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.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS