Noah Jefferson: From "Orthobro" to Orthodox and the Danger of Jay Dyer’s church within the Church

We are offering a summary of Noah Jefferson’s article on the “Orthobro” movement available in full here.

“It is the Orthodox teaching that there are no sacraments and no ecclesial reality outside Eastern Orthodoxy’s canonical bounds.” We have all likely heard this before, a confidant assertion of what is and is not “the” Orthodox view, based on nothing but shallow polemics and a complete ignorance of the complex theological dialogue which informs the work of Orthodoxy’s hierarchs and best theologians. Worse still, we all likely know of a personality, or group of personalities, who create a community and identity around themselves, parasitic upon the Church, and creating the kind of Orthodox identity completely bound up with such an individual or group, its politics, its polemical approach to theology, and its opposition to our hierarchs and theologians regarding ecumenism. It is my contention that this parasitical Orthodoxy is catechizing the next generation of North American converts, creating a “church” within the Church. This process is not accidental but is explicitly malicious, and if left unaddressed the black spots in our feasts will blot out the feasts entirely (Jude 12-13).

I say this is my “contention,” yet I know this is the case from experience. In my process of conversion from non-denominational Protestantism to Orthodoxy I had two opposing influences on the growth of my faith, the Orthodoxy of my master’s program at the University of Toronto (where I was introduced to the best of Orthodox theology as thoughtful dialogue and living tradition), and the Orthodoxy of the online “Orthobro” movement which was a pool of pietistic elderism, fiery protestant-style apologetics utilizing 20th century Orthodox polemics, fundamentalist views on tradition, right-wing and far-right politics, and meme-based warfare culture.  Of course, I make this assessment in hindsight. While I was enrolled in my master’s degree program (now complete), I became a moderator on Jay Dyer’s Discord Server, as well as a quasi-editor for the website PatristicFaith.com founded by Father Deacon Ananias Sorem and his board of clergymen.

In my article I detail how and why I left the “Orthobro” movement. As a young Orthodox it is easy to be swept up in this online community only to later discover, because of your own personal growth as well as increased knowledge of the movement’s workings, its inherently sectarian and anti-intellectual nature. However, what is of real significance is not my own decision to leave this movement in response to the pangs of conscience, it is how the leaders of this community reacted and what I learned about them as a result. I learned firsthand that this movement not only has leaders, but that they enforce their sectarianism by using cult tactics, shunning, cyberstalking, cyberbullying, doxing, and blackmail. I soon learned from others who, like me, had been victims of this group, that elements of the “Orthobro” movement functioned as a “mafia,” that they used fear to keep in line anyone who happened to make a name in the online Orthodox apologetics sphere. Worst of all, I found that this group is acting as a conscious force working against the Orthodox hierarchy, even arrogating to itself clerical authority from priests separate from their bishops, thus truly creating a parasitic cult within the Church.

But who is this group which exercises such great influence in the “Orthobro” movement? While the clericus vagans Father Peter Heers is commonly associated with them, and his own work is hugely influential in the online community, the gang that exerts forceful influence is that of Jay Dyer (a regular host for Alex Jones’ Info Wars), Fr. Dcn. Ananias Sorem, the clergy board of PatristicFaith.com, and the moderation team of Jay Dyer’s Discord server, currently headed by David Erhan. Jay Dyer runs a YouTube channel which has for its main content geopolitical and film analysis steeped in conspiracy theory, and Orthodox apologetics which can be summed up as neo-Palamism mixed with presuppositional apologetics originating from 20th century Reformed theology, all in the service of a rigorist ecclesiology opposed to ecumenism. Dyer’s social media presence is massive in Orthodox circles, his follower counts on Twitter and YouTube eclipsing any Orthodox group or individual alone, and the site PatristicFaith.com relies on him for its reach, relevance, and monetary gain. Fr. Dcn. Ananias Sorem, an individual listed as a deacon under the OCA’s Romanian jurisdiction yet known to be sheltered under the Serbians in Montana is the spokesman of the clergy board which runs PatristicFaith.com, a website he created to rival Ancient Faith Radio by capitalizing on Dyer’s following. In his words, “to be critical of Jay is to side against all the clergy on Patristic Faith, as well as our clergy advisory board.”

