So for context, I was brought up in a very ecumenical and non-denominational (not in the low church evangelical sense) household as a child. I grew up going to orthodox services, Baptist services, Lutheran services, even the odd Roman Catholic service. As an older kid (11-12-ish) my family stopped going to Divine Liturgy (which is where we wound up most Sundays through my elementary age years), which was around the time a Baptist friend of mine invited to me his youth group and I was welcomed into that church community, which as a 23 year old I still find myself a part of.

Somehow I ended up in in the view I now consider heretical that one could be a Christian without stopping sinning. I ended up thinking Around 16 or so that this was not true. At around the same time, I decided to start exploring orthodoxy because I felt that the Orthodox Church provided more certainty in the permissibility of the belief in biological evolution which gave me grief at this time as a teenager.

And I basically ended up going full steam ahead into orthodoxy. But the more I learned, the more I felt the existential dread and despair. I discovered all these rules. No food or even water before the Eucharist. Confession before a priest. Strict fasting for 180+ plus days a year. No blood sausage. No praying with my Protestant friends or family. The rules went on and on. And on top of that, I couldn't even be sure of my own salvation. I would go in this back and forth of finding internet articles, posting on Reddit, finding more articles and thinking in my own about how to reconcile these rules with the character of Gods trying to find more lenient versions that were still "orthodox". In the midst of all this was the existential dread and despair that, despite my best efforts, I could still find myself damned.

I'd ask a question and be met with the inevitable "ask your priest". Ask my priest if I should hydrate before liturgy when I know I struggle with dehydration headaches? What if he says no? Ask my priest whether I should abstain from all meat, dairy, eggs, oil and even seasonings and cooking in my meals during fasting? What if I have a better idea of what would edify my, based on my knowledge of scripture, reason, and my own personal circumstance, than he does? And then I would spiral in anxiety, dread and despair.

And be told that Orthodoxy doesn't have the same legalistic attitude as other denominations, and I was just misunderstanding, applying a Protestant or Catholic mentality to orthodoxy. That somehow I just needed to get that the rules are more about the spirit of the law than the letter, but somehow the letter still matters, and on top of all that I can't know whether I'll be saved or even what I must do or believe to know.

I guess I just never acquired the "orthodox Phronema".

Fast forward a few years, I studied philosophy during my undergrad. It was fun and edifying. I learned about religious and irreligious philosophy of all types. And most importantly I had the opportunity to think philosophically about these questions. It deepened my faith, and I got over the scupulosity of my teenage years, but mostly because I just stopped worrying about all the rules. About the fact it was up to the church and my priest rather than my discernment, my reading of scripture, and reason.

Finally, and abruptly, I realized, I am questioning orthodoxy. I'm questioning my initial motives. I am questioning whether it is the right expression of Christianity. I'm questioning whether it is true. I am questioning whether it is edifying. Because somehow, the gospel just cannot come with the existential dread and despair that it comes to me with in the Orthodox Church.

I am very much still a Christian. I am not atheist. I am not finding myself in another religion. But I am being drawn away from Orthodoxy. and it is scary because the orthodox church would consider me an apostate if I became a Protestant, someone whom salvation is closed to. Because I still am firmly convinced of the truth that God exists, more convinced even. I am convinced of the truth beauty and goodness in the Christian tradition, but also across it. And there are beliefs of the Orthodox Church that I just cannot get behind anymore.

Y’all, I am so sick of people telling me how lovely it is to have children in the service. I had so much stress walking around with my littles keeping them less disruptive, they hated all the sensory overwhelm, as a mom I never was worshipping, but actively parenting while my husband worshipped, and trying to keep my kids to a standard that just wasn’t developmentally appropriate.

Yes, there are families that enjoy this experience, but in my experience more families just stop attending if they have active kids.

Every time I see people talk about how lovely it is to watch the children run around I think of how my neurodivergent kids got talkings to, and how exhausting it was to be in service with the family. It just seems like they are thinking of a set of bunnies or something, not kids who need actual support and attention.

