Something is changing in an otherwise quiet corner of Christianity in the United States, one that prides itself on how little it has changed over time. Priests are swapping stories about record attendance numbers. Older members are adjusting — or not — to the influx of new attendees. Parishes are strategizing about how to accommodate more prospective converts than existing clergy can reasonably handle on their own.
Across the country, the ancient tradition of Orthodox Christianity is attracting energetic new adherents, especially among conservative young men. They are drawn to what they describe as a more demanding, even difficult, practice of Christianity. Echoing some of the rhetoric of the so-called manosphere, new waves of young converts say Orthodoxy offers them hard truths and affirms their masculinity.
“In the whole history of the Orthodox Church in America, this has never been seen,” the Very Rev. Andrew Damick, an Antiochian Orthodox priest and author in Eastern Pennsylvania, said of the large groups of young people showing up at many parishes. “This is new ground for everyone.”
In the United States, Orthodox Christianity is by far the smallest and least-known of the three major branches of Christianity, representing about 1 percent of the population, compared with about 40 percent who are Protestant and 20 percent who are Catholic. Orthodox pews here have historically been occupied by immigrants from Ukraine, Greece and other countries with large Orthodox populations. Their American-born children often drift to other churches.
But a homegrown Orthodox Christianity is strikingly emergent. Many of the young Americans new to the pews have been introduced to Orthodoxy by hard-edge influencers on YouTube and other social media platforms. Critics call the enthusiastic young converts “Orthobros.”
So, back in the late 80s, before Yarvin or Thiel had any sort of following, the co-founder of Heritage (and really the cold black heart of Heritage Foundation, Fuelner was the establishment academic but it was Weyrich's baby) Paul Weyrich traveled to Moscow (and all over eastern Europe) holding mock elections and teaching soviet politicians all about Democracy and snuck computers and other electronics in to dissidents.
In 1991 several members of Heritage formed the first of its kind go between for U.S. and Russia businesses to help them make the transition to capitalism.
Weyrich later gave a talk at a Christian college in 1996, and while taking questions from the audience he casually mentioned that as far as he knew, Gorbachev's right hand man wanted to crack down on him while he was holding mock elections. He claims when Gorbachev responded in silence the right hand man left his office and allegedly began planning the coup the next day unbeknownst to anyone from the U.S.
Somebody made a documentary about some of it in 2012 that aired once on PBS and then never again, but it's available on YouTube.
Weyrich was always a religious zealot, but apparently his experience "liberating Russia" from the clutches of communism felt like God was working through him. He mentions it a bit in the speech in 1996, and there's a mention at one point in the documentary that at one point Weyrich felt compelled to walk around Soviet Moscow in the late 1980s screaming "Christ is risen!"
Weyrich is also no doubt the reason the Catholic right has such an established foot hold in the modern day conservative movement. He was from a very old school traditional Catholic family. Apparently they left the church in protest of Vatican II because and switched to Orthodox.
Weyrich died in 2008, but project 2025 is his legacy. The idea of destroying/tearing down America to rebuild is all him. To be honest, the more I learn about this guy, (including the fact that few people even know who he is to this day, but he just kind of came out of nowhere, had no college degree, showed up in D.C. and a few years later had somehow completely transformed the Republican party and coined the term Moral Majority, gotten Reagan to adopt the mandate for leadership as a policy guide, and then almost single handedly accidentally (allegedly) helped topple the Soviet Union while trying to spread "democracy" yet he didn't even believe everyone should be allowed to vote?) the more I honestly wonder if he was CIA or a Russian spy.
What's really interesting is there is this foundation that mentions talks to unite Catholic and Russian Orthodox churches, as discussed with Weyrich and Frank Shakespeare, one of Reagan's cabinet members
I also just learned today actually that just before be began holding mock elections in the Soviet Union, he was apparently working with the Russian Orthodox church to free prisoners of conscience in Russia, and planning to use this as talking point to remind America that the Republican party was the anti-communist party.
Letter to Paul Weyrich regarding a Russian Orthodox prisoner of conscience in the Soviet bloc- proposed resolution for 1988 RNC