What Young Men Actually Want Is Prayer

Much has been written about the waves of conversion of young American males to Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. Lots of theories going around.

In May of 2017, one day I went to my megachurch in the evening as I regularly did (and this was a real, verified megachurch — it was in a former PGA superstore, and if we are being honest, not really for budgetary reasons). That morning, I went to my first Orthodox Divine Liturgy.

We’re dealing with two different religions here. And so let’s take a look at what the crucial difference is that’s causing all of these conversions and subsequent New York Post articles.

Is it the smells and bells? Sure. Yeah. But that’s not really the heart of the issue. To get to the heart of the issue you have to ask why the smells and bells are compelling.

They’re compelling because they imply there’s a structure here. You’re dealing with young men coming from the megachurch. Pastors in skinny jeans and common projects. Fog machines and jumping up and down and mental health pep talks in lieu of sermons and so on. Ok. So there’s really no structure there. We’re dealing with chaos. Importantly, Christianity is about Logos. Gospel of John et cetera. So this is a problem.

Ok, so we’ve gotten from smells and bells to some sort of ordered structure. The next step is, ordered structure of what. And here the answer has to be prayer. Yes, the sacraments are important to all of this. But the key thing you’re dealing with in the Divine Liturgy and the Latin Mass and whatever else is structured prayer.

The young men want a collect. And a psalter. And so on.

They’ve been taught that prayer is this kind of unstructured, free-wheeling thing with no purpose or anything.

The broader point here is that young men want to be put to work. They want a goal, and they want concrete steps to achieve that goal. That’s why they’re all playing video games. That’s why they used to ask girls out. Et cetera.

In closing, prots’ last hope is probably the 1928 BCP. Otherwise the young men are going rosary or Jesus Prayer.