Context from Grok Search Results on tradition of wearing a Russian Orthodox Cross with a leather strap.

1. Spiritual Significance and Proximity to the Heart:

• A post on X highlights a Russian Orthodox tradition of wearing the cross under the shirt, close to the skin and heart, rather than as a visible accessory. This practice underscores the cross as a personal, spiritual reminder of faith, not a fashion statement. Your leather cord aligns with this, as its simplicity ensures the focus remains on the cross’s sacred meaning rather than outward display. The 3mm leather rope, being unobtrusive, supports this intimate connection to the heart, reinforcing the idea that the cross is a constant reminder of Christ’s sacrifice.
• Web sources emphasize that the three-bar cross, worn consistently, symbolizes the wearer’s commitment to carry Christ’s cross daily, as taught in Orthodox theology. The leather cord’s durability ensures the cross remains a lifelong companion, aligning with the baptismal tradition where a cross is given to be worn perpetually.

1. Cultural and Historical Continuity:

• The three-bar cross, particularly in Russian Orthodoxy, is a cultural emblem tied to the historical practices of Kievan Rus’ and Muscovy. Sources note its adoption as a nationalist symbol in Russia, especially after the 16th century, and its use by Old Believers who preserved traditional designs. Your friend and family may see the leather cord as evoking the simplicity of early Slavic Christians or Old Believer communities, who often used humble materials like leather or woven cords. This resonates with the cross’s role as a link to Russian Orthodox heritage.
• The search confirms that leather cords were common in historical contexts due to their availability and affordability, especially in rural or monastic settings. Your 3mm leather rope with a clasp modernizes this tradition while maintaining its historical essence, which your friend and family members likely values as a marker of authenticity.

1. Practical and Symbolic Alignment:

• Web sources describe the three-bar cross’s design as inherently symbolic, with the slanted footrest representing the balance of salvation (upward to heaven for the repentant thief, downward to hell for the unrepentant). Wearing it on a sturdy yet simple leather cord ensures the cross remains secure and functional for daily wear, reflecting the practical needs of the faithful. The clasp adds convenience, allowing easy removal for activities like bathing or sleeping, which is a modern adaptation of the traditional practice.
• The leather cord’s humility contrasts with ornate chains, aligning with Orthodox teachings on avoiding vanity. Your family and friend may appreciate this as a reflection of the monastic ideal of simplicity, even for laypeople.

1. Traditional Variations and Regional Practices:

• Some sources clarify that the three-bar cross is not exclusively Russian but is strongly associated with Russian and Ukrainian Orthodoxy, with variations in other Orthodox traditions (e.g., Greek crosses may have a straight footrest). Your elderly family and friend’s insistence on the leather cord may reflect a specifically Russian cultural norm, where such cords are seen as traditional for baptismal or personal crosses.
• Discussions on X and web forums note that the cross’s material (e.g., wood, silver, or gold) and the cord’s type (leather, rope, or chain) vary, but leather is often favored in Russian contexts for its rustic, traditional feel. Your 3mm leather rope fits this preference, likely resonating with your family and friend’s cultural memory.

• Spiritual Intimacy: The leather cord allows the cross to rest close to the skin, under clothing, fostering a personal connection to Christ’s sacrifice, as emphasized in Russian Orthodox practice. This aligns with the tradition of wearing the cross as a sacred, not decorative, item.
• Cultural Authenticity: The leather cord evokes the simplicity of historical Russian Orthodox communities, particularly Old Believers or rural faithful, reinforcing cultural identity and continuity with ancestral practices.
• Practical Tradition: Leather is durable, affordable, and practical, historically used by monks and laity alike. The 3mm thickness and clasp ensure functionality and comfort, adapting tradition to modern needs while preserving its essence.
• Symbolic Humility: The unadorned leather cord reflects Orthodox virtues of humility and modesty, keeping the focus on the three-bar cross’s profound symbolism—Christ’s victory, the Trinity, and the balance of salvation.

