very unchanging that when you first go to an

Orthodox church it's very interesting it's and so sometimes people want to rush to convert because it's cool to go

Uh and the first lend that you go through is kind of cool well I'm suffering for Jesus and I'm giving up all these foods but the nice thing I

When I became Orthodox you know did a good degree worked hard written a little bit no one in Orthodoxy cares that I

Exist uh because they're the Church of centuries of Millennia and you know if

I'm not going to say anything that anyone cares about uh and so that's a

Good thing right uh the church endures the church contains a great cloud of witness is and so my intellect can

Engage with those people and the Liturgy itself will hold up to intellectual

Engagement uh and thought and so all of this goes together what I was going to say is eventually when the newness of

The Liturgy wears down the hard work the labor which is what liturgy means really

The labor of the Liturgy the fact that man I wish we had different Linton disciplines and some of them are drawn

From like the first and second century we're eating poor people food and poor people food has changed why can't we

Have Cheetos because in West Virginia that was what we ate it's poor Mountain Dew and Cheetos it's poor people food

Why don't we fast with it but of course the church could care less about my opinion and by the church I mean the

Church living and dead Universal a living Bishop could no longer get up in the morning and say except for a

Dispensation for me for medical reasons or something oh yes we're going to change the fasting rules of the church

Because John Mark wrote a clever article in you know some philosophical Journal it's just not going to happen no there's

No one equipped to do it yeah and and and what's interesting to me then coming

To sort of you know one of the core reasons we asked you on here is that given that the church has never been

Trying to kind of capture the culture it's it's been very happy to just do what it's always done um it hasn't

Really indulged in celebrities it hasn't really um you know changed much it's not

Been Evangelistic as you say um in that sense there's been this extraordinary

Rise in the number of young people especially young men yeah wanting to adopt Eastern Orthodoxy um so I know

That uh an Institute that um you're part of um has you know done some of the the

The key research on this that was later um featured in some global news articles

And so just just tell us about this research you did what you found out and and and then we'll talk about some of

The the reasons why perhaps we're seeing this right St Constantine College I i've been a college professor my whole career

And then decided it would be good to establish like micro colleges where people could experience dialectical I

What in an English context might be described as Oxbridge style education one-on-one tutorials that were

Affordable and in the American context that's exceedingly rare uh and so that's kind of the mission of the college and

Then simultaneously the college began to want to study things you get a group of academics together and they want to do

Research and so one thing we wanted to research right away was the longevity of conversions that's what started the

Process uh as waves of converts came do they stick I you don't just decide one

Day to become Orthodox and immediately sign a card and you're Orthodox uh usually it takes a couple years before

Your priest will suggest okay you should become an Orthodox Christian since since we don't believe you know uh anglicans

Are going to hell uh and you know there's not a rush in the door we want to make sure people understand uh we

Think we think we're the church that that's not to be like overly ecumenical uh but we don't rush people in and what

We discovered was there's a real stickiness that most despite what some people might think uh converts stay uh

And they endure they stay involved in church in fact converts may stay more involved in church than some cradle

Orthodox uh do the stickiness is greater uh in that we discovered and we're still

In the early days of this you know uh the research is limited but it's it's good quality uh we've had statisticians

Look at it uh and we'll keep growing the research is that we discovered married

Couples with children uh convert at a very high rate but the highest rate of

Conversions uh and single women convert uh at a lower rate than married couples but they do convert but uh single men

Are the highest group of converts uh equaling uh married couples or surpassing them in some cases and we

Begin to think about how to try to explain that I have actually a different explanation than most people give and

And it is that in the American context uh in general and I'm not fit to tell

You why this is true men are not doing well they don't go to college in as high a rate uh as women do and good for women

You don't want to suppress the number of women that are going to college uh they're not going to grad school at the

Same rates as women uh and and they exhibit uh antisocial behaviors in a

Much higher rate than women do and if you think about people who convert uh if

Your life and worldview is working for you you're not necessarily looking around uh you know you're looking to fix

The things that aren't working for you but if in general you know you go to college you're doing pretty well you've got a decent job then you're not looking

For you know what's wrong what's broken in me uh and so uh I think the male

Population single male popul uh it's no big insight to say that in the US context at least it's not doing

Very well and so if you're in a group that's not doing very well looking around and saying what's wrong with me

