In March, an audio recording of a lecture given by Fr. David Galloway of the Orthodox Church in America (OCA) was brought to my attention. Upon initial inquiry, it seems like a simple speech from an Orthodox pastoral conference. How controversial could something entitled “Becoming Orthodox In Spite of the Internet” actually be? We all understand the struggles of worldly temptations and bad habits, especially when it comes to technology.
But this presentation wasn’t the expected advice of a humble shepherd urging the sheep to exhibit self-control when navigating the “interwebs,” nor was it the naive work of a wide-eyed priest straight outta seminary. Rather, it’s a libelous and deleterious attack on Orthodox Christians, specifically those who are conservative content creators but also traditionalists at-large, since it is the latter who supports the former.
You don’t have to believe my assessment. Take a listen for yourself.
“This isn’t about personal guilt but social danger,” penned Alexander Solzenhitsyn in “The Gulag Archipelago.” His is an astute point explaining that one can write about controversial happenings and name names when the severity of the situation calls for it. I firmly believe this more than meets the mark.
I’m not writing about this happening in an effort to make the big bucks. Clearly, I don’t blog and podcast for the money. Nor is this merely some “inside baseball” drama swirling around the Orthosphere. I mean, thank God for the internet or else we’d have no idea that good people were defamed at a diocesan event.
Rather, I’m hoping to tear up the blueprint that’s used in the weakening of any conservative collective: subversion is allowed to enter in and then higher-ups reinforce a perilous pretext of laying blame for any organizational dysfunction and unrest at the feet of non-woke scapegoats. You see, it is the traditionalists who are stirring up trouble and causing disunity, not the heretical hordes, asserts Fr. David.
In the excellent essay “About Bloggers,” Fr. Andrew Moore defends us maligned content creators who Fr. David says are just too darn mean and whose sites get way too much traffic. They’re “edgy” for the algorithms and clicks, don’t ya know?
In fact, a few of the cited “rigorists” (as if that’s a bad thing) have been guests on my podcast, like Fr. Peter Heers of Orthodox Ethos, George Michalopulos of Monomakhos, Fr. John Peck, and Fr. John Whiteford, who like me is a co-founder of the Ludwell Orthodox Fellowship, where many of these “unsavory” characters are also listed on our “Fellowship Friends” page.
As you’ll hear at the 21:53 mark of the audio, Fr. David even name drops me as an example of a “not recommended” content creator – a warning cobbled together from a “quiz” the then-deacon, now-priest created for course work while at St. Vladimir’s Seminary. Below are screenshots of the survey description, as well as my being on the questionnaire right between Jay Dyer and Abbot Tryphon. Honestly, I’m honored to be included in such esteemed company, but that’s where the silver lining begins and ends.
In his pernicious speech, there’s nary a peep from Fr. David regarding the three main progressive blogs whose main thrust is total “transformation” of the Church: Public Orthodoxy, the online journal of Fordham University’s Orthodox Christian Studies Center, which has been known to include little ol’ me in their unholy hit pieces; Orthodoxy in Dialogue, with whom I’ve had the great displeasure of also having run-ins with their apparatchiks; and The Wheel, a radically pro-gay “Orthodox” publication that I’ve actually had the great pleasure of never reading. A “rigorist” can only take so much rigorous apostasy.
Trying to be too clever by half, Fr. David did however feature the heterodox websites in his slide presentation. (You can download those power-point graphics from either link in this essay’s lead paragraph.) He seems to think that throwing in some token leftydox in his visual presentation will provide him immunity from criticism, but it’s a bait and switch to comfortably attack those with whom he dislikes and wants to silence or purge from Orthodoxy, while simultaneously giving aid and comfort to the “rogues” who aim to “deconstruct Orthodox moral teaching and dogma.”
Fr. David’s slide below, based on the icon Ladder of Divine Ascent, even depicts as demons a few of his survey subjects as they attempt to hinder monks from reaching Heaven, further building his bamboozle. He understands that painting Dyer and Orthodox Ethos as evil is easy, since doing so poses absolutely no risk to him among the priest class.
Fr. David including the ecumenist organizations in his survey and a few slides while not mentioning them at all in his lecture doesn’t prove that he’s unbiased in the least. All it does is make clear the fallacious nature of his false equivalence and prove to me that he has indeed chosen a side.