Once upon a time, there was a priest at the OCA. His name was Fr. George. He was old, had hollow sunken eyes from sheer exhaustion (from dealing with Babushki) and was stubbornly strict. He believed fiercely, deeply, in the Orthodox Church being the true church. Other denominations were too "modern", too "heterodox." He had his own talks and sermons about the Truth of the orthodox faith and all of the strict fasting rules everyone must follow. He had a beard and grovelled around, muttering to himself.

But not only that. He had a Matushka Gretchen. She was the most formidable. If Fr. George was strict, Matushka Gretchen was formidable. She was the scariest person in the whole diocese. Fr. George always had to run his sermons by HER first. She would snap at visitors, keep everyone in line, and do the announcements at the end and address the people. She was a little old lady nobody dared cross.

Their granddaughter was Regina George. She was an adult, around 24 years old. She was blonde, glamorous, sassy, and exclusive. She learned from her beloved grandparents how to rule and exclude others.

When Fr. George, tired and sunken, did his sermons and tried his best to do the liturgy, his own granddaughter stood there, guarding the nave.

"On Sundays we wear headscarves."

She herself was wearing her most expensive, flawless silk Chanel headscarf. But she had to say that because a new girl was coming in, and she wasn't wearing a headscarf. Did anyone else care? No. Fr. George sure didn't require it. Nobody cared. Except Regina.

"Oh, um, there's a lot of babushki, can I stand with you?"

Regina scoffed, but then put on a smile. "Oh, I love how bare your hair is. It's so...rooted." She snickered to herself.

The girl was nervous. "Oh. Do we have to wear headscarves?"

Regina smiled and gave her an ugly one from the narthex - on purpose. "Yes. We are required to. Otherwise it's a sin."

The girl nervously put it on, vibrating with anxiety, while Regina smiled smugly through the service.

Matushka Gretchen was ordering the people around during coffee hour. Fr. George was being hounded by babushki again.

A Protestant inquirer tried to ask Fr. George some questions. Fr George replied, "You can't sit with us."

Regina's best friend nodded in approval at the poor inquirer. "Your suit though. It's so ... fetch."

"Thanks," the guy stuttered.

To be continued...

Now that I've recognized this pattern if I find out anyone idolizes this man I'm keeping a healthy distance and not expecting any kind of healthy relationship. For some reason he seems to attract the most militant nasty dox hypocrites. My church explicitly does not sell his books or promote him. He is not a saint.

I guess it’s my fault in some ways, they would keep up with me via instagram where like many other 21 year olds I would show myself wearing skimpy clothes, even though that’s disliked in orthodoxy. And it became obvious that I was transitioning again because I would show myself in the ballroom scene and my body was starting to become more female again from going back on hormones. But I really thought our friendships were stronger than my clothes and medical care.

My old church friend told me that a girl I used to be close with said this about me: “If you want to know, and this made me the most sad honestly. She literally said she had been thinking of not inviting you to the party she had been planning purely because she was worried you would come wearing a bikini or something and that it would intimidate people and the other “godly Christian men there “ I thought that was fucked up.”

First of all, I would never wear a bikini in this context because I don’t want to scandalize really orthodox people. But second of all, is friendship all about public perception to this girl? I feel very alone now that most of them have cut me out of their life, my only current friends are girls from Aa, and guys who want to play with me in their hotel rooms. And for the latter, I don’t even know if they truly like me for me, rather than just my body.

Hey guys.

This is a bit heavier than my posts before, but I really need your thoughts.

So basically, I feel that as a lesbian Orthodox Christian, I have an identity that is marked by contradiction.

The official Orthodox teaching is firm that homosexual relations are a sin.

In my experience, because I grew up in the parish and look like a cute teen girl and go with my mom, everyone just is kind and lets me be. If I say I'm lesbian, the clergy and the people just chuckle and are like, "Oh, kids these days."