”Glory to God in All Things”

—John Chrysostom

http://www.oca.org

http://www.synod.com

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Cloudberry’s grow where not a lot of things grown. They are certainly the Viking berries : beautiful, unique and enjoyable!

My favorite use of cloudberries and Lars of Sweden prepares a wonderful jam that I spread over a thickly buttered English muffin! Delicious!!!

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Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia’s name day is celebrated on May 24, coinciding with the feast day of his monastic patron, Saint Cyril Equal-to-the-Apostles, one of the missionaries who brought Christianity to the Slavs. This date is marked by the Russian Orthodox Church with celebrations, including divine liturgies and congratulations from church and state leaders, as noted in various sources.

My own name day is Saint Mark of Ephesus which is celebrated on January 19 in the Orthodox Christian liturgical calendar. This date marks his feast day, commemorating his life and contributions as a theologian and defender of Orthodoxy, particularly noted for his role at the Council of Florence. I painted an icon of St. Mark and the Priest blessed it… my first effort.

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Young US men are joining Russian churches promising ‘absurd levels of manliness’

16 hours ago

Lucy Ash

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“A lot of people ask me: ‘Father Moses, how can I increase my manliness to absurd levels?'”

In a YouTube video, a priest is championing a form of virile, unapologetic masculinity.

Skinny jeans, crossing your legs, using an iron, shaping your eyebrows, and even eating soup are among the things he derides as too feminine.

There are other videos of Father Moses McPherson – a powerfully built father of five – weightlifting to the sound of heavy metal.

He was raised a Protestant and once worked as a roofer, but now serves as a priest in the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (ROCOR) in Georgetown, Texas, an offshoot of the mother church in Moscow.

ROCOR, a global network with headquarters in New York, has recently been expanding across parts of the US – mainly as a result of people converting from other faiths. 

In the last six months, Father Moses has prepared 75 new followers for baptism in his church of the Mother of God, just north of Austin.

“When my wife and I converted 20 years ago we used to call Orthodoxy the best-kept secret, because people just didn’t know what it was,” he says. 

“But in the past year-and-a-half our congregation has tripled in size.”

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During the Sunday liturgy at Father Moses’s church, I am struck by the number of men in their twenties and thirties praying and crossing themselves at the back of the nave, and how this religion – with traditions dating back to the 4th century AD – seems to attract young men uneasy with life in modern America.

Software engineer Theodore tells me he had a dream job and a wife he adored, but he felt empty inside, as if there was a hole in his heart. He believes society has been “very harsh” on men and is constantly telling them they are in the wrong. He complains that men are criticised for wanting to be the breadwinner and support a stay-at-home wife.

“We are told that’s a very toxic relationship nowadays,” Theodore says. “That’s not how it should be.”

Almost all the converts I meet have opted to home-school their offspring, partly because they believe women should prioritise their families rather than their careers.

Father John Whiteford, an archpriest in the ROCOR from Spring, north of Houston, says home-schooling ensures a religious education and is “a way of protecting your children”, while avoiding any talk about “transgenderism, or the 57 genders of the month or whatever”.

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Compared to the millions of worshippers in America’s evangelical megachurches, the numbers of Christian Orthodox are tiny – only about one percent of the population. That includes Eastern Orthodoxy, as practised across Russia, Ukraine, eastern Europe and Greece, and the Oriental Orthodox from the Middle East and Africa.

Founded by priests and clergy fleeing the Russian Revolution in 1917, ROCOR is seen by many as the most conservative Orthodox jurisdiction in the US. Yet this small religious community is a vocal one, and what’s unfolding within it mirrors broader political shifts, especially following President Donald Trump’s dramatic pivot toward Moscow.

The true increase in the number of converts is hard to quantify, but data from the Pew Research Centresuggests Orthodox Christians are 64% male, up from 46% in 2007.

A smaller study of 773 converts appears to back the trend. Most recent newcomers are men, and many say the pandemic pushed them to seek a new faith. That survey is from the Orthodox Church in America(OCA), which was established by Russian monks in Alaska in the late 18th Century and now has more than 700 parishes, missions, communities, monasteries, and institutions in the US, Canada and Mexico which identify as Russian Orthodox.