What is truth is there a way out of this pit I and often uh this leads to very

Bad answers so for example i've had to interact with I don't want to say students because I I don't want to

Identify uh anyone so i've had to interact with young men who are attracted to Nazism and fascism and over

The whole course of my career i've had many students attracted to bolism or extreme views of Marxism but for the

First time I began to run into college age people who were attracted by uh

Really bad forms of fascism not the misuse of of the term but they you know wanted mine comp for Christmas uh as a

Christmas present an English version they were uh but it was because it's very evil thing but they were looking

For something different and since the establishment didn't seem to like them and since the establishment rightly I

Will underline hates Nazis they begin to look at well am I hated like the Nazis

And is there some truth there so I think Orthodoxy eventually for those who kept

Thinking and pursuing the truth engaging in the truth you you come to Jesus because Jesus is the center of the

Christian faith and having come to Jesus where can I experience Jesus in a Timeless uh way that will minister to

The whole person we talked about how the Liturgy engages head heart and hands the

The body and I I think eventually uh young men explore that uh inside of

Orthodoxy the other Advantage we have in the US is people are very familiar with other forms of Christianity and they

Carry the burden of that familiarity I we have our own mistakes you only have

To look at Russia and the Ukraine to avoid any sense of Orthodox triumphalism uh but in the US context

People can kind of uh I i'll quote the vice president the previous vice president unburdened by what has been

And they can see what might be so I think there's some of that as well I most people in the US still haven't

Heard of Orthodoxy and I get asked all the time if I'm Jewish uh for example I

There are college programs that will study the Middle East and not making this up and they'll have a lot of Jewish

Scholars great that's good they should they'll have a lot of Islamic scholars great that's good they should

Uh but there are no Christians uh involved there are no Christians engaged uh in a church that has endured in the

Middle East since the time of Jesus uh because we just don't appear on anyone's radar and there's an advantage to that

Yeah that's so interesting particular what you said about the fact that it's

Like your your rituals your practices your tradition is timeless and so I guess the attraction then is if if a if

A demographic of people are feeling hated by their culture well here's a place that looks nothing like my culture

What rest what Freedom what sort of yeah what newness I I love your explanation

There because I read the the Articles so there's an article by the New York Post I believe and then that was also picked

Up by um and of course the New York Post would never be Sensational as so it's always well this was my issue because I

Read that and I didn't love it you know because it was no I didn't love it either no because it was saying you know

All of the it was basically saying that they were all of these men were looking for a traditional and a masculine form

Of uh of Christianity and I got the traditional part and now that you've

Explained it I get that even more like something that's Timeless something that's ageless something that feels like

It connects you something that breaks down that that chronological loneliness that you were talking about and it feels authentic and stey and unshakable but

Then I was like but what does masculine mean in that context I I don't like that at all as a

Framing because I think if you come to the church it's the wholeness of the human person it is what is it to be a

Man what is it to be a woman can I find answers to that and and if anybody's converting to Orthodoxy uh out of some

Kind of uh bro culture uh Orthodoxy itself will rapidly I mean I I have a

Prayer rope on my wrist and the prayer that I pray most constantly in the Orthodox pray constantly is Lord Jesus

Christ Son of God have mercy on me a sinner uh so you're unlikely uh to

Become you know get an exalted view of yourself or uh put down other people uh

Because Christianity is essentially the greatest uh virtue is love the greatest virtue is charity and so i'll point out

What people skip over uh maybe the biggest group of people to convert to

Orthodoxy are younger married people with children if you look at our own study and younger married intact

Traditional families of course mean there's a man and a woman uh involved in the family uh I think it's an

Interesting question why not as many single women uh convert to Orthodoxy uh

And that's the more interesting question to me than that every other category of people in the US are tempted to to

Convert to Orthodoxy and I think again the Temptation is to fit whatever you

Know preconceptions you have about the way the church should look and give easy answers to those questions so I don't

Really have an answer to that question other than to suggest that conversion itself is difficult people don't rush to

Convert to something they don't know and so you have to be looking for something different you have to be looking for

Something new and so uh I would wonder if it doesn't correlate with social satisfaction or dissatisfaction more

Than anything else I I I I get the sense too from some of the young converts i've

Spoken to who have gone in the direction either of a sort of quite traditional Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy that

That it's it is the the kind of um as you said earlier B um the the kind of

Strength but not in the sense of a kind of masculine domineering but but of kind of the the rigor that it requires that

