Concerning the new converts to Eastern Orthodoxy: Are they MAGA clones or worse?

Yes, to all of those who have written — I have seen the National Public Radio feature that ran with this headline: “Orthodox Christian churches are drawing in far-right American converts.”

It would be hard to imagine a more vicious, one-sided propaganda piece than this one and, if you want to see a blow-by-blow breakdown, read this post by Orthodox convert Rod Dreher: “The Cathedral Vs. The Orthodox Church.”

Rod is using the term “cathedral” as a reference to a particular set of elite media and cultural institutions on what used to be called the “left.” Needless to say, NPR — like the editorial pages of The New York Times — plays a crucial doctrinal role in this cathedral. Dreher (a close friend for nearly 30 years) notes, right up top, concerning this NPR sermon:

… I concede that it is based on a kernel of truth: some outsiders are finding their way to Orthodoxy, thinking that it will be the far right at prayer. A friend who attends a large parish told me last year that they are seeing some young men showing up with that in mind, only to find out otherwise. Let me be clear at the start of this essay that I concede that this phenomenon is not invented out of whole cloth.
In my own small parish, we have seen a surge of young inquirers, but they are coming not with far-right politics in mind, but because they are looking for something more stable and deeper than the churches they had been attending. And yes, it is true that some come because they correctly sense that Orthodoxy is much less likely to surrender to the wokeness that is infesting many Protestant and Catholic congregations. Note well, though, that to NPR, all of this is “far-right.”

Veteran GetReligion readers will know that I am a convert to Eastern Orthodoxy, as well — coming from a Texas Baptist family with several members in the center of Southern Baptist life. If you want to know more about my own journey, see this lecture/essay from 2006: “What do the converts want?”

When people ask why I converted, my short response is that I was seeking a beautiful, conservative, ancient form of Christian tradition that didn’t include ties to American fundamentalism. Since my conversion 23 years ago, I have talked to — conservative estimate — several hundred converts in various settings, including my own parishes.

I would like to focus on the most obvious errors of omission and commission in the NPR piece — an important detail or two about the actual history of the “convert era” in “American” Orthodoxy, which began in the 1980s (click here for link to a crucial book). But first, here is the overture:

U.S. Representative Justin Amash is making a bid to shake up this oddly socially-distanced U.S. presidential campaign with last week’s announcement of an exploratory committee to seek the Libertarian Party nomination. He becomes the first avowed Libertarian in the U.S. House after being its first Palestinian-American. Due to Covid-19, plans for the party nominating convention, originally planned for May 21-25, are in flux.

The Michigan maverick is by far the best-known of the Libertarian hopefuls. He won headlines last year by quitting the Republican Party to protest Trump-ism, became the House’s only Independent, and was the lone non-Democrat voting to impeach the president.

Reality check. No third party has taken the White House since the Republicans in 1860, when Abraham Lincoln won with only 39.8 percent of the popular vote in an unusual four-way race.

The Libertarians’ best-ever showing was only 3.3 percent in 2016. Amash "uh-MOSH") got only 1 percent support against Biden (46 percent) and Trump (42 percent) in a mid-April Morning Consult poll. But he claimed to Reason magazine that he’s no “spoiler” and has a shot because “most Americans” think that Joe Biden and Trump “aren’t up to being president” and want an alternative.

Despite his anti-Trump credentials, Politico.com thinks it’s unclear whether Amash “would do more damage to Biden or Trump.” Showing the potential for conservative support, the Washington Examiner’s Brad Polumbo championed Amash against what he sees as the incompetent, “fundamentally indecent” Trump and the “frail,” too-leftist Biden.

Amash is also free of the sexual misconduct accusations against the two major party candidates — which they deny.

Religion reporters will note that Amash is one of only five Eastern Orthodox members of Congress. His Palestinian father and Syrian mother came to the U.S. as immigrants thanks to sponsorship by a pastor in Muskegon. He attended Grand Rapids Christian High School, where he met his wife Kara, later an alumna of the Christian Reformed Church’s Calvin University.

On the religiously contested abortion issue, Amash’s “pro-life” stand agrees with Orthodox Church teaching, and the National Right to Life Committee gives him a 100 percent rating.