Why are so many Evangelicals converting to Eastern Orthodoxy? Are Evangelical churches failing our young people? In short, yes. Our church services often are simplistic, driven by emotionalism and easy-believism. Additionally, many evangelical churches lack a mooring in church history, and fail to address apologetics. But most importantly, we lose sight of the gospel. To address the allure of Eastern Orthodoxy, we must face all these issues. I already compared Eastern Orthodox and Protestant theology in a previous essay.1 In this article, I will lay out some critiques of evangelicalism that drive people to Eastern Orthodoxy, and what evangelicals ought to do about it.
1. Tony Costa, “The Challenge of Eastern Orthodoxy: Comparing Evangelical and Eastern Orthodox Theology,” Christ Over All, May 11, 2026.
Emotionalism and Feminism
Too many evangelical church services lack depth of conviction in the holiness of God and the call of Christ on the lives of his people. It verges on the irreverent at times. Many of our services have become more about emotional songs and the ‘feel good’ mentality rather than fixing our attention on the centrality of the teaching of the Word of God (Matt. 28:19–20; Acts 2:42).
In the article by Rikki Schlott on why Protestants are leaving for Eastern Orthodoxy, the reasons expressed are as follows:
[T]he vast majority of attendees at most Christian [Protestant] churches are female, and many services are accordingly dominated by emotional songs, swaying, uplifted hands, and eyes closed in ecstasy. Men are much less comfortable [in those settings], and they have voted with their feet, which is why they’re minorities in these forms of worship,…Our worship forms [in Eastern Orthodoxy] are very traditional and very masculine… ‘Christianity in North America has become extremely emotional,’ Wee Sit, who was raised Evangelical, told The Post. ‘Going to Evangelical worship services, I found it to be like emotionally driven rock concerts, with the lifting up of the hands… ‘Modern Christianity … has become very watered down,’ Wee Sit said. ‘People go to church on Sunday, they sing a few songs, they listen to an hour-long sermon that seems more like a TED talk, and then they go home, and they just go on with their lives.’2
2. Rikki Schlott, “Young men leaving traditional churches for ‘masculine’ Orthodox Christianity in droves,” New York Post (December 3, 2024).
In addition to that the evangelical church has too often gone along with the feminism of broader western culture: “The feminization of non-Orthodox forms of Christianity in America has been in high gear for decades.”3 There has been an onslaught of attacks on young men in North America primarily through Leftist and Woke ideologies that have blamed men for ‘toxic masculinity,’ have blamed the patriarchy for the ills that women have suffered throughout history, and have blamed white men as privileged and guilty of white fragility. These ideologies are rampant in our schools, colleges, universities, and worst of all, in some of our churches.4 We Evangelicals need to reclaim biblical manhood.5 We need to teach young boys to be men, protectors of their family, and to be loyal husbands to their future wives. We need to urgently implement what the apostle Paul wrote about manhood: “Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong” (1 Cor. 16:13).
3. Schlott, “Young men leaving traditional churches for ‘masculine’ Orthodox Christianity in droves.”
4. I address these issues in Tony Costa, No King but Christ: The Collapse and Bankruptcy of Secular Worldviews (Bolton: Amazon, 2024).
5. And to do this, we first need to understand what it is. For a primer, see David Schrock, The Business of Is-Ness: How to Live in the World God Made (Cape Coral, FL: Founders Press, 2025).
Church History
Another area that receives next to little attention in Evangelical churches is church history. Orthodoxy claims that all the Church Fathers were part of Eastern Orthodoxy, and most Evangelicals cannot refute them. We need to start teaching church history in our Sunday Schools. As Evangelicals we are not restorationists like the cults that arose in the nineteenth century, claiming that the original church disappeared into darkness through apostasy and their respective movements arose to “restore” the true church. We believe that we are in continuity with the historic church through all the ages (Eph. 3:20–21). The fact that we subscribe and many recite the Apostles’ Creed and Nicene Creed bears witness to this reality. We are reformers who ever seek to recover and retrieve the Gospel. The motto ecclesia reformata semper reformanda (‘the reformed church is always reforming’) is a truism. This reforming is a constant retrieval of the Gospel that the apostles taught and “the faith once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3) against the tides of history, the appearance of heresy, and the various worldviews that challenge the Gospel. Evangelicals for the most part only know about the Reformation if that, when it comes to Church History. We need to focus in this area as we truly stand on the shoulders of giants who came before us.
This reformation has always been part of the history of the people of God, and God has always preserved His faithful, from the inception of the church until now. We see this very principle in the Old Testament in the time of king Josiah. Josiah was a reformer. Coming to the throne at the age of eight he inherited a kingdom steeped in idolatry and a gross apostasy from God’s covenant. His grandfather Manasseh and father Amon were apostates who had forsaken Yahweh (2 Kgs. 21:1–23; 2 Chr. 33:1–23). When he ordered the repairs of Yahweh’s temple something revolutionary occurred. They discovered the “Book of the Law” (2 Kgs. 22:8). This discovery sparked a reformation. This was truly a case of post tenebras lux (“after darkness, light,” the motto of Calvin’s city of Geneva). He returned to the Scriptures as his guide and light and renewed the covenant with Yahweh. In the same manner, when the Word of God was made available to the people in their own language during the time of the Reformers, it brought about a Reformation of epic proportions which continues to this day.
