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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 30, 2026

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...this seems confused, to me?

Firstly, almost no American right-wingers are Orthodox, because almost no Americans are Orthodox full stop. It is entirely to be expected that Eastern Orthodoxy plays practically zero role in the formation of beliefs on the American right. Most American right-wingers do not feel that Orthodoxy is part of their heritage and therefore pay no attention to it. Orthodoxy is simply not a relevant part of the American political or cultural landscape.

Secondly, Orthodox Christians are not a particularly right-wing demographic. Per Pew there, in 2023-24, 50% of Orthodox identified as Republican or leaning Republican, versus 6% in the middle, and 44% for Democrats. By comparison, Evangelicals are 70-6-24, Mainline Protestants are 52-8-41, Catholics are 49-8-44, and Mormons are 73-4-23. Mainline Protestants are more right-wing than Orthodox!

Thirdly, if I search Amazon for 'Religion X and ecology', I will find a huge number regardless. Just doing it now, Catholicism gets me 108 results, Protestantism gets 63, Evangelicalism 27, and Orthodoxy 22. Orthodoxy, at least on the metric you gave, does not seem particularly impressive.

Fourthly, I'd argue that citing authoritative works from a person's religious tradition is often ineffective in changing a person's mind, especially if the citation seems to be made aggressively or in bad faith. The obvious case study would be Laudato si', hailed with great enthusiasm by liberal Christians of all varieties, ignored by most others, and yet used by the former to try to pull conservative Catholics in their direction. Did this work? Not really. I think when one tries to cite a religious tradition, it's more important to be closely embedded in that group's actual practice.

On a final note, I do not for a second disagree with the idea that Christian doctrine, regardless of denomination, tells us to take care of the Earth and its resources. It very clearly does.

However, I think that Orthodoxy is not especially unique or more active in proposing care for the world than other traditions, I think most American right-wingers do not perceive Orthodoxy to be part of their tradition at all, and I'm not sure Orthodoxy should be seen as particularly right-wing at all.

I wasn’t referring to American Orthodoxy specifically, maybe that’s why it’s somewhat confused. Policy-wise, I obviously can’t speak to the footprint the tradition has in steering the politics of places like Greece or Russia. But if people want to associate environmentalism with left-wing ideologies, they’re fairly ignorant because it has a big impact in the thinking of Christians.