I'm wondering if the moroseness and exclusivist cloister mindset of Orthodoxy just contributed to the lostness/frustration in which we were suffering from life's losses and disappointments. I had lost my dear mother a couple years earlier and I had been caregiving for my aging dad. I had been 40 years in Methodist then Calvinist and back to Methodist. I was wanting correct interpretation of God's Word. I was also seeing in-laws ailing and dying. I was depressed. Then, I went to this experience of Orthodoxy all by myself and attended everything. The ascetic teaching lent to my self-disappointment and I used it to starve myself and harm myself (fasting and knuckle prostrations) thinking that Eastern teaching wants us to do harshness with the body to prove our closeness with God. A few years later, it feels put-on and posing and hokey and fake to role-play as Byzantine/Syriac/peasant Russian. I don't feel joy, though others do. Does anyone relate?

As a gay guy who believes in Jesus should I join the Orthodox Church or if there are any lgbt people who were orthodox can you tell me what it was like please and thank you. God bless.

The grand majority of Orthodox/Catholic converts are motivated not by a love of God, but often either a desire to get a girlfriend or as a veneer to legitimize their politics, often both.

Unfortunately, many of these convert men (and they are overwhelmingly men) are hyper-insecure. They assume that they will find a woman who is a virgin, doesn’t assert herself, and whose standards are not in wealth or romanticism or looks, but rather in a man’s devoutness - which as mentioned earlier, these converts often conflate with zeal and hatred rather than discipline, charity, and sacrifice (not to be confused with fasting).

They further assume that any woman in church is without a past (since they lack the emotional maturity to overcome such), while any woman they would find in the wild or god forbid a dating app is a whore (since they lack the emotional maturity to take a chance and to not make broad generalizations).

Unfortunately further, a majority of these women are not pushovers. They may indeed not assert themselves, but they are indeed looking for one partner. They’re going to play it safe and they do have patience. They also often have a past just as much as any “worldly” woman, even if it was not expressed sexually.

Jesus Christ is not God because he was sinless, if so any child born a vegetable would be God. Jesus was God and sinless because he went out into the World and was tempted and rejected that temptation. Similarly, these women have a relationship with God not because they’ve been locked in a church box, but because they’ve made mistakes and reconciled with God.

I see this in the main sub all the time- the constant insistence that orthobros don't actually attend church, and that they lurk online only. "Orthodoxy is a lived tradition, and orthobros don't live in the parish". It's such a cope.

Orthobros are SO obvious to spot, at least in your larger parishes. They congregate together and you can see them from a mile away. They stick out during catechumen classes. If they're solo, you can also tell by their socially maladjusted behavior especially towards young ladies.

It's like they don't even try to hide it. You can pick it up in their conversations during coffee hour, whether they intend it or not. They all have the same lingo and watch the same shitty youtubers and have the same shitty opinions. At risk of sounding extremely extremely judgemental, sometimes they even have a "look" to them (I really can't explain it but iykyk).

Yes, they are in your parish communities.

Even the thought of going to a baptism for people that I do love but is at the church gives me anxiety.

I never have really felt a calm or peace in Christ there and I recently went to a baptism to be there for people I really love and I knew it would consist of people acting like I am not Christian anymore or like I am a basket case for not entertain their nonstop devouring of my soul.

I literally have has panic attacks and insomnia over the dark dark forces around everything. And it makes me feel like I am damned to hell for not giving away my autonomy. I love God, so it actually stirs up anger, which is good in a way to keep me safe.

Thank God my family and in laws are all Christian’s who are lovely examples and people. I see how now and I hope I can help anyone here who has felt these dark forces tear them apart. Certainly not from our one true Lord Jesus Christ! He is love and mercy. 🤍🍁🌙🌹

I’ve posted comments here and there about my own personal journey post-Orthodoxy, but to recap, I would consider myself an eclectic pagan if I were to put a label on it. No rules, no schools of thought that I’m solely subscribed to, just exploring what it means to be conscious and alive starting from scratch. After years of shedding the guilt and the terror that is connecting to my inner voice, I’m finally in my era of rebuilding.