Notwithstanding the gross apostasy in Judah before Josiah, and following Josiah, God did not forget his faithful remnant among them. God has also had a people for his name and a witness in redemptive history and he never abandoned them. In the days of Elijah, he thought he was the only prophet of Yahweh left. God had to remind him that he still had 7000 servants in reserve (1 Kgs. 19:18; cf. Rom. 11:4). The church has also gone and continues to go through epochs of apostasy within her ranks, but the faithful remnant always perseveres by following the light of Scripture as Josiah did and the Reformers. The church of Jesus Christ has never disappeared from history.
Apologetics
We also need to focus more on Christian Apologetics. In my experience in the past forty years, I have noticed a profound vacancy in this field in Evangelical churches. Many do not know why they believe what they believe and are not able to provide a ready defense for their faith as 1 Peter 3:15 calls us to. The words of Hosea 4:6 apply here, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.” Many students who go off to college and university usually have their faith shaken because they are not properly equipped to confront criticisms leveled against their faith. Evangelical churches must make apologetics training a must. Teach them while they are young. We need to reclaim apologetics both in the church and in our seminaries and colleges and universities.
These skills in apologetics must further be aimed at Eastern Orthodoxy. We cannot ignore it. There has been a surge in social media of Orthodox apologists rallying for their church as the true church and dismissing all other churches as apostate. Many of the new converts are very zealous and some have a triumphalist approach to those who disagree with them. What many do not know is that there are different kinds of people in the Eastern Orthodox Church. There are the zealous apologists who are mostly new converts. There are also traditional and cultural Orthodox members whose affiliation with Orthodoxy is generational and cultural. They were born into it and see it as part of their culture, whether it be Greek Orthodox or Russian Orthodox. The women tend to be much more religious and faithful. Some attend church only during church feasts such as Christmas and Easter. Some observe the various fasts throughout the year while others let it slide. Some follow the old Julian calendar, while others do not. In other words, there are many similarities with Protestants.
The Gospel
When all is said and done, we need to focus on the importance of the Gospel. It, not the church, is the power of God unto salvation to all who believe (Rom. 1:16). The preaching of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to those who are being saved, it is the power of God (1 Cor. 1:18). Our focus when interacting with the Orthodox must be on that which is of “first importance,” namely the Gospel, rooted in the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ (1 Cor. 15:1–4). The centrality of Christ alone and his Gospel must be front and center as the apostle enunciated, “For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” (1 Cor. 2:2). The cross of Christ is the boast of the saints of God, “But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Gal. 6:14). As Evangelicals we need to reclaim our Protestant roots. They are biblical and they are sound. We need to take up the challenge of our days and defend Christ and his Gospel before a depraved world at all costs. There are many important books on retrieving and reclaiming our Protestant convictions which I highly recommend to the reader.6 We must learn to love our Eastern Orthodox friends enough to understand them, and most importantly, to point them to Christ and his Gospel which will always be the power of God unto salvation to all who believe by faith in the finished work of Christ “to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.” (Eph. 1:6).
6. Gavin Ortlund, What It Means to Be Protestant: The Case for an Always-Reforming Church (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2024); Gavin Ortlund, Theological Retrieval for Evangelicals: Why We Need Our Past to Have a Future (Wheaton: Crossway, 2019).
Conclusion
Evangelical Christians need to be aware that Eastern Orthodoxy has posed a challenge to them that cannot and must not be ignored. This is an opportunity to show our love for them as we are commanded to love our neighbor as ourselves (Mark 12:31). The greatest expression of this is speaking the truth in love (Eph. 4:15). We need to keep the lines of communication open with them in respectful dialogue and be ready to provide answers with reverence and humility (1 Pet. 3:15). We confess that we Evangelicals have not been perfect. We have plenty of faults, but we must be faithful in maintaining and upholding the message of the Gospel of grace. The church is the ground and pillar of the truth (1 Tim. 3:15). As the pillar, the church holds up the truth of the Gospel. Contrary to the charge that Protestantism has been feminized, there is indeed a type of Protestantism that is masculine, strong, aware of the dangers of secularism, and yet, proclaims Christ as King and Lord over all. It defends the precious faith once for all given to the saints (Jude 3) and will not compromise the truth of the Gospel, the truth that God saves undeserving sinners by his amazing grace, without works of any kind, but only on the basis of faith, and he does so to the praise of his glorious grace (Eph. 1:6). It is these Protestant churches that seek to work together to expand the kingdom of God and declare Christ as the Sovereign over all.
For those who are Evangelicals contemplating joining the Eastern Orthodox, I offer the following suggestions. Learn more about the roots of Protestantism. I would encourage reading resources like What It Means to Be Protestant: The Case for an Always-Reforming Church. Join a healthy Protestant church that is deeply rooted in the Gospel and takes the defense of the Christian faith seriously—a church that teaches men to be good fathers and providers of their families. Also, take time to research various resources online on Eastern Orthodoxy by Evangelical scholars.7 Do not jump into Eastern Orthodoxy based on your feelings, such as “the icons look beautiful,” or “the incense and the chanting in the liturgy has a sense of antiquity.” We are never to base truth on feelings. Feelings can be deceptive. Mere claims to be the “ancient church” have been repeated by a number of churches all vying for first place. Claiming it does not make it true. Original and ancient Christianity is to be found in what the inspired apostles wrote down in the New Testament. The teaching of Scripture places the emphasis on hearing the Word of God, “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.” (Rom. 10:17). Look to Christ alone as the dying thief did, with nothing in his hands, except faith in Jesus and surrendering to his mercy and grace without works. That is the Gospel that saves.