So it's hard to say I've even been treated badly at all. Most of the time people just see me as a little girl who's still figuring things out. They even tell me "Oh, don't talk to that guy" (this was my longtime guy friend who was also trying to find himself, but they saw him as sus because he was a modern dude. I had just mentioned him in passing.)

When I told the priest I was lesbian, he just quietly said "Ok." Didn't challenge it. Didn't tell me it was sinful. Just left it alone.

I told a few parishioners and they said, "Okay." Nothing. Just let it be.

It's pretty uncanny to be honest. No pushback. No lecturing. But no smiles or warm acceptance either with it.

Basically though a mom there talks to my mom and the priest meets with mom and like...well, bruh. Idk. I'm 23 years old, but a kid once told me, "You're in 5th grade? The Sunday school for big kids is over there!"

So anyway. When I say I want to have kids as a single mom by choice, people just nod and are like, "That's cute."

But bruh. I'm a lesbian....and I can't even say they're homophobic because they gave me nothing to work with. But the official doctrine says that they don't approve of my orientation.

But the church lady, when I talked on the phone with her and said I wanted kids, she just said, "Oh honey, not yet."

So...

But anyway, thinking about the overall doctrine, I wonder what'll happen when I do, inevitably, become a single mom by choice (which I've been telling them for the past 3 years bruh, and they've just thought it's cute).

As far as dating, I don't really want to date girls, but I'm attracted to girls. It's not that I care much about dating one - it's that I care about the way I'm perceived. I worry that one day I will try to talk to someone Orthodox and they will be nice to my face but think to themselves "Oh, she's lesbian, I'll pray for her because that's sinful."

Like, bruh. I did NOT choose my sexuality. I dated 20 guys and not once have I felt attracted to any. Meanwhile I daydream about girls. I first discovered I was lesbian when I was 11 years old before the concept even existed in my head.

Then, the Orthodox Church claims to have a monopoly on faith. They claim that you need the church's sacraments, the priest's blessing, everything, that they're the True Faith. But by my real lived experience, I find that it actually serves as a supplement, but God never is conditional on my experience in the church. I can literally not go to church or just church hop, and it really has little to do with God Himself. The experiences I have are so amazing and beautiful, and yet the Orthodox Church invalidates them. My dad has similar experiences and been Orthodox, but they are trans.

So basically, sorry for the long-ass rant being too long, but what do you guys think...I want it to be nice and constructive not mean because I've been pretty run down by mean comments online and I am sensitive and young so I want some kind words...but also I want to hear your experiences in the Orthodox Church and how it compares to mine.

A few things here sound off to me. Orthodoxy doesn’t think you need to convert to go to hell. Also, I can’t imagine an orthodox priest forcing the wife to convert to follow the husband.

It’s interesting to me that there is an impression that orthodoxy is hardcore. I think that’s new and because of all of the orthobro nonsense.

My husband and I have been attending church together for years. We attend a Protestant church and have leadership roles. Recently he out of nowhere has decided that our church is heresy and not the true church and he thinks that he belongs at an Orthodox Church. He has been heavily watching Jay Dyer and other Youtubers and reading books. He went to church at an Orthodox Church this morning and I went to our home church. He says he’s not returning with me and if I want to I can stay at my feel good church. I don’t think we should attend different churches as a married couple but maybe I’m wrong. I’m just hurt and honestly embarrassed as dumb as that sounds. Does anyone have advice?

I don’t necessarily understand why the sudden change of heart. He just keeps saying they’re the one true church. I feel like I want input from someone who has been orthodox but isn’t anymore as well as someone who currently practices orthodoxy. I’m just trying to understand. I don’t want to lose my marriage.

"Well, that's just online"

"REAL Orthodoxy isn't like that"

"You're just going to the wrong church"

Can I just suggest we ban these types of dialogues, especially since they're almost always posted by people who haven't been on this forum long, and seem to have nefarious intentions?