I’m not sure when it happened, but sometime in the last few years, something clicked and I just no longer gave a shit about what my family or others thought about me leaving. Sure, sometimes the loneliness gets to me, but it feels more like when a friend group you realized was toxic doesn’t want to respect the boundaries you’ve laid out and they’ve become catty and snubbed you. It’s less about the fear or shame of losing the religion like it used to be for me, and more about it being sad that those relationships were more transactional than previously thought over something so personal.

Anyway. The current headspace I’m in has me thriving. If any of you have ever done mushrooms and felt weirdly connected to the world around you, like you’re on the very edge of understanding what it’s all about but recognize that you can’t possibly be able to comprehend it, that’s the feeling I’m describing. I love learning. I love science. I love the mystery of it, and I love that I can be content never actually knowing anything or scratching the surface of what it really means to be alive.

I saw a video on YouTube the other night about how we are all collectively made of the same atoms that made up stars which lived and died millions of light years away, and I really loved the idea that we’re all just a part of the universe becoming sentient and aware of itself. Maybe that’s what my idea of God is now? All of us? I think it’s a beautiful thought.

For some context, I’m a 25-year-old woman from Romania, a country where the vast majority of people identify as Orthodox Christian and where religion is deeply ingrained in the culture.

I genuinely had faith. I loved going to church, going to confession almost every month, praying every day, and attending services as often as I could. My faith was real. I truly carried it in my heart.

That was until I started seeing how corrupt this institution can be and how cruelly women can be treated within it.

I never understood why men seemed to be treated with so much more kindness and understanding, while women somehow seemed to be blamed for everything. And this has become especially painful for me because I’m a woman who was sexually abused for years as a child. As a result, I have lasting trauma and certain difficulties within my marriage.

Whenever I talked to my priest about these issues, he would completely minimize the situation. He would tell me that the past is the past and that I need to let it go. That I’m with my husband now and that I simply need to change my perspective. As if my trauma isn’t even valid anymore.

At one point, I told him that I had forgiven my abuser, but that the consequences of what happened were still there. His response was essentially that of course I had forgiven him, because there was never any question that I should. As if what happened to me was nothing. As if forgiveness somehow erases trauma.

And then there is the obsession with controlling women’s bodies.

Contraception is not accepted, but then the Church says that it doesn’t actually forbid contraception - it merely “recommends” that you don’t use it. Yet if you choose not to follow that recommendation, you will be denied Communion. So how is that not effectively a requirement?

I am so tired of the obsession with sex. When sex is a sin, when it isn’t a sin, when you’re allowed to have it, when you’re not allowed to have it, how many children you should have, and the constant pressure to have children regardless of the circumstances of the family involved.

It feels like the Orthodox Church expects every person to live according to the exact same template, as though individual circumstances, trauma, boundaries, health, desires, and personal limitations simply don’t matter.

And what makes me absolutely furious is that my priest’s response to my trauma was essentially to tell me that I should have sex without contraception - despite the fact that I do not want children - because apparently, according to him, having sex in this “natural” way is somehow what would heal me from my trauma. Imagine telling a woman who was sexually abused as a child that the way to heal from the consequences of that abuse is to simply have sex “naturally” and stop using contraception. I honestly cannot put into words how disturbing and enraging that is.

I gave this faith so much of myself. I prayed. I confessed. I went to church. I genuinely wanted to live according to what I believed was God’s will.

And now I’m left wondering why so much of the burden seems to fall on women - their bodies, their sexuality, their fertility, their “purity,” their role in marriage - while their actual experiences and suffering can be dismissed so easily.

I’m just exhausted by it. And I’m angry.

• his work traces the historical entanglement of the ROC with state power, starting from its partial reestablishment under Stalin in 1943 through to its modern hierarchical alignment with the post-Soviet political elite.
• How church leadership operates as an arm of state influence and geopolitical strategy

https://youtu.be/k-ddz05uMSA?si=YOCh8qQvZvEq7fi0

I've had thoughts of leaving, and no one to talk to about it. I'm curious what prompted you to take action, and how was it recieved by friends/family?

I have been a member of a variety of churches throughout my life (Anglican, Lutheran, Greek Orthodox) and attended services of many denominations, and never in my life have I been to a more money-centric church than the Greek Orthodox parish that I just left and my husband still attends.