That that is what's attractive it's it's difficult it's not it's not to kind of just hey just come along and we'll just

Give you a sort of a slight sheen on your life and some tips on on how to live your best life it's kind of it's

It's entering something that's quite different that demands something of you uh that that can be quite difficult to

Understand actually not necessarily easy and but there's something that in an odd

Way that often goes against all of our kind of Seeker friendly Evangelistic advice that we've been bu very often in

The western church is actually more attractive interestingly and especially I think yes to some of these young men

Who perhaps feel like as as B was saying it it's different to what's on offer already in the culture um

I guess go ahead if you go to a regular Parish I think the other problem is uh

It would be like having read X or Twitter uh which I'm no longer on right now uh but having read it during the

Election and decided how the election was going to go based on the people represented on Twitter or x uh or your

Favorite social media platform uh or by people for example who listen to talk radio uh back in the day when talk radio

Was big and I did know guest hosting and things like that they would always tell me if you're friends like the show it

Will fail uh because it's a mass Market uh movement and so when you're talking about tens of millions of people uh I

Think sometimes we're too tempted because so easy to quantify to go on social media and look at those converts

And turn them into the norm uh as opposed to the young married couple who

Was looking for a church that wasn't selling them something that was in a product that just wanted to express the

Faith once delivered to the apostles and I want to say something about timelessness you know the Liturgy itself

Has slowly evolved over time you know if you dropped into first century Palestine

No one was doing the Liturgy of St John chrysis right uh exactly as it's done uh

It grew out of Temple worship it grew out of the synagogues uh prayers were added over centuries uh the point is and

And B you kept captured this really well is that the Liturgy is timeless in the sense that the entirety of church

History right back to the first century and some of the most ancient prayers in the Liturgy can be found and it isn't

Changing with the minute it's changing with the century I and so you know I I

Had a mentor who said there's some big social issues that are going on right now and the mind of the church needs to

Reflect on them and we'll let you know in 300 years what we think uh

And and so as a dialectically based analytic philosopher I want to think about it and write a paper and tell you

Uh not what you should think but enter into dialogue with you but the church Universal isn't sitting in dialogue with

Me uh it's saying okay here's what we've received this is what's true it has to

Be applied to your life it has to be applied to the 21st century um we're a church of the vernacular I wherever

We've gone we've translated the Liturgy into the of the people so we're a church that

Changes in a sense but it isn't in a marketing sense like oh no we're not

Going to be relevant to the year 2025 and I I I I got this from listening to

An interview with Father Andrew dck who you may be familiar with John Mark who's one of one of the sort of works with us

In side yeah Pat so he's he's he's a he's a priest in the Orthodox church and

And he was just saying you know being asked about this you know upsurge in young men entering parishes uh he said

Well we we were as confused as everyone else we hadn't changed anything we wen't doing anything differently suddenly all

These young men were just showing up and there was no kind of you know people were asking have have you has there been

Some big Evangelistic you know uh campaign and he said no that that just wouldn't work in Orthodox circles um yet

At the same time you know something is obviously driving these young men to go and go to all the bother uh or these you

Know young couples or whoever to to find their local Orthodox Church I wonder how much you think um the the influence of

Some of those names we mentioned earlier like Paul Kings North Martin Shaw Jonathan Pou especially alongside his

His friend Jordan Peterson you know who are obviously reaching a lot of these young men

And do you think that's having an influence on it obviously it obviously is I mean if anybody's talking to

Millions of people and Orthodoxy becomes an option that for Orthodoxy particularly in the North American

Context is a big deal I if you say you're Orthodox in the United States

Most people still have no clue what you're talking about and sometimes i'll just say you know the churches you're

Always praying for because someone's killing people Christians that's us we're almost always the group uh that

You're praying for uh because someone is killing us uh and so that sometimes

Helps people but like I said we're we're almost invisible and so for someone

Who's very prominent that has a platform to millions of a certain kind of person to even put us on the radar is

Immediately going to lead to a curiosity that a local Parish isn't used to uh you

Know they're plugging Along being faithful uh but the other thing is so this is where I'm going to be uh naughty

In a way uh I became Orthodox because I became convinced it was true and I could

Find Jesus there uh and so uh people come and they're curious and they're

Engaging in the niyam Creed and they're wrestling with it and it's said every week and they're trying to understand it

