Orthrobros: Christianity for the Chronically-Online Based Bro
Exploring the phenomenon that has taken the internet by storm
This will be part 1 of a series of pieces on Christian and Church history, past and (in this case) present. I am mainly writing about the Orthrobros and their recent rise here; I will dive into the actual Catholic/Orthodox institution and its history in another chapter.
Are you too based for feminized Slop Protestantism? Too independent for AIPism? Do you want to be right all the time and have infallible beliefs backed up by an infallible institution? Is Catholicism just not “cool” or “mysterious” enough for you? Have you ever had that nagging feeling that you’re just more spiritual and more based than normie Christians? Then welcome, Orthrobro!
Traditions that aren’t yours.
It is the habit of the chronically online to pick out niche or foreign ideas and organizations, carefully remove them from their historical and cultural roots, put them in a vacuum, and then larp about with the cool new image they created out of it, like a cargo cult. Not to say that there aren’t sincere Orthodox adherents, or that it is totally irrelevant in The West, but the fact of the matter is that it’s called Eastern Orthodoxy for a reason.
Orthodoxy is, and always has been, an entirely Eastern (Byzantine) faith tradition. That schism that happened was, in fact, geographical. Orthodoxy was a competitor to Catholicism and was not tolerated in their jurisdiction, same as all things deemed heretical by our betters, from time immemorial ‘till present. It was a bitter schism back in the day that never fully healed. Though they are back in communion now, they are still not the same church.
The overwhelming majority of Orthodox adherents live in Slavic and Eastern Mediterranean countries. In America and The West, the entirety of the Orthodox tradition derives from immigrants who came from places like Russia or Greece and brought their faith with them. Catholicism (or Protestantism) is the tradition we have in The West, and our Catholics dramatically outnumber Orthodox Christians for this reason. In America, we have more Jehova’s Witnesses than Orthodox. A handful of nations, like America, could even be said to be traditionally Protestant, in that they don’t really have Catholic roots, let alone Orthodox traditions.
Orthodoxy is not “trad” for the mass of Orthrobros adopting it lately. It’s actually very trendy and current online. How did Westerners even find out about it? Well, online of course! This article is actually from an Orthodox source that is even chastising the priests on social media, and rightfully so. It is cringe-y marketing which undermines their authority at best, outright deception at worst, and it is all based around selling an aesthetic and luring in poor quality catechumens. This is not good soil to plant The Word in.
The silly and pedantic nature of the Orthrobros can be easily demonstrated by asking the question: Why not convert to Catholicism? That is the traditional Western faith, after all, and is very similar to Orthodoxy. If someone genuinely values tradition and their historical roots and isn’t about identity politics or luxury beliefs, then they wouldn’t choose a foreign faith that is remarkably similar to the one which is traditional to their people.
So why is this uniquely Eastern splinter of Catholicism gaining so much in popularity? I think there are several reasons, but they mostly revolve around the “trad” appeal.
The Trad Appeal
It’s more traditional, they say. It’s just more real, man! It isn’t sold-out and going woke like Catholicism or Protestant Slop. It’s more authentic! It feels right!
This is, at best, an incomplete understanding of what Orthodoxy actually is. Eastern Orthodoxy and Western Catholicism have the exact same history and roots, up until the schism of 1054. Neither fundamentally changed in that schism nor since then. The argument was about whether “The Holy Spirit” emanates from The Father alone (Catholicism) or Father and Son (Eastern Orthodoxy). It is the ancient equivalent of a church having a great schism over what color the carpet in the sanctuary should be. It is, and was: meaningless, pointless, and stupid; a result of politics intersecting religion, and they were doing that 1000 years ago. Truly, there is nothing new under the sun.
Yet there’s also a reason Orthodoxy is “more traditional” than Catholicism: it’s because it is frozen in time.
Orthodox liturgies and services are still basically the same as they were over 1000 years ago, as with John Chrysostom’s famous liturgies still being read to this day. Come back next Sunday for an exact repeat of last Sunday, and the Sunday after that, and the weekdays, and we’ll keep doing this ad-nauseum for the next 1000 years. Although swinging the censers around is pretty cool; The aesthetic is strong.
People also like repetition and stability, they’re comforting. There’s certainly positive things that can be said about this. Protestant slop-merchants and figures like Pope Bergolzeebub have thrown, or are throwing, their traditions away to their own detriment. Surely this means that über-traditional, endless repetition is good in it of itself, right?
This is, unfortunately, the dialectic: that pernicious little thing we just can’t seem to get rid of. The pendulum is swinging from the extreme Boomer position of, “all tradition bad!”, to the new Gen Z extreme of, “all tradition good!” After this comes the synthesis, which will likely take the form of syncretic Pan-Abrahamism, brought to you by your “traditional Christian leaders”. But that’s a topic for another time.
