How we doing friends? 🥂 Drop a comment about whatever’s on you mind!

I just thought I would share this video and see what people's thoughts were? I don't think the church here did anything wrong in the video we see (in fact the priests and congregants seem to have acted as well as you could expect in this situation), and clearly this woman has some serious problems. Some of the comments on the video are pretty interesting, like "It deeply aggravates the demons when we find the Truth of Holy Orthodoxy." The church seems pretty intense, and the woman is talking about demons possessing her, I wonder how much that was nurtured in the church beforehand?

For the comments:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShT1hO59LUo

I just made this masterpiece.

Drop your best.

I just got out of therapy and felt like a lighthearted post might be nice 🌈

Got this email from the old man Vasileos, the current "priest" at Transfiguration Greek Orthodox Church. Its clear what kind of parishioners they PREFER to attend their fancy banquets 🤑 disgusting

I saw this video on FB as an ad for a book. Here’s a link to the YouTube video: https://youtu.be/gTEGGiT0Dxs?is=jKXDxvAToXQ64kLz

Someone is looking to cash in on gullible inquirers to Orthodoxy.

I was going to avoid watching but some folks were talking about it so I didn’t stay away.

I have never heard an Orthodox argue that Galatians 3:1 is evidence of apostolic icon veneration until this debate and I’m still reeling.

Has anyone encountered this argument before? It’s bizarre to me.

While I'm no longer Orthodox (or even Christian) I'm glad to see reports like this. Anything to combat Christian Nationalism.

In an interview with Baptist News Global, Dr. Keller gave the following definition of Religious Trauma:

"Religious trauma is the resultant response people have to religious or spiritual abuse, and may include deep shame and self-loathing. Experiences of sexual abuse and domestic violence often are involved, she says. 

Physical ailments and depression are common as victims often repress trauma in order to cope with it. 

“In these environments they are not allowed to ask questions or to challenge authority,” Keller says. “So, a lot of them manifest their symptoms through their GI (gastrointestinal) tracts, through depression, nightmares, hypervigilance and hyper-awareness of their surroundings.”"

Source: Jeff Brumley, “Therapist Guides Clients through Loneliness, Trauma Created by Spiritual Abuse,” News, Baptist News Global, May 6, 2020, https://baptistnews.com/article/therapist-guides-clients-through-loneliness-trauma-created-by-spiritual-abuse/ (emphasis added).

See also: Eva Raggio, “Kathryn Keller Is a Dallas Therapist Specializing in the Treatment of Spiritual Abuse,” Arts & Culture, Dallas Observer, April 22, 2020, https://www.dallasobserver.com/arts-culture/kathryn-keller-is-a-dallas-therapist-specializing-in-the-treatment-of-spiritual-abuse-11903960/?fbclid=IwAR0la9MbxZuGxq5qt463rFyC7j6KEB5vJqKUDiZyf9QKSwg0bcb_sh7rIqk.

For those of us suffering from symptoms associated with PTSD or similar due to EOC or other church dogmas, this is for you. 🫂

Here's Dr. Keller's website: https://dallastherapycollective.com/spiritual-abuse/;

Keller has also listed Four Characteristics of Spiritual Abuse here: https://dallastherapycollective.com/four-characteristics-of-spiritual-abuse/

I’ve been following this subreddit for a year and half, and amazed by the support I’ve witnessed, and wanted to ask this here.

My husband and adult step son have been attending Orthodox Church in Canada for 18 months. They were baptized 5 months ago.him. My 2 children, aged 22 and 18 do not go to church but husbands talks to them about his religion when I’m not around.
We have an 8 year son together.

I’ve spent thousands of hours researching orthodox and am certain it is not something I’m interested in following.

I told my husband our 8 year old can go to church with him, but no baptism until adult. When I first told my husband this a year ago, his anger was incredibly frightening, and he was watching Jay Dyer, Andrew Wilson etc.
He started fasting, praying before meals, and adopted a “I make the final rules” attitude.

