Assignment: Russia's Church in Texas

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 6 May 2025

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Not that long ago many church-going Americans saw Russia as a godless place, an “evil empire” in the words of Ronald Reagan. But in President Trump’s second term, US-Russia relations have been turned on their head. The White House sided with the Kremlin at the United Nations, voting against a resolution to condemn Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

This seismic shift is also being felt in parishes across America. Increasing numbers of US Catholics and Protestants are embracing Eastern Orthodoxy. Many converts disillusioned by the showbiz elements in many megachurches, say they are drawn to a faith with enduring traditions. Some, uneasy with social and demographic change, believe the churches they were raised in have lost their authority by going “woke” – shorthand for supporting equal marriage, female clergy, pro-choice, Black Lives Matter and other liberal issues.

Some converts have hundreds of thousands of followers online, and push Kremlin narratives that Russia is the world's last bastion of true Christianity - a few of the most radical have even emigrated there. Lucy Ash has been to Texas – one of the most religious states in the US – to meet some new converts.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Thank you for downloading assignment from the documentary podcast on the BBC World Service.
0:06.3	We all know who the tech bros are, those latte-sipping geeks in Silicon Valley,
0:12.4	but have you heard of the ortho bros?
0:15.5	After the COVID pandemic, I was told that young American men tired of what they saw as excessive wokeism,
0:22.9	a converting to Orthodox Christianity in record numbers,
0:27.3	fasting for days on end, reading theological books,
0:31.3	and adorning themselves with Orthodox crosses.
0:34.5	We wanted to find out why.
0:36.8	So Linda Presley and I hit the road in Texas.
0:41.1	160 yards, arrive to your destination. Gosh, like, this is really extraordinary. We're coming up to
0:49.6	big sandstones of a mansion with Roman colonnades. looks like it could be the setting for a Victorian
0:58.1	period drama or something out of a Jane Austen novel and it's got a big star the lone
1:06.2	star of Texas over the portica.
1:13.7	Nothing looks very orthodox here.
1:19.2	There's a statue of a girl clutching a red lily, very skimply clad.
1:24.3	Hello.
1:33.7	A powerfully built, bald-headed man in a cassock steps out of his pickup truck, the sun bouncing off the large gold cross on his chest.
1:36.9	This is Father Moses MacPherson, and we're in the open countryside just north of Austin.
1:42.8	We're going to build the church out here.
1:44.4	To my left over here.
1:45.9	Yeah, the east side, so facing east, like a normal Orthodox church faces east.
1:50.3	And then we'll renovate the building so that we can do services in the interim
	...

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