If you've actually been heavily involved in the church before, you see it from a mile away... The concern-trolling, the fake sincerity that's there mostly to make you give Orthodoxy another chance, again in again, like a MIL telling you to give your abusive husband another chance, that "he's changed" or that your perspective was warped when you last saw him,

I've been to many churches as visitors. The only churches that practice this behavior... Are cults. Orthodoxy is given a pass because, at face value, it is not AS immediately aggressive as Western cults... Most priests on the podiums don't start with sermons on how gay marriage is wrong, or how women using certain types of birth control are basically murderers... But the teachings are there. The sermon is just there to draw you in.

Even in "less extreme" churches, if you're in the Western world, you can guarantee at least a third of your church is in some way influenced by the ROCOR propaganda they follow online. If someone isn't extreme, that doesn't mean they won't be an apologist for extremism.

Sorry, but we see it all the time. I'm not saying we kick everyone to the curb, but can we call a spade a spade?

"Not ALL Orthodox" is as toxic as "Not ALL men". If you're truly an ally, you wouldn't feel the need to get on your pedestal to defend a religion that controls and degrades women. There's a reason even cradle Orthodox women leave the church, and it has to do with the emotional intelligence they have to recognize they're being abused by a bunch of old, archaic men, who largely are there to get each other's egos off.

Honestly, I have an issue with anyone who thinks there's a valid reason for men to be priests, but not women. How can a religion ever be "equal" when such a thing is true? Has there been one female patriarch? No? Ok, then fuck off.

Ok, rant done.

You can find many such videos online talking about this topic. How everyone should choose between these two paths.

In one of them, Josiah Trenham basically says “How do you know that God is calling you to become a monk? If you can do it and you don’t see yourself being a father, then do it. That’s how you know”. This is a zero iq argument.

The mere fact that there isn’t a big obstacle for you to do something doesn’t mean that God is calling you to become that something.

I could theoretically become Italy’s next president, nothing is seemingly stopping me from doing it. Is that a clear vocation from God?

For the remainder, we know the drill. Are you gay? Just be a monk bro. Do you have a low sex drive? Just be a monk bro. Are you unable/uninterested in getting married for whatever reason? Just be a monk bro.

Monasticism becomes a compromise rather than a conscious choice.

There are more paths that can be equally blessed. Just let everyone be. No, they obsess about this completely superfluous, useless thing.

Jesus himself never married nor became a monk.

Hey everyone,

Like many here, after leaving Orthodoxy I’ve spent a lot of time trying to make sense of what I went through and why the psychological grip felt so intense. To process my own experience and validate what so many of us felt, I started looking at Orthodox practices through the lens of Steven Hassan’s BITE Model (Behavior, Information, Thought, and Emotional Control)—a framework commonly used to identify high-control environments. The BITE model has been referenced multiple times in this community, and this is where I first learned about it, which helped me in my decontruction/healing process. But as far as I can tell, there has not been a compare-and-contrast between the model and Orthodoxy.

Apologists often dismiss these practices as "ancient spiritual wisdom" or "loving discipline," but when you look at how they function psychologically, the structural overlap with high-control systems is hard to ignore.

Here is a breakdown of how several core Orthodox traditions align with the BITE model:

1. Behavior Control (Regulating your physical reality)

• Caloric & Diet Control: The Church mandates fasting from meat, dairy, wine, and oil for nearly half the calendar year (Lents, fasts, Wednesdays, Fridays). In high-control groups, dictating caloric intake alters physical baseline energy and enforces group compliance through shared physical restriction. When you are chronically under-nourished or restricted, your brain conserves energy by down-regulating critical analysis, boundary setting, and skepticism. This leaves the subconscious far more passive and open to accepting incoming dogmas without pushback.
• Proscribed Physical Routines: Long services, strict prayer rules, kneeling, and prostrations heavily structure your physical time and energy. Hours of mandatory standing, early morning/late night vigils, and repetitive physical actions (prostrations, crossing oneself) induce profound physical fatigue. Combined with sensory overload—rhythmic chanting, dark lighting, flickering candles, and heavy incense—long services bypass analytical processing (System 2 thinking) and put the brain into a hypnotic, highly suggestible state.
• Obedience to a Spiritual Father (Dukhovnik): The concept of hypakoe (holy obedience) encourages believers to consult a priest/elder on personal decisions—career moves, dating, marriage, finances—stripping away individual autonomy in favor of "godly counsel."