In response to Dyer pointing out Fr. David’s malevolence veiled as morality, the newly ordained priest tweeted, “I have no desire to attack you, but at this time I do not recommend your work” and “I was happy to answer Jay’s question of why I don’t recommend his work, but I don’t plan on attacking him or other people I disagree with regularly.” Well duh, because you’ve already attacked him and me and others, Fr. David, and used your position and privileged platform to do it.
Prelest is “the wounding of human nature by falsehood. All of us are subject to spiritual deception [but] awareness of this fact is the greatest protection against it.”
— Bishop Ignatius Brianchaninov
Below, you’ll see a collage of four of Fr. David’s pie-chart slides. The crucial takeaway here is that the three most influential prelest websites actually received anything more than 0% priest approval, and in the case of two, nearly a quarter of clergy “partially recommend”! Yikes, if that doesn’t scream “Jerry Springer Christianity,” I don’t know what does.
The bottom-left pie chart is an exhibit of how unscientific was Fr. David’s survey and how careless was his research. After all, Journey To Orthodoxy is a noncontroversial and edifying source that strictly features convert testimonials. That’s it.
Plus, it’s run by Fr. John Peck, not Fr. John Whiteford, who recently quipped, “The OCA is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.” I suppose that Fr. David meant to serve up Fr. Whiteford’s fearless personal blog as fodder in his canard but accidentally confused the Johns. Oops.
In an essay entitled “The Media Czar,” Monomakhos’ Gail Sheppard called Fr. David a “media hound” and smashed his survey’s methodology. Odd that a priest who charges a fee for Christians to be included on his daily prayer list casts aspersions on independent truth-centered creators whose work is kept afloat by the goodwill donations of everyday people. Meanwhile, giving cover to the “modernizing progressive forces” (which all benefit greatly from big foundation money) seems just fine and dandy to Fr. David.
I’m certainly no stranger to smear campaigns. In May 2020, my first came when I got doxxed by the left-wing media darling and “right-wing watch” professor Megan Squire. (I discuss the experience at length with a podcast guest who suffered at the hands of the same devilish deep-state dame, but I never wrote about it, so keep an eye out for a forthcoming essay on that hellish experience.)
According to kkklown world rules of engagement, it’s not all that shocking that a godless Antifa asset adept at lining her pockets by ruining the lives of anyone to the right of Jonathan Greenblatt attempted to add my family’s destruction to her wins against “extremism.” It is jarring, though, when people in positions of power hate you and want you dead simply because you hold different beliefs and aren’t afraid to practice or preach them. Oy vey.
Ever since my dox occurred right at the dawn of the degenerate and deadly “summer of love,” I made my real name available on my website’s “About” page and have been wide open about associating my pen name with the real me. This fun fact further exemplifies Fr. David’s shoddy work, since I’m mentioned as an example of someone creating content anonymously (around the 39:58 mark).
You can hear priests snidely chuckle because they either don’t understand the dangers of dissident blogging or being doxxed, or because they just don’t care. Wow, that’s a knee-slapper, fathers!
But it wasn’t until March 2021 that I found myself for the very first time in the cross hairs of someone claiming to be Orthodox. Her name is Sarah Riccardi-Swartz and in a March 2021 interview with Arizona State University, she described me as a fascist. Her evidence? My essay “Russian lessons for Dixie” and my friendship with Dr. Boyd Cathey, as well as my two-part series calling out Fr. Christopher Calin (see below) and defending then-OCA priest Fr. Mark Hodges who attended January 6 and is now in ROCOR (the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia).
I’ve only once referenced Sarah (in “Love your neighbor as yourself – except if he’s a Dixian“) and plan on doing a long-overdue deep dive on her soon because, to the surprise of “academics,” we plebs actually know how to do real research. However, I have been pretty successful in coining the pesky and overpaid propagandist as “Hyphen Grrrl.” It’s the little things, y’all.
Sarah’s also the quintessential example of a hifalutin Fordhamite whose grift is to vilify “the archetype” – straight, white, conservative (mostly Southern) Christian men – and revel in their identity-less-ness … and claim to do so in the name of Orthodoxy! So when you can count on one hand clergy willing to challenge the sick and twisted “scholarly” subterfuge and some priests even offer them a friendly platform, it’s often left to laity to expose their skulduggery and hate.
The Wall Street Journal recently wrote an overwhelming positive piece about Orthodoxy’s growth in the US. Yet, Sarah took to Twitter to breathlessly correct the author about how all this faithful flowering is really a bad thing, you see.