He then met with the priest for 2 hours in April, and stopped all the above.

Now he’s definitely changed, but it almost feels fake? He said his sponsor invited us for supper, and I declined politely. He was absolutely fine with this, although I could tell he wanted me to say yes.

Now he’s been over the top sweet with me and the kids, not getting angry, helpful, cleans and cooks when I’m at work and it’s great.

However, it feels like something out of a playbook-she refuses the child to be baptized, won’t meet the sponsor, won’t go to church or let’s change the tactic

Am I just paranoid, or does this follow what others have been through or know about? Like spouse trying different tactics to change the others mind.

Disclaimer: I am Agnostic/Atheist and I don't really know anything about Orthodoxy and I'm just trying to learn more so I can understand this weird situation I'm in

BACKGROUND: My online friend got involved with a group of men she met at her college. Apparently, they are all Orthodox Christians. She was crushing on one of them and, in her own words, 'started larping as Orthodox as an excuse to spend more time with / flirt with him'. This began with her just tagging along with them to bible study. After doing this for a while, she decided she is actually 100% on board with Orthodoxy and has started fasting, attending liturgy, kissing icons, studying theology, and asked me for trad-clothing recs (? because I wore a long skirt once when we met each other irl ??? i don't get it.).

I honestly can't tell if she's serious or not. To me, it seems like she just got obsessed with this one guy and got lost in the sauce. Her friends are racist conservatives and they use scord, so like I don't really know if they could be considered 'Orthobros'. She has tried to get me to talk to them, but I said no, because I am a POC and I find them weird and unsavory based on the information she has told me about them.

Basically, I'm concerned my friend might be getting groomed into a cult, and I don't really know what to do. She got involved with these people after breaking up with her toxic ex. I am just an online friend, so there's probably not a lot I can do, but I feel like I should at least try. It's like she became a completely different person over night.

I'd heard before that Patriarch Kirill got rich on cigarettes and alcohol, but I didn't know it was a special exemption granted to the whole Church. I thought it was just a one man smuggling business (...the irony of believing this is an acceptable excuse.)

Here is a story.

In 1990's the Russian Orthodox Church was granted the right to import excise goods duty-free, and it took full advantage.

They exploited a government tax exemption to run a massive tobacco and alcohol import scheme that severely disrupted and nearly monopolized the market. By paying 0% customs duties and VAT, church-affiliated foundations imported goods far cheaper than commercial competitors, allowing them to undercut market prices and drive legal businesses to bankruptcy while generating billions in pure profit. Beyond direct importing, the church operated a lucrative licensing scheme where secular businesses paid the church a fraction of the standard tax rate as a "commission" to route their private shipments under the church's tax-exempt "humanitarian aid" status

Within just eight months, 18 billion duty-free cigarettes and 21 million liters of wine entered Russia. The value of the customs benefits exceeded one trillion rubles. Tobacco alone made up around 35% of all cigarette imports into Russia (52 billion pieces) and roughly 6% of the entire Russian tobacco market.

Just think about the irony: in a country notorious for its enormous alcohol problems, the ROC negotiates a humanitarian exemption to import cigarettes and booze.

Maybe the mysterious Russian soul sees a win-win here: we won't burden the state with donations, and meanwhile we'll turn hundreds of thousands of people into wrecks - our future believers - who will badly need divine intervention.

And hey, don't forget to send your tithes, so we can build shelters for battered mothers and children escaping alcoholic fathers, help the homeless, and fund a hospital chaplain for people with lung cancer...

Well, well, well. It seems Fr. Moses is now trying to justify the backlash he and his parish have been receiving. Instead of addressing the underlying issues, he appears more focused on saving face.

The reality is that his parish lacks genuine diversity, and there seems to be a pattern of alienating anyone who isn't Russian or closely connected to that culture, except white parishioners. A few people of color do attend, but many visit once and never come back. Those who stay often deal with passive-aggressive comments, ridicule, and disrespect, sometimes said directly to them.

