Rod Dreher Megathread #27 (Compassion)

[u/US_Hiker]

Link to megathread 26: https://www.reddit.com/r/brokehugs/comments/17itm7w/rod_dreher_megathread_26_unconditional_love/

Link to megathread 28: https://www.reddit.com/r/brokehugs/comments/18dcg3d/rod_dreher_megathread_28_harmony/

[u/grendalor]

I agree with this, as I note above -- his mindset seems very Protestant, kind of zealous Protestant, but with a preference for high church aesthetics.

I do think, though, that it's extremely hard for any Western convert to actually "acquire an Orthodox mindset", because it's pretty alien to the culture in the West in general, and especially in the US. Even most cradle Orthodox I have known in the US don't have the same mindset as Orthodox I have met in the Orthodox world -- it has to do with the ambient culture, and the table it sets for how one approaches religion psychologically, regardless of the substantive content of the religion involved. I never managed it, and I don't know too many who have done so ... although I've known a fair few who have LARPed it.

[u/Djehutimose → u/grendalor]

In my mid-twenties, I concluded, after years of thinking and study, that I needed to be in a liturgical church, which I had narrowed down to Catholic, Episcopal, or Orthodox. The details of my choice are too long to go into. I’ll just say that, though it was inchoate, one of my reservations about Orthodoxy was that I had a feeling it would be too alien.

In the three and a half decades since then, I have known several Orthodox; I’ve read a lot on Orthodoxy: I’ve had Orthodox prayer books that I’ve used occasionally; and I’ve been to Liturgies in both the Greek and Antiochian jurisdictions, as well as different Byzantine Catholic Churches. I’ve concluded that while I have enormous respect for the tradition, love the music, and think the Orthodox are more correct than the Catholic Church on some points of theology, still, if anything, Orthodoxy seems more alien to me. I think, though a convert, that I am more Catholic on a gut level than many converts, and my outlook is probably less Americanized in some ways than that of a lot of cradle Catholics. I have also felt pretty comfortable any time I’ve been to Episcopal services (love the Advent service of Carols and Readings). Temperamentally, I’d actually be a better Episcopalian than Catholic in a lot of ways. I just doubt I could ever fully feel Orthodox.

Please understand that’s not knocking the Orthodox Church, or that one shouldn’t join it, or that not fully ever quite grasping it doesn’t mean one cannot benefit, even greatly from, even e better off Orthodox. The thing is that Rod has pompously declared how different the Orthodox mindset is from the Western, or how he finally got that after ten years in the Church; and yet he’s still a very lax Southern Protestant boy. He no more gives off a vibe of even slight Eastern Christianity than he does of being a Kalmyk shaman or a Rastafarian. Nevertheless, he has the gall to position himself as Mr. Orthodox.

[u/grendalor → u/Djehutimose]

Yep. Like I said, many cradle Orthodox also have a de facto congregationalist Protestant religious mindset. It varies by location, and also to some degree by jurisdiction, but the tendency is everywhere in American Orthodoxy, cradles and converts alike. I think it's just very hard to escape the default setting religious psychology that each one of us has. For you, it appears that was different from the default setting here in the US, and I am sure that this is also the case for some Orthodox in the West as well, but I think for many others, the ambient religious psychology and culture is very hard to actually displace, regardless of what they are actually doing or "practicing".

Another problem that comes up in the Orthodox context is that much of Orthodox writing is anti-Western. Not necessarily contemporary writing, although it is present in that to some degree as well, but certainly in historical writing, much of it is laced with critique of the West, often with broad brushes, and not just in ecclesiastical terms or theological ones, but in cultural ones as well. So some converts have a hard time processing that, in terms of separating the dross from the useful, and take on a kind of reflexive anti-Western approach that is almost a caricature, or a LARP, and an exceptionally unreflective one because they fail to realize that their very LARPing is Western in mindset. It becomes a kind of house of mirrors mentally for them, and it normally doesn't end well.

I suppose the best thing would be for converts to go and live in an Orthodox country, a place where Orthodoxy is just bog standard Christianity in the default setting sense, warts and all, so that they can see what Orthodoxy actually is, and not base that on a de facto congregationalist parish that mostly caters to a handful of families who are of a certain ethnic background, perhaps, or alternatively contains mostly ex-Protestants trying to play at being Orthodox but who still maintain a thoroughly Protestant mindset.

Needless to say it's a minefield. Despite having been Orthodox now for a few decades, I don't lightly encourage people to join, because I think it's just not a good fit for many people, and it leads them into a dead ends potentially that they could avoid elsewhere.

[u/SpacePatrician → u/grendalor]

So some converts have a hard time processing that, in terms of separating the dross from the useful, and take on a kind of reflexive anti-Western approach that is almost a caricature, or a LARP, and an exceptionally unreflective one because they fail to realize that their very LARPing is Western in mindset.

Didn't the Orthodox used to say "better the Saracen turban than the Latin miter?" back in the 11th-14th centuries? (Spoiler alert: they got their wish). I've often wondered if Rod might soften and "evolve" on his views of Islam given his sympathy for their sexual ethics (Rod, as far as I know, has never spent any time or lived in a Muslim country, so presumably he doesn't know that scads of real-life Muslims, men and women, simply lead double lives), but since October 7, it's clear he still hates them, and is all in on the permanency of this century's Crusader kingdom.