Was listening to this great Mere Fidelity interview with @NotoriousTIB, and I found her advice to churches about how to become stronger institutions sound (basically: embrace the weird, including orthodoxy). But reflecting upon the subsequent discussion, https://mereorthodoxy.com/strange-rites-new-religions-godless-world-dr-tara-isabella-burton/

which centered around the question of what to do when orthodoxy itself (on anthropology, e.g.) is what keeps people out, I began to worry. "Weird Christianity"—as exemplified by Protestant and Catholic trads (esp. Anglicans and Catholics)—can become just another aesthetic

preference even as it embraces orthodoxy. And, in fact, its embrace of orthodoxy is precisely part of its appeal: it gives Weird Christianity an edge. If the 60s counterculture was edgy for its anti-traditionalism, Weird Christianity can be edgy for its traditionalist aesthetics

and theology. Furthermore, such "Weirdness" is not itself actually abnormal or even especially "countercultural" in the new religious/spiritual landscape. We're witnessing a revival of all sorts of Weird Religion, with Christianity just being one example. This presents dangers.

The proliferation and multiplication of hip Weird Religions means that Weird Christianity actually fits in rather well. "Oh, you believe in the resurrection? That's so cool—I'm really looking forward to Valhalla, myself."

"You believe in an ancient Tradition and infallible magisterium? Well my neo-Paganism has its roots in ancient Norse mythology" etc. In other words, orthodoxy-as-weird can become (and I say *can* because it doesn't necessarily become) just another aesthetic, spiritual preference.

The question for orthodox Christians, especially those like myself who do tend toward traditional expressions of the faith, is precisely how we can guard ourselves against aesthetic religion, a religion of easy "countercultural" taste. It seems to me that one way of guarding

against this is to ensure that we're actually embracing those dimensions of our religion that the broader Weird Religious/Spiritual culture will not look kindly upon. Are we taking up our crosses? Of course, this question gets extremely complicated,

not least because there's no one culture; we're all in cultures and sub-cultures and sub-sub-cultures, which means that we can rail against "the culture" while being adored in the sub-cultures much closer to home. So this is complicated. But if, for example,

we find ourselves selectively jumping ship from our tradition's claims at just those points where our traditions seem least palatable to our friends, to our society, and *to ourselves*, we should be very worried that our orthodoxy is aesthetic, at least in part.

Today, we're getting to the point where believing in the resurrection is actually not, culturally speaking, super hard. Millions of Americans right now think they can read their futures and personalities from flaming balls of gas in space millions of miles away—the resurrection

is not especially absurd in that context; or, perhaps it's equally absurd. In any case, it's not *more* difficult to believe, and the social cost of believing it is not as large as it once was. But there is social cost to believing other things, things Weird Religion downplays.

That should make all of us Weird Christians nervous. The retreat to Weird is often a retreat to aesthetic respectability. And it's hard to know if that's what it is for us. We probably won't know until we're forced to forfeit respectability, until each of us has to stand alone.