How does this group exercise its influence? Jay Dyer’s Discord server is effectively a vast forum for catechesis in which thousands are being catechized into a polemical, sectarian Orthodoxy, in opposition to anything or anyone they label as “subversive”, including the hierarchy of the Orthodox Church in America (OCA) and the Assembly of Canonical Bishops in North America; Dyer directs converts to the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR) and seems to share its perspective on 20th century Orthodox history. Individuals who catch the eye of Dyer or his moderator team are recruited to join the team and/or become apologists for their online group. Dyer and his moderators enforce their vision for Orthodoxy by banning dissenting individuals from their server, and, if such individuals know too much, by blackmailing said individuals and even intimidating other Orthodox communities on Discord to engage in shunning tactics against them while proclaiming them to be “dangerous” and/or “subversive.” Dyer, his circle of influencers, and his Discord server project an aura of legitimacy and authority through their association with Fr. Dcn. Ananias Sorem and his clergy board who in turn support Dyer unconditionally, are party to his doxing and blackmailing, and in effect are acting as a body with teaching authority, despite being a ragtag group of priests and deacons with no synodal oversight. This self-created authority is of course illusory. It is a horrible violation of Orthodoxy as it divorces teaching authority from the episcopate and puts it instead into the hands of priests and whatever charismatic layman they gather around. The illusion, however, becomes quite tangible when enforced by the online mob. Indeed, in online Orthodoxy the relation of shepherd to sheep is obliterated, as wolves either make the sheep join the pack or devour them.

In my article I not only go into great detail, supported with extensive documentation, regarding the events of my own shunning and attempted blackmail by this group, as well as the character of these “Orthobro” leaders, their conspiratorial and sectarian worldview, and their inner workings, but I also give a theological analysis and demonstrate that their anti-ecumenical rigorist ecclesiology derives from, and reinforces, an anti-intellectualism rejecting reasoning in history, a theology reduced to pietism and polemics, essentially Apollinarian. It is not only that ecclesial rigorism leads to a defective ecclesiology and sacramentology, Donatist at best, rather, this rigorism is indicative of a poisoned understanding of tradition and theological hermeneutics that goes down to the very roots. Furthermore, this rigorism is a result of and further perpetuates an Orthodoxy defined by opposition to the “other,” and thus can be nothing but a purely reactionary thing moved by the passions of fear, hate, and ignorance, in effect a zombie virus antithetical to living tradition. Indeed this imagery is apropos because unlike “Genuine Orthodox” or “Old Calendarists” of the past, this new generation of rigorists will not necessarily create schism (they value canonical boundaries all too highly), rather they will act as parasites on the hierarchical structure of the Church for sacraments and canonical legitimacy while rejecting the Church’s teaching authority, continuing the spread of their virus within, forming their own interior community with authorities (charismatic laity and clergy) and methods of control (e.g., cyberbullying, doxing, blackmail, shunning, etc.).

The above is a summary of what I have treated much more extensively in my article proper and its documentation, which I have not only published publicly after receiving permission to do so from my Bishop, parish priest and spiritual father (a priest and PhD university professor) but have also submitted directly to hierarchs and clergy of the OCA and other jurisdictions, to the Assembly of Canonical Orthodox Bishops in North America, and to various Orthodox theologians. Having done all within my ability I am now informing the Church as a whole (Mt. 18:17). Not only must this issue be dealt with by the hierarchy before it precipitates schism (or, perhaps far worse, mass ideological infestation of the next generation of clergy). The Church as a whole needs to examine itself because the causes of this crisis have been born from within.

This crisis cannot be solved by mere imposition of authority. Of course, hierarchical authority must come into play (the “Orthobros” have themselves attempted to usurp authority, operating outside any synod and across jurisdictional lines).  Also required is a theological engagement with all of the issues leading to this distortion.  Such a thing requires theological freedom; rationality and freedom are inseparable. A body degenerating into irrationality is a body subject to corruption, and corruption is death, and we know that Christ’s resurrection compels us to put off corruption for incorruption, death for immortal life (1 Cor 15:53-55).

Thus, I sincerely hope my article brings this dark underbelly of North American Orthodoxy to the attention of those who can study it from all different perspectives (theological, sociological, psychological, political, etc.), and demonstrates the need for addressing the cognitive dissonance facing Orthodoxy today. As for me, I do not plan to address the “Orthobro” movement directly or engage with its influencers any further. For me this is not an academic disagreement to be hashed out, it is a matter of exposing and being free of an abusive cult as I move on with my life and pass this information into more capable hands. To every shepherd of the Church, “be thou diligent to know the state of thy flocks, and look well to thy herds (Prov 27:23).” You scholars, the Church is your house, “therefore every scribe which is instructed unto the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, which bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old (Mt. 13:52).”

I would like to express my sincerest gratitude to the editorial team of The Wheel for accepting to promote my article through their blog. I reached out to them because I knew they were not afraid to publish material challenging the false accretions to tradition which come from the right-wing, and that they support theology as free dialogue. Because my complete article proper cannot be published on their site (due to space limitations), I have self-published while accepting The Wheel’s promotion. It is a sad fact that as of now the rigorist and neo-traditionalist faction has an effective monopoly over online Orthodoxy. I pray this will change in the future, and I am thankful The Wheel exists as an example of the change I hope to see.