Traditions are neither inherently good nor bad. There are good traditions and bad traditions and everything in between. Throwing acid at women suspected of acting dishonorably is a proud Indian tradition, so should we adopt that? Maybe that isn’t a good example to give for this generation. The man-made traditions of the Pharisees overriding Scripture is why Jesus castigated them repeatedly and said,
Matthew 23:23-28 (KJV),
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone. Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess. Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness. Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.
Don’t kid yourself into thinking the Catholic or Orthodox churches are somehow different, even most of the Protestants are like this now.
Yet a people totally bereft of an identity and set of common values and cultural practices are hungry for any shred of tradition. Anything which is old, consistent, and brings stability to their lives is desirable, and understandably so in the shifting mire of The Postmodern West, but this opens the individual up to all sorts of deception and manipulation. They’re not going to God, they’re looking for man’s solution that will fulfill their immediate desires and needs. It is a carnal, not a spiritual, impulse.
It’s like we’re going back to pre-Protestant times. How quickly men have forgotten the folly and false doctrine of Catholicism, which Orthodoxy is a splinter of.
It is mainly because of the massive failure of mainstream Protestantism, or mega-churchianity, which I have taken to lovingly calling “Slop Protestantism”, that Orthodoxy has become appealing. Young people (primarily men) are hungry for masculinity, tradition, place, and meaning. We understand on a primal level that we are supposed to be carrying something forward and have an inherited identity and purpose.
Now, our social decay has gotten so advanced that people aren’t even getting married or having children anymore. We are literally erasing ourselves as a people and civilization on an industrial scale. The desperate measures of people resurrecting dead traditions or adopting foreign traditions are understandable, given the extremity of our situation.
But, if it isn’t about truth, light, and serving God, but rather about serving yourself, it is not spiritual in nature.
Matthew 6: 5-7, (6:7 in bold)
And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.
But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.
But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking.
Almost everyone ignores these instructions from Jesus. Luckily, Jesus’s words don’t matter all that much in the Catholic/Orthodox traditions, so it will suit the fad-chasers well.
At the end of the day, faith in Christ is not about the traditions and institutions built up around it. They exist to serve and arm the Saints, not the other way around, and the Saints live to serve God and one another. These top-down political institutions have been in a satanic inversion that obscures Christ’s truth for as long as they’ve existed. You just weren’t taught about that, which is convenient for them. What’s old is new again! An entire generation of truth-seekers is being set upon by the same-old institutional wolves, again.
It would have to be another volume entirely to get into what constitutes genuine faith (judge them by their fruits) and Sound Biblical Doctrine. This is rarely taught anywhere in any type of church. But I digress.
Hidden History
As an aside, there is also the sneaky little hidden history of denominations and churches that people don’t talk about. The public has nearly forgotten about all the Catholic pederasty scandals, and how it is endemic to the church and no doubt continues to this day. I doubt it’s much different in the Orthodox Church, but they’re much smaller and have much less press in The West.
Then there’s all the mainline Protestant denominations that let people down and betrayed their congregations, only to rebrand and do it all over again as Slop Protestants. This is a major reason for the rise of “non-denominational” churches. They aren’t really non-denominational, or even a different denomination. Oftentimes, they still have their same old association with the same denomination. They just market it differently, and slopify it to gain the greatest market share. It’s like when a construction company builds a lot of bad houses to make a quick buck, so when the heat gets high they change their name and location in order to avoid accountability and do it all over again with new suckers.
Orthodoxy, meanwhile, has so little footprint, press, or awareness in The West that it looks squeaky clean in comparison to other denominations. I believe this is the main reason for it being preferred over Catholicism. It can be a good thing to be in your Western brother’s shadow, after all! Influencers picking up Eastern Orthodoxy from obscurity during COVID was the greatest thing to ever happen to them.
The Feelz
It is interesting to see that it is right-leaning, stoic-inclined young men, who learned about Orthodoxy online, that are causing a surely-unanticipated explosion in Western Orthodox adherents. I’m sure the priests are just tripping over themselves for their un-awaited mass of catechumens.
It looks different, it feels different, and it unapologetically embraces stoicism and masculinity for effect. It’s not hard to see why young men are flocking to the ol’ Orthodoxy in droves. It is seductive and looks great! It has a tremendous buzz about it.
Yet, despite what Orthodoxy gets right (such as head-coverings and modest dress for women), an obsession with aesthetics and appearances is ultimately a feminine impulse. This is why Postmodern Slop Protestantism is such a curse: they have sacrificed authentic masculinity, and by extension, authentic faith, on the altar of feminism, to appeal to the shallow sensibilities of weak women so that they might increase their tax base; they are the same as the corporate world. “Happy wife, happy life!”
2nd Timothy 3:1-9,
This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away. For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts. Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth: men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith. But they shall proceed no further: for their folly shall be manifest unto all men, as theirs also was.