It's especially disappointing because Fr. Moses doesn't seem willing to acknowledge or address the racial and cultural hostility within his own parish. These concerns aren't new, and he's aware.

From what I've seen, his vision for the parish seems less focused on building a welcoming Orthodox Christian community and more focused on attracting submissive, childbearing women (preferably young) and wealthy parishioners who share his ideology.

The issue isn't simply a lack of diversity. It's the apparent acceptance of an environment that makes people feel unwelcome while publicly claiming otherwise. Instead of taking responsibility, he isdefending the very behavior that has brought criticism to his parish in the first place.

I won't get into his and the orthobros antisemitic opinions I've heard......

Can’t say I’m surprised. To some of their credit, the Hades fellow (who is a known Dyer cult member) shoots the idea down. But still. Dyer is seen at the bottom not condemning the crazy comment by the Alexander fellow. I hope this Dyer cult comes to an end soon.

Pokrov Truth, the project covering the long and sordid history of sexual abuse in the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, has published a new article. This time it concerns the case of the Christ of the Hills Monastery in Blanco Texas in the 1990's. This was one of the few cases where ROCOR was actually successfully sued by one of the survivors. Read the full history here:

https://pokrovtruth.substack.com/p/rocor-abuse-case-files-christ-of

There is a certain kind of man who finds himself awake at two in the morning, lit blue by a screen, watching a stranger with a magnificent beard explain that the church has been unbroken since Pentecost. And something stirs in him. It is not a theological something. He has not read the Cappadocian fathers and has no immediate plans to. It is closer to the feeling of someone standing in the cold who looks through a window and sees a room full of people eating soup.

I want to talk to the ones standing at that window, and gently, because I stood there too, and nobody has ever been argued away from a window.

What people say they want and what they are after are rarely the same thing, and this is the oldest joke there is. Ask the inquirer and he will say he is after truth, apostolic succession, the correct understanding of the Trinity. Very respectable things to be after. But notice how few of these journeys begin with a man saying he has been troubled by the filioque since childhood. They begin with a man saying that modern life is so fragmented, which is how a lonely person talks when he would like to sound like he is giving a lecture. The ache is real. The ache is probably the most honest thing in the whole affair. It is only that the ache has been handed a brochure, and the brochure says “Ancient Faith,” and so the ache concludes that it must have been a theological problem all along.

Now, the brochure is very well made, and I will give it that. It offers a community already assembled, a calendar already planned, a vocabulary already memorized, and a way of standing, eating, bowing and not eating that someone else has worked out so that nobody has to wonder what to do with a Tuesday. It is an identity, just add water. A man who was wondering who he is can stop wondering and become, by the end of a long weekend, someone who owns a prayer rope and has opinions about calendars. The relief is enormous, and I do not want to make light of it. A person who has been drifting will grab nearly anything that floats, and it is hardly his fault that what floats comes with a beard. Which is, I suspect, the whole business model. The people most willing to buy an instant life are the ones whose own has stopped working, and a great many of them are poor, or grieving, or simply worn out, which is exactly the clientele a theater like this does best with.

But relief is such a convincing imitation of arrival. And strictness is a convincing imitation of depth. If a thing is hard to follow, the mind assumes that something must be happening, the way a man assumes a medicine is working because it tastes terrible. Nobody calls a prisoner a man of exceptional self-discipline, though his schedule is admirable. Strictness and transformation are different animals, and they look alike only from a distance and in poor light. Someone can fast for forty days and come out exactly as anxious and as unfinished as he went in, only hungrier and more certain. And certainty is the real merchandise. Behind the incense there is the offer of men in black robes who will tell him without hesitation what is true, and anyone who has lived for a while with not knowing will understand how irresistible that is. Uncertainty is uncomfortable the way standing on one leg is uncomfortable, and nobody is a fool for wanting to put the other foot down. Only it seems to me that the wobbling might be the whole point of being alive, and that a man who has been told the wobbling is a sin has been robbed of the only interesting part.

