Ben Christenson was raised Anglican — church every Sunday, a religious school, and Christian camp every summer. But Christenson, 27 of Fairfax, Virginia, always found himself longing for a more traditional faith.
“The hard thing about growing up in my church is that there was a lot of change even in my lifetime,” he told The Post. “I realized that there really was no way to stop the change.”
He watched as traditions went by the wayside: The robed choir was swapped out for a worship band, lines were blurred on female ordination, and long-held stances on LGBT issues shifted.
“All of that stuff was basically fungible, which gave me a sense that the theological commitments are kind of fungible, too,” he said.
So Christenson began exploring other denominations in college and landed on perhaps the most traditional of all: Orthodox Christianity. In 2022, at the age of 25, he converted.
“It seems to me like the mainline denominations are hemorrhaging people,” he said. “If you still are serious about being a Christian now that there isn’t really as much social status tied up in it, and you want something that has some heft to it, there’s more of an awareness of Orthodoxy than there used to be.”
Christenson, who works as a fundraiser for nonprofits, attends Saint Mary’s Orthodox Church in Falls Church, Virginia.
Conversion means that he now must frequently attend confession, recite prescribed prayers, and endure extreme fasting, sometimes over 40-day stretches. Weekly services are also highly ritualized and regimented and can last up to two hours.
But he says he takes great comfort in the 2,000-year history of each tradition: “There is a sense of structure, of continuity … It’s the exact same. It hasn’t changed. It’s not going to change.”
“I think there are a lot of Protestants who want a more traditional, grounded, historical faith, and I think for young people especially, it makes sense because so much else in our life is changing all the time.”
Christenson’s story isn’t just anecdotal. As more and more Protestant churches unfurl Pride flags and Black Lives Matter banners in front of their gates, young men are trending toward more traditional forms of worship.
A survey of Orthodox churches around the country found that parishes saw a 78% increase in converts in 2022, compared with pre-pandemic levels in 2019. And while historically men and women converted in equal numbers, vastly more men have joined the church since 2020.
Father Josiah Trenham has led Saint Andrew’s Orthodox Church in Riverside, California, for nearly three decades — and he’s noticed a swift jump in interest: “The last four to five years have been a massive uptick. It’s showing no sign of tapering off. If anything, it’s still increasing… It’s happening massively in untold numbers nationwide.”
Trenham’s church has 1,000 active participants, and, although recent converts in his congregation have been split roughly evenly between men and women, he agrees that most Orthodox churches around the country are gaining far more men.
“The feminization of non-Orthodox forms of Christianity in America has been in high gear for decades,” Trenham explained.
He points to the fact that the vast majority of attendees at most Christian churches are female, and many services are accordingly dominated by emotional songs, swaying, uplifted hands, and eyes closed in ecstasy.
“Men are much less comfortable [in those settings], and they have voted with their feet, which is why they’re minorities in these forms of worship,” he said. “Our worship forms are very traditional and very masculine.”
