Early starts, strict routines and discipline: more and more young men in Finland are being drawn to the rigors of monastic life and its conservative values.
In such a secular and progressive country, where experts had expected the young to be less religious, Christianity has been gaining ground — among young men at least.
Inside the dazzling white Valamo monastery, the country’s only Eastern Orthodox abbey, the day begins at 6am with prayers, followed by breakfast and chores. Life here is much as it has been for hundreds of years.
Photo: AFP
However, despite the spartan life, the brotherhood has been growing fast, expanding from about 10 monks to 18 in a few years.
COVID-19 was a turning point, Archimandrite Father Michael said.
“After that, we started to see a huge increase in interest,” he said.
He regularly receives e-mails from young men who want to discuss the faith and, occasionally, wish to become a novice.
“I think it is maybe the quite uncertain times we are living in. People want to have something steady, something to stand on,” he said.
The number of Finns identifying as Christian has been declining for decades. However, researchers began noticing a rise in young men’s interest in religion about five years ago.
“I was at first very skeptical of the phenomenon,” said Kati Tervo Niemela, professor of practical theology at the University of Eastern Finland.
“But the same results have been repeated over and over again in the survey data,” she said.
Inside an old wooden church adorned with icons, Father Stefanos, who was raised in an Orthodox family, said he “had always just known” he would become a monk.
“It has been great,” the 23-year-old said, taking away “all those earthly stresses people have.”
He was a student living on his own for the first time when he embarked on the monastic path two years ago — worrying about student debt and finding his place in life.
“Then the war in Ukraine started, which brought in more stuff on top of all of that,” he said.
About 63 percent of Finns are Evangelical Lutherans, with only 1 percent belonging to the Orthodox Church, the country’s second-largest national church, which is under the authority of the Patriarch of Constantinople in Istanbul. Although it traces its origins to Russia, Valamo monastery cut its ties to Moscow when Finland became an independent nation in 1917.
Tervo Niemela said some young men find deeply traditional religious groups like the Orthodox Church match their conservative values. The Orthodox Church does not, for example, allow female priests.
Young men’s opposition to some Lutheran ministers blessing same-sex marriage showed in surveys, she said.
Some young men also cited Canadian traditionalist pundit Jordan Peterson as an inspirational figure.
“Young men may find that Christianity supports them as men in a society where they feel that masculinity in general is not valued,” she said.
Meanwhile, young women in Finland — a pioneer in gender equality — continue to espouse more liberal values, Tervo Niemela added.
“We have many more men expecting women to conform to a traditional female role than women wanting to be in that role,” she said.
Dressed in a black cassock, his long hair tied in a knot, 29-year-old Deacon Raphael said he entered Valamo monastery six years ago after completing a philosophy degree.
“I had a very conventional upbringing as a Lutheran in Finland. We went to church maybe once or twice per year ... so not particularly religious,” he said.
“The kind of answers I was looking for, the church fathers answered really well. Orthodoxy I found had the most coherent answers of the Christian churches” to the big questions, he said.
Father Raphael said he had been inspired by media personalities such as French-Canadian YouTuber Jonathan Pageau, who gives a Christian Orthodox perspective on current affairs.
The monk said he believed young men were now “more conservative than females.”
“Orthodoxy in some sense is very patriarchal and conservative,” based on tradition with a capital “T,” which is why it is so attractive, he said.
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