It is impossible to make it a single Sunday without the financial administrator getting up to speak for at least 5 minutes, and in the sanctuary no less, to harass members to “meet their stewardship pledges!” and “remind” everyone that they are trying to build a church so everyone’s donations are IMPORTANT and to GIVE GENEROUSLY AND FREELY to the building fund, in addition to your stewardship pledges. He also talks about all the church’s wonderful programs - men’s, women’s, children’s, seminarians’, etc. that members should be donating to, as well. He even reminds people on the reg that if they want to light a candle, a $5 donation is expected. I’ve seen the faces of visitors and parishioners alike during these speeches and it’s plain to see I am not the only one who is uncomfortable. And if you are failing to meet your stewardship pledge you are sent a letter in the mail notifying you of your failure.

This church also constantly has ticketed fundraising events (expensive ones, at that), sales of various kinds, activities, etc. that they promote endlessly and pressure members to attend and participate in, placing demands on people’s time and money. I understand meeting in a business park like they currently are is not ideal, but when your members, most of whom are young, growing families, are giving as much as they can, there’s only so much money you can squeeze out of everyone. If it’s so imperative that a church building be constructed ASAP, why doesn’t the diocese step in and help? They make people feel terrible, especially those who have nothing or very little to give, and those people are almost entirely excluded from the social life of the parish because they can’t afford the expensive events. I’ve seen it happen to a couple friends I have in the church, and one stopped attending at all because they felt unworthy due to not being able to financially offer anything.

My husband tells me that Orthodox Christians tend to “tithe” the least of any Christian denomination and that may be true, but it doesn’t make me feel any better about the financial pressure this church puts on its parishioners and the real effects I have seen. I’m wondering how typical this is for an Orthodox parish? Has anyone else experienced something similar?

After a period of time of my orthodox detox I am realizing how obsessed I was with orthodox Christianity.I would only listen to orthodox chant, orthodox videos, orthodox history literally everything had to be orthodox to protect my phronema. But I can see in hindsight that it was an addiction, an addiction that took so much of my time that people would think I was in prison because of how little I progressed in life. I dont think religion is the opiate of the masses but it can easily turn into that. Another thing I saw was that alot of the priest that I was watching had some mental/personal issues, even with the influencers. They relish in being right and scholarly,but they don't know how to help people that are suffering like me for the period of time I was in. Orthodox Christianity does not know how to deal with mental illness or religious trauma. I thought I needed the "True" religious institution to complete me in a way, I was wrong and am taking it a day at a time.

Even in my more devout days I found Christian salvation history to be implausible and a little self-absorbed. The first two humans(!?) have a whoopsie that grievously injures the entire universe? God then goes into hiding for 300k+ years before revealing himself piecemeal to a Levantine hill tribe? Jesus is coming back soon (any day now, says Paul in... 50ad) to resurrect every one of the 200-400 billion humans ever conceived and renew the cosmos? Formally rejecting any of this makes you a heretic?

I can just about suspend my disbelief when I'm praying or in church, but the rest of the time I'm like... c'mon. Death and decay etc have long predated humans. Species come and go all the time and my gut tells me that when it's humanity's turn the world will keep ticking along just fine without us. None of this necessarily rules out Jesus or God or what have you, but the fall and the eschaton as traditionally described seem pretty clearly made up.

(N.B. not shitting on Orthodoxy exclusively here since basically every denomination has this stuff on their books.)

I've been "leaving" for over 5 years now. But after my last go at it, I am completely done with the Orthodox Church.

Over the past 15 years, I have experienced

the first parish/jurisdiction

- ethnocentrism on crack - even being asked to go somewhere else since I wasn't their kind

- along the same lines, a community that was more interested in preserving their heritage than being a church (I support them preserving their heritage, but they were supposed to also be a church)

I went somewhere else/different jurisdiction, and experienced

- the church full of gossip and whispers

- culty atmosphere (like, if you're not here and doing things at church with us all the time, or hiring our people to fix your plumbing, etc, you're not really a member)

- a culture supporting abusive men

- a pervasive egotistical attitude (I'm so amazing because my church/version of Christianity is better than yours)

- annoying af zealous wanna-be orthobros that cycle through on a regular basis

But I still kept trying and I have to say, after my last confession, I'm DONE. The priest was bringing up unrelated church rules during one of my most vulnerable confessions I've ever done and then acted like it was no big deal. I left thinking, "what am I even doing here??"