But it then it isn't just intellectual they're told go fast go get your body in

Shape uh great lint is coming up and I know there are people that look forward to it but I'm a Reynolds and that means

We like to eat as as I show demonstrate and so that's a hard discipline for me

Because the foods I like best are the foods you get rid of uh during Lent uh but it's good for me it's good for my

Soul and so it's that kind of thing that people come to say and I'm not making

Any claims about any other traditions this is where I can find the fullness of Faith uh we know where the church is

We're not making a statement about where the church is not that reminds me of something Justin

You say quite frequently actually but about Christianity as a whole is there has to be an element to which it's only useful and it's only attractive because

It's true so I like that that's the base answer because I think it's true

We're also a church of Miracles I mean we're a church of weeping icons and

Hagiographies that if you look at one way of looking at history would be the intercession of the Saints and how

They've held us back from uh nuclear Annihilation uh now I don't Advocate

Historians in a secular context always work that way but the possibility of the

Miraculous Orthodoxy doesn't deny it but it also doesn't become crazy about it uh

So that you know any local person who decides something some woo woo thing has occurred we all rush over and take a

Look at it uh again we'll say well in a hundred years we'll really know what

Father soand so and his weeping icon were up to and and then we might canonize the person uh that that will be

Cool uh and so as a a church that you know every Church does Celebrity and

Gets bitten by it it's not that we don't do it but there's no money in it inside of Orthodoxy and so uh we don't atttend

We don't usually get as many grifters I I I was going to say though the that

That aspect of Orthodoxy which is obviously that that kind of openness to the Supernatural and to miraculous the

Weird as as one of our guests on our first season put it Tom Holland he he again is a good example of something who

While he hasn't gone to Eastern Orthodox he has very much been drawn to very Anglo Catholic tradition right um in in

A conversation I shared with him about a year ago he talked about the fact that the thing that brought him closest

Actually to conversion was actually a prayer uttered actually to the Virgin

Mary in in and that this led you know a series of events happened that that led

To him being cleared of a cancer diagnosis now he says that it's the

Weirdness actually that he thinks is actually quite attractive to people now people aren't looking for a sort of very

Rationalized humanistic version of Christianity and I think that's sometimes the mistake again that our

Seeker sensitive movement makes is that we have to kind of play down all all of the the strangeness and the weirdness

That but actually you know from his point of view people are actually looking for that now I don't know if that's your your experience no it is and

I so I i'll repeat I think you would find the church where Miracles can occur

And are recognized to have occurred and be occurring and where again the most

Rigorous scientific imagination can also live and flourish and grow uh so that

Pre-revolutionary Russia was no Paradise but also our image of it is sometimes uh

We get it through a Soviet propaganda but if you take a look you know they were producing First Rate chemists Nobel

Quality chemists and also producing Miracles uh uh inside of a a whole

Culture it was deeply defective or the Russian Revolution wouldn't have occurred but there is something there

Where we can say say is it possible to be in a church where when this is in a

Western context but it's a saint recognized by both churches I'm being a tourist walking through Milan doing my

Thing and I look over to my left and there is St Ambrose laying there

Investments I older than Augustine obviously uh St Ambrose pray for me uh

And I have to say as a normal human being my first reaction was not Holiness it was yeah

Like there's a dead guy over in a glass case what in the world but then as a

Person who loves history and the hity of the church for example which Ambrose did and the conversion of Augustine uh

There's the guy for whom the cathedral around me was built and he

Endures my sinfulness my work your work all of our

Works will be gone and Ambrose will be there uh being weird uh and you know I

Walked into one Monastery in the East and eventually uh you decay in the

Cemetery the way they be bury you in the Eastern tradition and there are stacks of your bones as you go in and then I

Realize uh me too and so there's a weirdness at that level where death is

Something that the Orthodox view as an entryway to the other world but aren't

Weirded out by we're not freaked out by it and yet we allow it to remain

Other like I I we're not like the strange adults who have gotten really

Into Halloween and a kind of gross Gothic skulls everywhere uh kind of

Thing but we're also comfortable around uh death and the human body so that

There was Ambrose praying for me uh in a great Cathedral and as an orthodox person I went from this kind of yeah to

Yah that's awesome and so I think that's Orthodoxy works well that way it's not

The only uh branch of Christianity that has that effect but lots of branches of Christianity don't do that at all