Professor Scott Kenworthy, who studies the history and thought of Eastern Orthodox Christianity – particularly in modern Russia – says his OCA parish in Cincinnati “is absolutely bursting at the seams”. 

He’s attended the same church for 24 years and says congregation numbers remained steady until the Covid lockdown. Since then, there has been constant flow of new inquirers and people preparing to be baptised, known as catechumens. 

“This is not just a phenomenon of my own parish, or a few places in Texas,” Prof Kenworthy says, “it is definitely something broader.” 

The digital space is key in this wave of new converts. Father Moses has a big following online – when he shares a picture of a positive pregnancy test on his Instagram feed he gets 6,000 likes for announcing the arrival of his sixth child. 

But there are dozens of other podcasts and videos presented by Orthodox clergy and an army of followers – mainly male.

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Father Moses tells his congregation there are two ways of serving God – being a monk or a nun, or getting married. Those who take the second path should avoid contraception and have as many children as possible.

“Show me one saint in the history of the Church who ever blessed any kind of birth control,” Father Moses says. As for masturbation – or what the church calls self-abuse – the priest condemns it as “pathetic and unmanly”.

Father Moses says Orthodoxy is “not masculine, it is just normal”, while “in the West everything has become very feminised”. Some Protestant churches, he believes, mainly cater for women.

“I don’t want to go to services that feel like a Taylor Swift concert,” Father Moses says. “If you look at the language of the ‘worship music’, it’s all emotion – that’s not men.”

Elissa Bjeletich Davis, a former Protestant who now belongs to the Greek Orthodox Church in Austin, is a Sunday school teacher and has her own podcast. She says many converts belong to “the anti-woke crowd” and sometimes have strange ideas about their new faith – especially those in the Russian Church.

“They see it as a military, rigid, disciplinary, masculine, authoritarian religion,” Elissa says. “It’s kind of funny. It’s almost as if the old American Puritans and their craziness is resurfacing.”

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Buck Johnson has worked as a firefighter for 25 years and hosts the Counterflow podcast.

He says he was initially scared to enter his local Russian Orthodox Church as he “looks different, covered in tattoos”, but tells me he was welcomed with open arms. He was also impressed the church stayed open throughout the Covid lockdown.

Sitting on a couch in front of two huge TV screens at his home in Lockhart, he says his newfound faith is changing his view of the world.

“Negative American views on Russia are what worry me,” Buck says. He tells me the mainstream, “legacy” media presents a distorted picture of the invasion of Ukraine.

“I think there’s a holdover from the boomer generation here in America that lived through the Cold War,” Buck says, “and I don’t quite grasp why – but they say Russia’s bad.”

The head of the Russian Church in Moscow, Patriarch Kirill, has doggedly backed the invasion of Ukraine, calling it a Holy War, and expressing little compassion for its victims. When I ask Archpriest Father John Whiteford about Russia’s top cleric, who many see as a warmonger, he assures me the Patriarch’s words have been distorted.

Footage and photographs of Putin quoting Bible verses, holding candles during services in Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour and stripping down to his swim trunks to plunge into icy water at Epiphany, seem to have struck a chord. Some – in America and other countries – see Russia as the last bastion of true Christianity.

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Nearly a decade ago, another Orthodox convert turned priest from Texas, Father Joseph Gleason, moved from America to Borisoglebskiy, a village four hours’ drive north of Moscow, with his wife and eight children.

“Russia does not have homosexual marriage, it does not have civil unions, it is a place where you can home-school your kids and – of course – I love the thousand-year history of Orthodox Christianity here,” he told a Russian video host.

This wispy-bearded Texan is in the vanguard of a movement urging conservatives to relocate to Russia. Last August, Putin introduced fast-track shared values visa for those fleeing Western liberalism.

Back in Texas, Buck tells me he and his fellow converts are turning their backs on instant gratification and American consumerism.

“We’re thinking of things long term,” Buck says, “like traditions, love for your family, love for you community, love for neighbours. 

“I think that orthodoxy fits us well – and especially in Texas.”

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