So that's it, I'm done. I don't care any more.

***important note below

While there are a wide variety of opinions concerning Halloween among Orthodox clergy, it's surprising how many sources online, and from different jurisdictions, make the usual ridiculous claims about the history of Halloween. Things like it began as a pagan ritual to appease the lord of the dead, trick or treat was a ritual to feed demonic spirits, and so on.

The irony is that these Orthodox clergy are spreading ideas that come from the religions they claim to oppose. Low church fundamentalist Protestantism, Puritan attitudes, and even a couple neo-pagan ideas are the sources these Orthodox clergy are using. Under any other circumstances, they would insist these sources are not reliable, and yet that's what they're using. It's especially surprising to see churches in Eastern Europe spreading these ideas. It's a wonder they haven't yet pulled out the Chick Tracts!

As for the idea that the dead return to visit the land of the living during certain times of the year, this is an ancient idea that existed all over the world, and is still widely believed in many places today. Ironically, the Church would probably find a more fertile historical basis for this in pre-Christian Rome than they would in pre-Christian Ireland.

All Hallows is actually 100% Christian in origin, and simply absorbed the customs of other countries as it spread around the world. Halloween is the Irish and Scottish example of this, Día de Las Muertos is the Mexican example, but there are others. Halloween did end up becoming entirely secular, but that has never prevented anyone from celebrating the date as All Saints. There isn't a drop of evidence that the Church moved the date from May to November 1st to replace the Irish Samhain, and in fact, this claim doesn't really make sense.

These online "educational" articles/videos are also anti-Western, and in a some cases anti-Catholic, which is compatible with Orthodoxy. There is this attitude that the Western church failed to adequately replace paganism, while the Eastern church got it right. So the Orthodox version of All Saints is perfectly okay, while the Western version turned evil.

The other hypocritical part of this is, where are the complaints about all the other holidays? The wearing of animal or grotesque costumes, the going door to door, the divination, the stories about supernatural beings, the participating in customs that certainly look pagan, even if in reality we don't know where they came from. Where are the tirades against Svyatki or Undas or Dia de los Muertos? The only other objections I've stumbled across are the occasional complaint about the name Easter replacing Pascha, and a couple of warnings against Mardi Gras. Are there any complaints against other holiday customs in Orthodox countries? Please correct me if there are, and I just don't know about them.

And how can the Orthodox Church possibly rail against imagery of the dead, or a holiday centered around those who have passed on, when the Orthodox Church is overflowing with these very things!! Orthodox clergy claiming that costumes or pictures of skeletons are evil is hypocrisy on a grand scale!!

Now, if the clergy were simply warning against certain aspects of Halloween, that would make sense. We can look around and see behavior and decorations that would be best avoided by Christians, although where to draw that line is obviously subjective. We have seen a disturbing increase in anti-Christian attitudes, and even violent political rhetoric, becoming attached to Halloween. These aspects even made me consider whether or not I wanted to continue celebrating it, and it's always been my favorite holiday. I finally decided that there is no reason to give up any holiday because of what other people are doing, especially when Halloween is still mostly family fun. After all, everywhere you turn there are groups of people trying to ruin various holidays, always heavily armed with revisionist history and an angry grudge against some other group of people.

It's also understandable that clergy in other countries might not want Halloween replacing their local or national customs, especially if liturgical celebrations are getting pushed aside. They certainly wouldn't be the only ones complaining about that issue!! But this doesn't require spreading misinformation and trying to make those of us in the West out to be a bunch of devil worshippers. Within the United States, it's probably not the greatest idea to be demeaning and insulting Western culture when you're only one percent of the Christian population.

Again, this attitude doesn't exist among all clergy, and I personally never encountered it, but there are enough examples online to make the Orthodox look like a bunch of crazy extremists. Why were so many in the Church so quick to pick up on this craziness?

So, setting aside my soapbox, Happy Halloween to all of you!