2. Thought Control (Reshaping identity & suppressing doubt)

• Identity Break via Name Change: Changing your name at baptism, chrismation, or tonsure acts as a psychological break with your "worldly" past self. Your core identity becomes re-anchored entirely within the Church collective and its patron saint framework.
• Thought-Stopping Techniques: When intrusive or doubting thoughts (logismoi) arise, believers are instructed to immediately shut them down using repetitive mantras—most notably the Jesus Prayer ("Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner").
• Loaded Language: Internal jargon like prelest (spiritual delusion), phronema (Orthodox mindset), and passions creates a cognitive shield. Natural human boundaries, critical thinking, or self-reliance are reframed as dangerous spiritual flaws or demonic influence.
• Black-and-White Dogma: Orthodoxy claims absolute, unalterable truth. Any departure from the Councils or Creed is labeled heresy or schism, leaving zero room for nuanced personal belief.

3. Information Control (Restricting valid sources of truth)

• Patristic Consensus over Private Judgment: You are constantly warned against "trusting your own intellect" or engaging in "private interpretation." Truth can only come through the Holy Fathers and Church Tradition.
• Weaponizing Prelest**:** If you have an intuition, critique, or gut feeling that contradicts the Church or your priest, it is weaponized against you as prelest—a trick of the devil. This forces you to distrust your own mind and feelings.
• Invalidation of Dreams and Subconscious Signals: Ascetical literature explicitly commands believers to distrust all dreams, visions, and subconscious gut feelings, warning that demons use them to lead people into prelest. By teaching you that even your own mind and sleeping subconscious cannot be trusted, the Church cuts off an essential internal channel of self-awareness.
• Suspicion Toward Secular Psychology & Therapy: Outside mental health care is frequently discouraged or viewed with deep suspicion. Secular therapy is often labeled as "worldly" or harmful because it doesn't account for the soul, forcing believers to rely exclusively on priests—who often lack any psychological training—for complex mental health issues.

4. Emotional Control (Manipulating internal state)

• Cultivated Guilt & Unworthiness: Daily prayers constantly reinforce that you are fundamentally broken ("chief among sinners," "unworthy servant"). While framed as humility, it keeps you in a perpetual state of emotional dependency on the sacraments for relief.
• Fear of Damnation / Outside World: Leaving "the Ark of Salvation" is framed as entering spiritual destruction. The external world is painted as fallen, degenerate, and unsafe.
• Sacramental Accountability: Vocalizing your private thoughts, failures, and secrets to a priest in Confession acts as a powerful mechanism of exposure and compliance.

Ancient Tradition vs. Modern High-Control Reality

When you bring up these concerns to believers, they’ll often say: "That’s just monastic askesis!" or "You just had a bad priest!"

While mainstream parish life can be moderate for some, the reality is that the toolkit for high control is built into the dogma and canon law itself. Whether a parish becomes a toxic cult-like environment usually just depends on how literally the priest decides to enforce these canonical rules—which is why converts, rigorist parishes, and monastic communities suffer the highest rates of trauma.

For those of you who have left: Your instinct that something felt wrong wasn't spiritual delusion—it was your human need for autonomy reacting to high-control mechanics.

I'd love to hear from others in the group:

• Which of these BITE categories resonated most with your personal experience?
• What other examples might you add to the list?

Updates:
An incredibly thorough exploration of these same ideas posted by - u/LetterSeparate1495
https://www.reddit.com/r/exorthodox/comments/1tnzeq5/how_to_build_a_highcontrol_regime_without_violence/

Other users in this thread have shared their experiences and excellent examples of these categories throughout this conversation. Thanks to all of you for your feedback, input, and support!