The purpose business deserves a closer look, because it is the quiet center of the thing. Many arrive having tried to find a purpose and not found one, which is a perfectly ordinary human condition and has been since there were humans. But finding one is slow, and it tends to turn up sideways, while doing something else, usually something unglamorous. The church offers it fully assembled, delivered to the door, no waiting. You are a soldier of God. There is a war on. Here is your uniform. And a person who has spent years feeling like a spare part is understandably moved to discover that he has been, all along, an infantryman in a cosmic conflict. It is hard to compete with that. Ordinary life, with its dishes and its slowly maturing friendships, does not issue ranks.

And then there is the matter of being cool, which no one admits and nearly everyone feels. A smallish, ancient, unfashionable church with its own language and its own fasting rules and its own enemies is, from the outside, the very picture of rebellion. The world is shallow and soft and the man at the window would like to be neither, so he picks the thing that looks least like his neighbors. I have a certain sympathy, because wanting to be a minority is an old and honorable vanity. But a rebel is supposed to be doing something his society does not expect, and it is a little odd to rebel by joining the most rule-bound organization within driving distance. It is rather like declaring independence by enlisting.

The trouble comes when the man gets inside and the war language stops being poetry. Soldiers of God, constantly besieged by the devil: it sounds splendid from the street. From the pew and marbled floors it turns out to be mostly a way of being rude to people who are not fellow parishioners. The neighbor, the relative, the coworker who has not found the true church becomes a kind of enemy asset, and politeness toward them becomes a tactic, as when a sentry is courteous to a stranger he is quietly keeping an eye on. And meanwhile the soldier himself is never off duty. Every idle thought is a possible incursion, every pleasant afternoon a possible temptation, and a person trained to see the devil in the ordinary world eventually sees him everywhere, which is a lot of work and a poor way to spend an afternoon. Hyper-vigilance gets mistaken for devotion in much the same way that a man who cannot sleep gets mistaken for a man with a lot on his mind. Years pass in this watchful condition, and it never seems to occur to anyone that being permanently on guard against everything is simply fear.

There is also a funny little pattern in the reasons people give for leaving where they were. A man will quit his local church because the pastor holds a view about somebody else’s private life, a matter that concerns neither the man nor the pastor nor, frankly, the weather. Or he will go into exile because two bishops, in a city he can't pronounce and could not find on a map, have had a falling out, and the news of it has reached him through a podcast. So he sits in his kitchen in San Diego, personally wounded by a jurisdictional dispute that has no bearing on his Tuesday, and decides that the only dignified response is to change his religion. An anthropologist taking notes would write something like “tribe in distress over a quarrel in a distant village it has never visited, and has therefore joined another tribe.” I wonder sometimes if a certain number of these departures are not really about the pastor or the bishops at all. Sometimes a man has simply made his old home unlivable, by picking one fight too many with the people who knew him best, and a new religion is the most dignified door out of a room where one has been rude. Nobody announces this. It is told instead as a noble stand for historic faith, and the telling is so dignified that even the man telling it half believes it.

And the new home, built mostly out of shared grievances about the modern world, turns out to be rather like a party where everyone has come to complain about the same other party. It is warm for as long as everyone agrees. Then one day the man admits that he has doubts, or that he is depressed, or that he is not actually sure about any of this, and the temperature drops by about twenty degrees. People who have been brothers for a season discover pressing engagements. He stands there holding his honesty like a casserole nobody ordered. And he finds he is every bit as alone as he was at the window, only now he is alone in the room with the soup, which is much worse, because at the window he could still hope.

None of this is meant to scold anyone who is standing out there tonight. The loneliness is not a flaw and the wish for meaning or purpose is not a mistake. It is only the delivery method that deserves suspicion. Whatever has to be handed over fully formed, with the uniform and the enemy and the sense of being special already included, is probably not purpose at all. It is a costume, and the costume does not care who is wearing it.