They're either purely rationalistic or they really really really don't want you to think about

Miracles yeah I think as you were speaking another

Possible um draw came to me in that I am becoming more and more convinced the

More people I'm speaking to the more people I'm interviewing the more I'm writing I'm becoming more and more convinced that we are desperate to knock

Ourselves off the top of the cosmic pyramid like we are so longing to give

Up our place as at the top of the food chain to not be the biggest and most

Powerful thing that we know and I think you can kind of see symptoms of that everywhere but I think I think there's

Something about your tradition in particular that reminds us that there is

A good kind of small and we are it you know that there's a good kind of finite

And we are it I mean you know let's yeah when you look at the good God who is essentially unapproachable and

Undescribable and everything we say about God is the best thing that we can say but we can never capture God in his

Essence we can say true things about God and about what God did in the person of Jesus Christ there's a real history

Jesus really lived and died the body that came went into the tomb came out of the Tomb uh transformed uh all those

Things are true they're true true they're true in this sense uh that I as a philosopher would want to talk about

Truth uh but there's a Transcendence that then you're right puts me in my place that says uh the existence of

Aliens is a really good example of how comfortable Orthodoxy can be with weirdness so we don't have a view about

Aliens but I think my secular friends who want to believe in aliens and I'm a science fiction fan really want somebody

To come and put us in our place and also make it so we don't destroy ourselves

Like give us some kind of Enlightenment or some kind of hope that there's some more rational civilization Orthodoxy on

The other hand has a menu of explanations for what could be occurring if we had a first encounter uh with

Another race my suspition is and and I I don't say this to be cute but given how

People behave that if we have a a first encounter it's likely pilgrims coming to

Bethlehem to see where the Incarnation occurred and they finally made it uh

Right around Christmas and so that will be remarkable uh but it will again if we

Met uh other intelligences it would still give us a longing for the

Transcendent because those other intelligence even if they had space travel wouldn't be sufficient to ground

The love that moves the heavens and the furthest Stars uh it would still be inadequate it would still be finite I I

Once gave a talk to a group that believes in a finite God I we don't have to get into the which group it was and

The problem I felt was not even their history or some problems some anomalies

In their holy book they were used to hearing that the problem is that I I am

So flawed and began my life in such a flawed way but I want to love my wife hope

Transcendently uh and that love is great but it isn't infinite but it points to

This great possibility of a love that is total that is absolute and maybe it

Doesn't exist but whenever humans have heard about it they've longed for it and so the mere possibility that it could

Exist means any intelligence that we ran into that was finite any intelligence

That we ran into that was finite would be inadequate to ground this the horrible film Indiana Jones 4 the

Crystal Skull one uh will evidentally the Russian woman has never read a fairy tale so she has to know everything I I

Have A Little Bit of Sympathy for that uh in that she's looking for something

Big enough to ground everything and everything includes an all the past and

All the possibilities and all the loves that could ever be and also that can

Last long enough to redeem human suffering uh the human suffering that was on Titanic was awful we've talked

About Titanic um and so you need time for love to begin to heal wounds and we

Need a Transcendent love that has an infinite amount of time to give meaning to things that I wouldn't even dare to

Attach meaning to now even though that was 1912 it's still too soon for any human apologist to try to say well it's

Okay that that happened and that suffering occurred uh because of trit Reason ab and

But over the plenitude of time with an Infinity of Love there is hope in the

Human heart that such suffering can find meaning well just bringing things back

To the finitude of time because we are running out of time oh certain about here as well but we um I mean back to a

Very more praic sort of aspect of this because you you've talked we've talked about you know some of the reasons why

We're seeing young people young men especially drawn to Eastern Orthodoxy um the kind of crisis among young men that

You you mentioned at the beginning John Mark um the weirdness that we've talked about that very many people are looking

For the the kind of that the the sense of humility that that Bell mentioned that people perhaps actually don't want

To be at the top of the food chain and recognize their finite I mean another

Aspect of this and it links I think to the young the kind of masculine identity crisis if you like is is the vibe shift

That we've been seeing in culture with the election of Donald Trump the rise of more kind of populist and National

Nationalistic kind of forms of government in different parts of the world and so a lot of people have linked

This this move um especially young men kind of want looking for a more traditional kind of grounded historic

