U.S. blogger: The rise of Orthodoxy in America triggered attacks on bishops

American Christian blogger Jay Dyer. Photo: Daily Pulse

Well-known Orthodox blogger and commentator Jay Dyer told the U.S. outlet Daily Pulse that Congressman Joe Wilson’s accusations against Orthodox Christians are directly connected to the recent surge in conversions to Orthodoxy in the United States.

Commenting on the article published by the American edition of UOJ about Wilson’s letter, Dyer emphasized that certain forces in the U.S. are deliberately targeting Orthodoxy.

“It's really not too surprising because this is a continuation of a long-standing 'Russiagate' narrative that has collapsed, but they still try to kind of breathe life into it here and there,” Dyer said. “It's also tied into of course the recent surge in Orthodox conversions that we've been seeing from Protestant and Roman Catholic and even atheist opinions out there in America. People are turning to Orthodoxy. A lot of churches are tripling in size.”

According to him, this trend extends far beyond Russian parishes – it includes Serbian, Antiochian, and other Orthodox jurisdictions. “Overall, this is a propaganda, geopolitical move on the part of trying to revive this narrative that America's been penetrated by and is suffering from all this Russia subversion, which nothing could be further from the truth,” the blogger stressed.

Dyer, who is himself a parishioner of ROCOR, rejected claims that his Church is subordinated to Moscow: “It's really just jurisdictions and we're not technically like underneath. We don't answer to Moscow per se. We're underneath our local bishops. Bishops are decentralized in the Orthodox Church.”

He also highlighted the double standards at play: “It's very selective now." He went further saying that they also tried to craft a narrative in the past, and some outlets, Foreign Policy in particular, would even publish pieces suggesting that Orthodox Christians might be "part of this plot that Putin is involved in." The same thing happened with traditional Catholics – suddenly the FBI declared that 'traditionalists’ are a threat.

Dyer noted that these attempts to portray Orthodox Christians as foreign agents completely ignore the actual persecution of believers in Ukraine: “The irony is that Zelensky and others really are persecuting Orthodox Christians throughout Ukraine – they cast them all as agents of Putin, agents of KGB, and all that nonsense. The Church there is being persecuted.”

The blogger added that politics simply isn’t discussed in ROCOR parishes in the U.S.: “I've been in the Russian Orthodox Church since, I don't know, 2017 or 2018. And you know Putin doesn't come up. We don't usually talk about that. We're talking about apologetics and theology in the gospel.”

Earlier, the UOJ reported that Congressman Joe Wilson drafted a letter to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi requesting an investigation into whether Russia is attempting to use Orthodox Churches in the U.S. for intelligence activities.

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