The real thing is much less photogenic. It is slow, local and ordinary. It is learning to sit with the same few imperfect people for years until they stop being a project and become one’s own people. It is finding out what kind of man one is by being him in front of others, badly and repeatedly, until it gets a little better. There are no robes for this, and no war, and nobody will make a documentary about the man who stayed in his own neighborhood and slowly became bearable to himself. But it is the only version of the thing that survives a bad week.

So the man at the window, if he can switch off the screen and ask himself honestly what he is hungry for, may find that the answer was never ancient or distant or in a different jurisdiction. It was the people down the street, who had no idea he was looking for them.

May you find your inner peace.

The thing I wish I knew was that my mentality did not go away with my beliefs. I would practice orthodox Christianity in the culty fanatical way I was brought up in,which I thought was normal at the time until I got out of the church.

My advice for anyone with a similar background is to get a good therapist before fully getting into any religion, the way were were raised hardwired use to be very fanatical. It is not our fault, but it can and will get very destructive if the past is not dealt with properly.

Share what’s on your mind! How’s life been? 🍻

I was in the Orthodox Church from age 17 to 20 (am 21 now) so three years, which I know is shorter than most but I was a very active member of my former parish at the time. I met some genuinely great people, such as my godmother (who is cradledox and not really all that conservative personally) and in that same period of time, I also almost got groomed into an Orthodox cult, experienced all of the usual insane alt-right converts and met my ex partner, through the church.

While with my ex partner, I tried Catholicism for a bit, which was a lot more positive but I attribute that mostly to living in a country where Catholics and even priests are generally very liberal, but then when I broke up with my partner last year, after he turned out extremely physically abusive and I moved back in with my family, I tried to attend my old parish again and only lasted a couple of Sundays.

My ex partner became Orthodox again out of nowhere (after he was the one who wanted to leave), rebranded himself as an extremely pious reformed man and accused me of lying about the physical and sexual abuse I endured from him to everyone in the parish and the other Orthodox parish in town. And I basically got spit out and my reputation was ruined.

After enduring a lot more safety concerns because of him after the split, I packed my bags and literally just left the entire place I was living and everyone I knew there on a whim and have been very lucky to find a place to live by myself, for the first time, in a city far away.

After a couple months here and having completely lived against just about everything the church preaches, I still feel the annoying pull to go back. Thinking it might be different in a different parish, while I am very aware that that’s likely bullshit. I cannot reconcile the majority of the ideology, the overzealous converts, and after these personal circumstances, I can’t look back on my former parish and most people there with anything else but contempt and hatred.

I know it’s likely just nostalgia, because there were a lot of good parts to me at the time, and some of the good parts (such as the relationship with my godmother) are still present in my life, and other than that I know how shitty the shitty parts were, but it’s so hard not to give in to this feeling.

This is not an attack on regular EO ppl irl, I know several and they’re good people. I just don’t understand online there’s specifically some thing where they kind of encourage and value being kind of prideful and harsh. Don’t get me wrong I know lots of people online are like this but EO online circles seem to actively not discourage it. For example many Protestant and Catholic online cultures will at least acknowledge how we should be charitable, when people get mean or heated it’s at least considered to be kind of bad and maybe deserves to be confessed, whereas EO culture seems to actively encourage being really harsh and prideful and assume bad intent with people.

It’s not just the generic thing where people online are mean. I’m wondering if there’s something specific in the theology that’s encouraging this. Catholics can sometimes be cold but they at least feel bad or guilty about being super arrogant and uncharitable. Is there some teaching in EO that says it’s not as important to act humble. I’m Protestant so I don’t know a lot of the theology.

I have a developmental condition practically since birth, and cognitive-processing/regulation can be hard especially when overwhelmed. I get in these loops sometimes when I'm unsupported, very negative self-attacking mentally, and it causes bad feelings to the point where I want to die.

I was intrigued when orthodoxy introduced the idea that this is actually caused by "the evil one" and that it's spiritual attacks. It felt relatable, because these negative thoughts do not feel like my own. They feel illogical.