Maybe form of faith that that ask more of them that it's it's tied into that

You know as as we we've kind of as perhaps people are rejecting the the quote unquote you know more woke

Progressive kind of uh agendas of of previous governments and shifting in a

More right Direction I mean is there some truth in that that that that's kind of partly where that that I think and

You know and I I don't think it's bad I I think all of us come to the truth uh

In partly Noble reasons partly defective reasons sometimes partly bad reasons

Like we're stumbling our way towards the light uh when a scientist makes a great discovery uh and then we benefit from it

We don't quiz their motivations and and re eject a discovery because we did you know they had bad they wanted to get

Rich and so they developed this wonderful product we don't we don't throw it aside so I do think that there

Are mixed motives for people coming but I would like to say something good um

Orthodoxy says take my Phil helenismo and I I love Greek culture I

Can't be a Greek I wish I could be I also love Russian culture I wish I could

Be Russian and I can't be I'm just I am like I'm so boringly Anglo-Saxon when

They ran if you're from West Virginia like everyone in her marries that if I went to a certain part of White Chapel

If it's endured I bet I could find a relative uh uh and so it's very strange

And it's okay to love your folks now this is a very lesser love

This is a very lesser love and it is been perverted in jillions of ways

There's no place in the church for jingoism a great American expression for you know loving your country

Inappropriately but to love your folks to love where you came from to love your family to love your extended family to

Love my home state of West Virginia and Appalachian culture recognizing all its flaw and Appalachian culture certainly

Has entered a a a kind of dark period a terrible period where we used to produce

Wonderful folk music and now we're producing opioid addicts uh and some of this was done to us and some of it we've

Done to ourselves but it's okay for me to be proud to be a West Virginia it's okay for me to look

With pride to that and Orthodoxy uh which can fall into kind of ethnic evils

Uh also though has a strong sense of we're going to do the service in Romanian because you're Romanian and

It's okay to be Romanian uh is a strong streak inside of Orthodoxy uh and I

Think people find it appealing now I don't know what to call that politically but but I think we so reacted in the

20th century to the real evils of jingoistic nationalism particularly in

Germany and Italy uh that we got to the point where when when I went to school

And they did where are you from in the United States the point is you're from like 50 different places and we'll

Celebrate all of them and when I was asked where my folks came from all I had was Great Britain and it actually was

Humiliating like people were what's wrong with you this is the most boring like map of where you're from uh

Possible but I I think inside of Orthodoxy someone would come and say it's okay it's okay to be proud of the

Fact that your family came from Great Britain in fact just from England I we're not British we English only and I

Will only tell you in fifth grade that was kind of in the American context a shameful experience in the kind of

Schools I went to because you should be you know 15 different groups of people

People and that's a glorious thing in the US and so I think people find that appealing uh it's okay to be proud of

Your heritage as long as you don't tell lies about it and as long as your love doesn't become

Disproportionate yeah that's so fascinating that's so I could go on and

On and on talking about this unfortunately the great aunt that I told you about would tell you that I can go

On and on and on you want I can only tell you people from the 19th and early 20th century were the bluntest people I

Ever met when I gained weight she would just come in and she would say you are fat uh but she also asked me once if I

Had ever heard of anyone talking themselves to dub and so it's possible I can do it I think I could do it too so

Let's just because honestly I want to ask you more about mysticism I want to ask you more about the emotional um

Intelligence all oh there's so much but um this has been the most beautiful

Beautiful conversation Orthodoxy is a church for um true Romantics who don't want to let Romanticism consume

Them that's a of putting it yeah I like it well

Thank you so much it's been it's been lovely uh i've learned a lot over the last hour of conversation and um uh and

All the best is you continue to document this interesting renewal and Revival in

Orthodox circles as you say it's a long game in Orthodoxy and we'll see what this brings and and on what the outcomes

May be but for now um thanks for being our guest and telling us about the the re-enchantment that Eastern Orthodoxy is

Bringing in many Western circles thanks for being our guest today Jo Mark yes and just to thank you our wonderful

Listeners and viewers um I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as Justin and I did um if you would like to

Subscribe review like do all of those helpful things um we would be so appreciative also as ever you can be a

Part of making these convers ations happen all of the information you would need is at scen andun seen.com

Uh but for now I guess reluctantly it's time for us to say goodbye we will see

You next time all right thank you see you next time goodbye