The troubling acceptability of Eastern Orthodoxy among Western secular Leftist intellectuals

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It is troublingly acceptable, isn't it?

Acceptable, that is, especially compared with Conservative or Evangelical Protestants - aka 'fundamentalists'.

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And this acceptability of Orthodoxy can only be for bad reasons - mostly that Orthodoxy, as it functions in the West, is perceived as being no real threat to the Western Leftist project.

Orthodoxy is instead seen as an example of 'vibrancy', of ethnic colour (since almost all Western Orthodox churches are non-Western - Russian, Greek, Serbian, Coptic etc), and perhaps of offering a rich and exotic aesthetic appeal.

Unsurprisingly, Western converts to Orthodoxy always have been among intellectuals - especially academics.

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For instance, I once conversed with a member of the national intellectual elite who said that they attended Orthodox service quite frequently when abroad on vacation; and I initially interpreted this as meaning that this person was a covert Christian - but far from it! The person was actually hostile to Christianity, but enjoyed attending Orthodox worship, because it was assimilable to a generic 'spirituality' of a New Age flavour, the 'perennial philosophy' perspective, and subjectivist mysticism.

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In sum, Eastern Orthodoxy is seen as cool - and thereby its effectiveness as a form of Christianity is neutralized.

In the modern world, everybody wants to be cool; but anything cool is assimilated to the mass media world and can lead to no good.

Any hope for Christianity in the West will need to come from the uncool...

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