Now, we see how the pattern repeats in reverse with men, quite bizarrely, when it comes to Orthodoxy. No, God did not declare them to be infallible and “the one true faith”, ever in the last 2000 years.
Men are now obsessed with appearances and aesthetics as well. This was once the domain of gays. Now, it is, “Embracing masculinity and tradition.” As a matter-of-fact, your ancestors were not lifting for the perfect bod, bro, to attract the Orthro-hoes, they were doing physical work with a productive end as they needed to survive.
Nobody is going to be very happy with the results of the Orthrobros movement. Well, maybe not nobody, but the majority will be dissatisfied or even fed-up. When fad-chasers and the chronically online pervade your group, it never ends in a cheery way, and it hurts the movement/institution in the long run:
The Orthodox Church, after an ecstatic honeymoon period, will come to realize that they’ve been inundated with inferior-quality catechumens that are chasing an image and a fad. Some are sincere and may become life-long converts, but after the tsunami, they will be left with a hard choice: gatekeep and turn away a lot of disillusioned young men to maintain their integrity, or embrace everyone and drop the quality of their religion precipitously.
The Orthrobros themselves are going to mostly be disappointed. They are like a thirsty man searching for an oasis in the desert, and believing they have found one, they cup their hands and put the water to their mouths only to taste… sand! Augh! It is ultimately a mirage: they don’t understand Orthodoxy, and aren’t familiar with it, and have no personal connection to it, instead following influencers and online sources that hyped it up. They don’t know that what they are seeking can’t be provided by their chosen institution. Orthodoxy in The West is like a monastery: it is a refuge from the world, not a place to find guidance through this life. It will not get you girls or that trad life you’re looking for, don’t believe the survivor bias.
Conclusion
Many have pointed out, and I believe correctly, that the primary cause of our Postmodern malaise and misery and societal decay is spiritual in nature. The spiritual decline and disbelief in all that is supernatural or transcendent or intangible is the root problem. You aren’t addressing the issue or finding authentic spirituality when you just go and adopt an ossified foreign tradition because of its form, appeal, and practical utility.
Postmodern man and woman, such as the Orthrobros, approach truth and the divine as a man shopping in a grocery store. They are browsing the shelves, having a taste of all the different faiths and traditions and deciding, “I like the flavor of this one the best.” It is a rebellion against the post-truth/my-truth zeitgeist in a distinctly Boomer-ish fashion: rebellion through conformity.
Orthrobros are basically the disillusioned goths of today that are into Warhammer 40k. It’s really about image, appealz, and feelz, and of course: ME! Orthrobro-doxy is searching for something in the world that is, corny as it sounds, inside you— or it isn’t.
Luke 17:21,
Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.
It is a difficult and slow process to establish a new tradition or build-upon an old one, but it happens organically and is authentic for the people that are a part of it. Attempting to resurrect long-dead traditions, or adapt a foreign tradition to a purpose for which it wasn’t made, is not “trad”. That would make Zionism traditional, which it sort of is now, along with the entire neo-liberal worldview. Those are your traditions now, do they please you? Unfortunately, when your traditions are gone, they’re gone; this is what Humpty Dumpty tried to warn us about.
The irony is palpable as the Orthrobros engage in exactly the same behavior as those they criticize. At the end of the day, there is very little difference between the Orthrobro, the “Traditional Pagan”, the ignorant Catholic, or the Protestant slop-merchant. All of them are adopting a set of beliefs/traditions for selfish and superficial reasons, and either playing make-believe or just degrading it. When a tradition is detached from its people, culture, and time, it ceases to be a tradition. If you think boomers running around singing “Hare Krishna” is cringe and a betrayal of their own tradition and cultural heritage, then you should think the same of the chronically-online Orthrobros.
I don’t want to give anyone the impression that I believe there’s 0 value to Orthodoxy or that all its adherents are insincere, that is not the case. It is, however, the case that the Orthrobros are mostly chronically-online or online-influencer-types getting involved for the wrong reasons, based on ignorance and fad-chasing. I mock and meme on the BASED REDPILLED ORTHODOX CHADS as they are just a stupid and destructive breed of people no matter where they go, and they are convincing hordes of people to follow them in their stupidity. Most are mislead, but some among the Orthrobros are sincere, and will either stick with the Orthodoxy in good conscience or find it to be a useful step on their path to Christ. This essay is primarily for you, to hopefully save you much time and futility in your walk with God and direct you to that which is true. Take it from me: bad church experience is worse than no experience, so know that you cannot trust the words or ideas of the “BASED” Orthrobros. My local parish is disappointingly weak, in fact, but I did find a surprisingly decent one in Greenville, SC.
May your feet be blessed as you carry the good news and your cross,
Shalom my goyim
They don’t want a pedo pope and to go to church with Latinx. That’s about it. Good article, I agree that Christianity is a plague and should be rejected.