This article is a really good example of how they twist words and the understandings of laws and the world. I found it particularly disgusting how they equate self esteem with being like the devil when it was pride that was the issue. There are plenty of blanket statements in this article too.

i love reading about christianity, but i would like a book that is about or includes inform about orthodox history, belief and culture from a secular or academic perspective. or perhaps at least acceptable in your opinion for someone who doesnt want to hear anymore bullshit while being gladly in her post-orthodox state of being. just trying to learn deeper without having much discomfort with rhetoric being blasted in my face. any recommendations are welcome, thank you!

I wanted to expand on a previous post because a user who has identified himself as Dr. Philip Mamalakis, an Orthodox therapist and professor of pastoral theology at Holy Cross, made the argument in this subreddit that Orthodoxy is sex positive and against purity culture.

I disagree. Orthodox sexual ethics are a form of purity culture.

Start with Orthodoxy's almost obsessive fixation on monasticism.

We were told: "Marriage is silver; monasticism is gold."

That pretty much says it all. Marriage is good, but monasticism is better. And look at the saints: there are legions of monastic saints, while the married saints are often celebrated for extraordinary sexual abstinence. We constantly encounter stories of married couples who voluntarily lived "as brother and sister."

Sorry, but that's not normal marriage.

I'm not talking about couples who can't have sex because of illness or age. I'm talking about healthy married people voluntarily giving up physical intimacy because they believe celibacy is spiritually superior.

And I knew Orthodox couples with essentially dead bedrooms who were told by their "spiritual fathers" to endure it, even when one spouse wanted sex and the other didn't.

Shortly after leaving Orthodoxy, I briefly dated a Jewish woman. She invited me to her cousin's wedding. In a Jewish wedding, the bride and groom are given seven blessings. One of those blessings is that the bride and groom find joy and delight in one another.

I remember thinking: Holy shit. They're actually praying that these people have a happy sex life.

Not "sex is permissible because you're married." Not "make sure it doesn't become lust." Not "it is better to marry than to burn."

They're simply blessing the couple's physical relationship.

My girlfriend wasn't particularly religious or theologically educated. Just your average New York Reform Jew with nominal beliefs. When I told her about some of the Orthodox stuff, she thought it was fucking bizarre. Like literally, she said, "That's fucking bizarre."

I told her, "Well, of course it seems bizarre to you. You weren't raised Christian."

She said, "No. It sounds cultish."

Then she pointed out something obvious that had never occurred to me:

"Christianity came out of Judaism, right? Judaism just doesn't have these ideas about sex. Where do you all get this shit?"

And that's what finally made me see it.

Orthodox sexual ethics are saturated with the language of purity, chastity, lust, passions, self-control, virginity and asceticism. Then add the fasting calendar, where many of us regularly abstained from sex in marriage so we could receive Communion.

Meanwhile, the person who completely renounces sex is held up as spiritually higher.

Smells like purity culture to me! It's just not American evangelical purity culture. It's an ancient Mediterranean Christian version of it.

I'm pretty sure Dr. Mamalakis will respond with, "But Orthodoxy says marital sex is good!"

Yes. I know.

But purity culture doesn't require you to say sex is evil. It requires you to create a moral system in which sexuality is heavily regulated, sexual desire is treated as dangerous, virginity is spiritually prestigious, and the sexually abstinent person is regarded as more spiritually advanced.

That's pretty much exactly what I experienced.

Marriage is silver. Monasticism is gold.

Anyone else?

I am a young female catechumen who is thinking long and hard about leaving the church. I have many objections, much of which I have resolved. But there are a few, despite two years in the church, I have yet to resolve. They haunt and bother me: ​

1. Orthodox Marriage and Motherhood:

I am absolutely repulsed by Orthodox marriage. My body is repulsed by it; I physically do not want it. I do not want to be a mother. Even though motherhood is not a strict requirement and one only needs to be "open to life," something in me screams, "No! Don't do it!" It feels like something supernatural, outside of myself, is stopping me from being okay with it.