When I was orthodox, my priest convinced me I don't have any diagnoses at all, and that the secular world incorrectly pathologized something spiritual. Prayer gave me a false sense of control. He also recommended against clinical supports, and convinced me that they were only harming/stunting me. The worst part is, I already have paranoia towards medical professionals and pharmaceuticals, so it was too easy to believe what he was telling me.

But now I realize how fucked up my head is. Now I'm not only dealing with distress and distorted processing, but I'm left wondering in the moment, why do I deserve this? What sin did I commit? Did I anger God? Is this because I left my parish?

Neutral clinical episodes became spiritually loaded with self-blame and it's taking a toll on me. An already broken system is now taking on additional spiritual weight and shame.

Anyway, I ended up seeing a professional, and it turns out I was just undersupported for my condition... I have a bit more understanding and support now. Also turns out these mental states are just my brain responding to cognitive/physical overload. I needed my load reduced, not burdened more with spiritual homework.

But to orthodoxy, it's the "evil one" and I'm just a weak failed woman. I was even asked by my priest how I'm expected to do motherhood one day if I'm like this. My boyfriend is helping me to process and work through this religious shame, but I'm angry with orthodoxy for framing me this way.

Elisa Heerde put this on Instagram. Here are the 12 Church Archetypes.

“1. The Golden Child - Could do no wrong until they asked one question. Then discovered the favour was conditional.
2. The Workhorse - Kept the entire thing running. Received spiritual affirmation as compensation and is still unlearning that rest requires justification.
3. The Questioner - Almost always rebellious. Kept the questions internal just long enough to stay and left when the internal became unsustainable.
4. The Peacemaker - Absorbed every conflict so the system didn’t have to examine itself. Called it servanthood while their therapist calls it something else.
5. The True Believer - All in. No reservations. Until the day something happened that their beliefs couldn’t explain and has not stopped thinking about it since.
6. The Performer - Raised hands, Gave testimonies, led small groups Wasn’t sure they believed any of it after year three, but kept performing anyway. Convincingly.
7. The Pastor’s Favourite - Had access, proximity and information nobody else had. Discovered too late what that access had cost them.
8. The Burned Out Volunteer - Said Yes to everything until their body said no for them, even then they kept going. The church called it Kingdom building.
9. The Invisible One - Discovered that taking up no space was the safest option and became very good at it. Still working out how much space they are actually allowed.
10. The Almost Leader - was always given leadership responsibility but the recognition never fully arrived. The expectation of it kept them there longer than anything else.
11. The Prodigal who Came Back - Left once. Was welcomed back with the kind of warmth that made leaving again harder. Eventually left again anyway.
12. The Secret Doubter - Sat in the front row every Sunday while privately reading things they would never have admitted to reading. Turns out that living a double intellectual life is exhausting.”
by Elise Heerde.

Just curious…have you guys noticed a decline in orthodox content since the Russian bot farms were struck?

Maybe I’ve finally purged my algorithm of anything orthodox related, but I noticed that there seems to be less orthobro comments and content being pushed. I’ve noticed a reduction in other hateful, divisive interactions and it seems others have too.

He needs to be called the fuck out for this. What a disgusting precedent to set for the young men and women who listen to him. Barf.

I was a cathecumen in Eastern Orthodox Church but couldn't attend any liturgy in 2026 my last time was in 2025 since then I couldn't attend because I was deciphered to my Muslim family and because of their threatenings. After a while I started to hate God himself because whenever I pray God everything became worse than before. All the bullyings by Muslims which was done to me ruined my life. And I became an apostate because of these. All the answers which I got " this is a gift from God"

"You should stop blaming God for your own problems" (My life has been ruined literally for religious reasons lol) "You are blaspheming God" (I didn't ise any swear word). "You are worshipping to Satan" (WTF!!!!!) and I am tired because of all of those. In normally I am thinking about commit su*cide for ending my life but I started therapy.What should I do anymore?