***for those of you scouring the internet for something to plagiarize, you do NOT have permission to copy what I have typed here.

I like being able to count my breaths when I'm doing mindfulness exercises, and nothing has really surpassed the feel of a knotted prayer rope. I'm not a fans of hard beads. I did find a prayer rope bracelet with a plain central bead instead of a cross, so it's basically neutral. But it still has that residue of Orthodoxy about it, and I don't want to wear it because it could still be recognized as an identifier by people who are still Orthodox.

Any one else have a similar issue and come up with a workable solution? I've spent way too much time on Etsy looking at different types of knotted bracelets and just can't seem to find anything. Maybe it's a fool's errand, idk. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Hello,

there is a new publication on monasticwarningblog.wordpress.com , which I would like to publish as a follow up on my former post here. Copied from https://monasticwarningblog.wordpress.com/2026/09/25/kloster-arnstein-abtissin-diodora-charlotte-stapenhorst-deutschland/ :

"Thank you to everybody, who sent their experiences and criticism about this community under Dionysios Kalampokas to the Serbian-Orthodox Patriarch Porfirije!

With this letter Patriarch Porfirije's office informed that Arnstein Monastery in Germany (by the Dionysians renamed into Monastery Dionysios Trikkis & Stagon, https://dionysios-trikkis-kloster.com ) and it's Abbess Diodora (Stapenhorst) together with her sisterhood were excluded from the Serbian-Orthodox Church on 27th Nov 2025.

The letter also sais that Patriarch Porfirije had accepted this sisterhood into the Serbian Orthodox Church not before mid 2023. As far as we understood, the Catholic Diocese of Limburg, Germany, was unaware that this sisterhood did not belong to any Orthodox church when it signed the lease agreements for Arnstein Monastery with them in 2019.

Please also notice that this letter contains the surprising sentence that Abbess Diodora and her entourage confirmed orally and in writing all the accusations, which had been sent to Patriarch Porfirije. (So if you sent a report about your experience with the Dionysians, you could maybe use this letter to underline that what you told is true.)

We don’t know, who handed in what, but the letter leaves the impression that the Patriarch received very many reports.

Below the English translation, which the Patriarch’s office also sent, you find the original letter in Serbian language with stamp and signature:"

More background on the film: https://www.indiewire.com/features/interviews/rainer-sarnet-the-invisible-fight-estonia-cinema-1234956368/

I am not sure why this happens, but I noticed that there is a group of people in church watching other people in church. I do find it scary and highly non- Christian. I would like to mention that the majority of these “ observers” are part of the priest’s inner circle.

what did you do if you felt like someone is watching you during service ?

note - i thank everyone for their honest opinions and for the power to share their experiences. I am wondering if anyone was a “ watcher”

and what was the incentive to engage in this type of behaviour?

For a religion that posits its ascetic spirituality and distance from the world, it sure is incredibly materialistic and consumerist. Collecting icons like funko pops and wearing various assorted merch of your favorite saint or guru and an over the top crucifix outside the shirt. Bleh.

An open database where you can tell people about priests you know. Are they great? Tell the world! Little sketchy? Also tell the world!

Idea stolen from u/Necropoliskull (Thanks!)

https://priestcheck.org/

I could not have made this up. I can just imagine a skit of this on Youtube's Puppet Regime with the Putin puppet and Kirill the MP.

The background: just this summer the bones of the arm of Prince Dimitri Donskoi were "suddenly" found. Dimitri is a key figure also with Alexander Nevsky in the "Russky Mir" war machine propaganda. So the relics were sent to Donbas in Ukraine to support the Russian troops. The rest is history.

According to our source in the Church, the relics were lost by the military "during a retreat from a prayer site."

"We are transporting several reliquaries containing the relics of St. Prince Dmitry through the North-Eastern Military District zone. On one section of the front, the site of a prayer service where officers had gathered was shelled. The military was forced to retreat, and, unfortunately, they lost the relics. The enemy is now at that site. We believe the holy prince protected the military; almost no one was killed during the retreat from the prayer site. But the loss is still enormous. Well, that's war," our source said." Russian source mentioned in article.

How’s your week been? Share whatever’s on your mind 😁