This isn’t about a problem being overblown, as Fr. Barnabas tries to counter above. This is about people purporting to be Orthodox lying that “the archetype” is evil and clergy reinforcing the myth that traditionalists are “problematic.” This is about heretics who want to “transform” the Church and annihilate souls. This is about Renovationism, against which all Orthodox Christians should be standing firm, not whether or not you think I or any other “rigorist” is too brash.
“Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, act like men, be strong.”
— 1 Corinthians 16:13
While Sarah claims to want to expunge ideology from the Church, she counters with a purely ideological laundry list. Perhaps blinded by that giant chip on her shoulder she’s unable to see her obvious intellectual error. Or maybe Sarah just doesn’t care since so few clergy denounce her for it, yet we who notice the flimflam are smeared by conformist clergy. That is what’s problematic.
You can read Sarah’s entire thread here if she hasn’t blocked you. In it, she went on to call yours truly a racist. Such boiler-plate Bolshevism and so totally desperate, and still, I ain’t skeered. Drives the party elite craaaaaazy! Those who seek undue power seek to control language, so don’t let them. The sooner good people stop apologizing for being called bad names by bad people, the better.
Sarah also used NPR as “proof” that Orthodoxy’s just brimming with meanies. Holding up government-funded public radio to try to bolster government-approved opinions really is an embarrassment, but it does illustrate nicely the long con we’re dealing with here, folks.
Besides giving you a little background on some of the menacing subversion we Orthodox are being confronted with, why else did I take a Hyphen Grrrl detour? My friend Jim Jatras explains it well in this comment from Fr. Andrew’s article.
Fr. David and Sarah also share some commonalities. He claims we traditionalists are an “unsavory Orthodox internet presence,” and she tags our content “digital radicalism.” They’re both singing the same sinister tune: shut up and go away, especially you young men coming to the Church. Thank the good Lord there are clergy and Orthodox brothers who care for men, many of whom are in crisis because of the woke world fostered institutionally by Sarah and spiritually by Fr. David.
Another thread is that Sarah was among a few leftydox gurus who lost their ever-lovin’ minds in November 2021 with the launch of the aforementioned Ludwell Orthodox fellowship. (See “Stirring the pot” for more on the unhinged reaction to this Southern missionary organization.)
So, believe me, the irony of being libeled by Fr. David at a conference of the Diocese of the South (which was “founded upon principles of evangelization and outreach” by Texas-born Archbishop Dmitri Royster) is not lost on me. Simply put, some priests would rather denigrate missions, write off traditional converts as too challenging or too darn icky, and shepherd only normies than they would do the hard work of resisting the spiritual darkness of our times … or at the very least, not slandering those who do.
It’s telling too when Fr. David admits that some of these “extremist” content creators are actually effective at evangelizing Orthodoxy to seekers yet still deems them troublesome due to their “style” and “approach.” Instead of being so uncharitable to the traditionalists, why not simply pray “for the harvest of converts to Christ” and “for the laborer who will reach them”? Just sayin’.
I’m not sure what exactly the above Thaddeus is referring to, but many topics do require an unbending conservative and patriarchal take (gasp!) for Orthodoxy to remain, well, “orthodox.” That’s not a bug. It’s a feature.
It’s why tradition is the guard against fleeting innovations, permanent revolution, and even indolent priests. And that is precisely why the agents of change so loathe those who are resistant to it.
Maybe this “othering” of traditionalists is not so much about eliminating opposition (as is the case with the Fordhamites who see us as a challenge to the hegemony they seek), but rather, it’s just about limiting the workload. In fact, there were two straws that broke the camel’s back for me when leaving the closed doors of the OCA for the open doors of ROCOR: one being covid-mania, of course.
The other was my then-priest’s non-reaction when I told him about my dox (which should have caused concern since I was always honest with him about my blogging) and asked if he’d have my family’s back should someone call him or a bishop and claim I was some variety of “ist” or “ism.” Crickets.
Sadly, he never answered the question, which made our decision to leave a salvation and existential issue, not a “political” issue. To priests like him and Fr. David, being “normiedox” is the best path. It’s makes their jobs easier and less messy.
Well, my now-parish priest offers deep and profound care to my family. He knows the Church is the hospital for all who repent and seek, not just those who may not typically require so much time and effort. In fact, he preaches that we should be “maximalists” as a way to navigate being in this sick and depraved world but not of it.
Be sure to check out part 2 in which I explain why it’s risky business for piety-signaling priests to pour fuel on the progressive fire. May God have mercy on us all.