2. ​Inclusivity and Clergy:

Being anti-LGBTQ and having an all-male clergy does not sit right with me. Scripture and the Church Fathers state that gay acts are a sin, but I cannot sit and tell gay people they are not valid. The thought of being a nun in a monastery serving alongside a trans nun brings me so much joy—it feels so beautiful. The idea of transgender monks and nuns, and blessing gay marriages, feels like a blessing. It is sad these people are barred from that. Furthermore, an all-male clergy just feels weird and off. I don't have a rigid theological reason; it simply doesn't sit right. ​

3. Birth Control and Sterilization:

The Church's stance on birth control is way too strict. While some priests are flexible as long as contraceptives are not "abortifacient" (preventing implantation), that threshold is still too restrictive. The fact sterilization is not allowed. A woman needs to get her bishop's approval for a medically necessary abortion. People should be able to utilize any birth control they want.

​ ​Because of these issues, I feel barred off from love altogether and feel forced into monasticism. I want to fall madly in love, have deep devotion, and marry someone, but monasticism feels like the "safe" way to do that. However, I don't want to be forced into it just to have love.

​I am a big proponent of Saint Maximus the Confessor's concept of divine Eros: that desire and lust are not inherently bad, but rather energy to be redirected and transformed into a burning love for God, not squashed. Yet, the advice I see everywhere is about aggressively fighting and conquering lust rather than transmuting it. ​Additionally, the Church's approach to sexuality feels like we are forced to cut off a fundamental part of ourselves. The Church says desire and sex are good only within marriage under exact, correct expressions. This creates immense anxiety. The thought of the marital act in the Orthodox Church gives me anxiety: Am I committing a sin? Am I doing a bad act? Am I too passionate? That sounds like a mess, making monasticism look like the "easy" option just to avoid the anxiety.

​I want to look at both options (marriage and monasticism) with full delight, wonder, and zero hesitation, trusting whatever God has in store or whatever my heart truly wants, knowing He will catch me at the end. But the Orthodox Church doesn't offer that freedom because marriage currently feels repulsive and monasticism feels like a default escape rather than a genuine, primary choice.

​Because of this, I am open to joining more progressive liturgical churches, such as the Episcopal Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church, or a schismatic, gay-affirming Orthodox group. Something that believes in the nicene creed, believes that baptism saves and that christ's body and blood is truly present in the eucharist.

​My hesitations with progressive churches include: ​

1. Demographics:

Unlike Eastern Orthodoxy or Roman Catholicism, which are growing quickly with young people, progressive mainline churches often skew older. I want fellowship with peers and a chance to find a partner. ​Theological Anxiety: In the back of my mind, the history of the church and conditioning whispers that ordaining women and affirming queer people means "not real Christianity." I have deep anxiety about picking the wrong church, following doctrine that misrepresents God, or missing the truth.

​2. Political turn offs

While I notice progressive churches often have better fruit—being more generous, feeding the hungry, and helping others selflessly—I am not a fan of rainbow flags, rainbow vestments, or rainbow icons in a liturgical setting. It feels like idolatry. I want to put Christ first and keep the pro-gay stance secondary. I want a church that welcomes everyone with open arms, but I don't want the entire focus of the liturgy to be centered around political or social movements. Can we worship God first?

​I want to be able to wholeheartedly choose my path from the bottom of my heart, with all my soul, and fully jump in. Right now, I don't have that option in my current church experience

I still am unsure if being pro lgbtq is compatible with christianity. I mentally can't put the two together. But oh, how I want Christ, and I want to love gay people.

I still am attracted to orthodoxy because of certain Saints which of whom I have a strong attachment to and burning love for, the concept of theosis, the concept of being a saint, really saint stories. There's other reasons but yeah. Tell me what y'all think.

I am uncertain of the leanings of this subreddit. Is this sub mostly atheist or mostly non-Orthodox Christian? I am asking out of curiosity as a Christian.