So you know that for everyone? I can't make an absolute statement like that. Even if we loose one person because of that video, that is fine with you because they were not really curious or serious in your opinion...OK. Someone could be curious, watches that video first and is instantly discouraged. Gone. However, there are a ton of videos like this one so one can't counter all of them...
You know, if you wanted to respond to this video without promoting it, one thing you could do would be to create a React video on YouTube. This allows you to react to the video, including the most problematic snippets of the original, and if you refer to the channel by name but do not include a direct link, that will probably not result in them getting an increase in viewership, which could result from directly linking to them, in particular, from embedding a link to their video off site.
I myself would love to do some videos on YouTube reacting to videos which spread disinformation about the Orthodox Church. I also have a Teams subscription with ChatGPT which includes access to Sora, which can be used to create very high quality animations and graphics for a video (ChatGPT is the only AI which has been programmed to understand human anatomy and which can reliably draw humans without making mistakes such as people having hands with an incorrect number of digits, or people handshaking with their hands sort of blending together in a grotesque manner, which was a major problem with the old image generator they used to use, and which remains a problem with the Grok 3 image generator and the other main AI image generators).
Thus if you wanted to collaborate with me on such a project, that could be very interesting, and it would also negate, as far as I can understand, the disagreement you and
@ArmyMatt have on this issue, since I believe he is correct that someone who would be turned off by just this video is not likely to convert, but on the other hand I believe you also are correct in that the large number of anti-Orthodox videos on YouTube could combine with other mass media depictions of Orthodoxy, including the depiction of us as a strange ethnocentric religion from Seinfeld and My Big Fat Greek Wedding, and the depiction of Russian Orthodoxy as a brutal ideology being promoted by the Ukrainian government, which is seeking to weaponize religion - so that even if one is opposed to what Russia did, which many people are, the result of this is that the media is actively carrying a narrative from the Ukrainians that his hostile to all Russian churches (which would include many churches that are part of the OCA and have no connection to the Russian government) and which has led to the vandalism of OCA and ROCOR parishes in the US and Canada, and indeed other Orthodox parishes by people who assume all Orthodox are Russian Orthodox (thus ignoring even the existence of even the OCU and the UOCNA and the UOC-KP), and I have seen a disturbing amount of comments to this extent on YouTube and other social media platforms.
Thus, there is a need to counter three types of anti-Orthodox propaganda, without inadvertently giving any of them a direct platform:
1. Hellenocentric and ethnocentric depictions of Orthodoxy which ignore the fact that the Eastern Orthodox Church actually regards ethnophyletism, the idea that only those people of a given ethnicity should pray together, as heretical*
2. Russophobic attacks on Orthodoxy which ignore the Orthodox majority in Ukraine and the majority position of the UOC among Ukrainian Orthodox Christians (I have a friend, who has unfortunately since had a total mental breakdown - please pray for him, his name is Jeffrey; I don’t know if he was ever baptized as his parents contributed to his breakdown, who was under the belief that Ukraine had a Jewish majority population, based on his own subjective experience in that every Ukrainian he had met in Southern California was Jewish).
3. Misrepresentations of Orthodox doctrine and the promotion of anti-Orthodox heresies such as Iconoclasm and Nestorianism, such as what we see in the aforementioned video.
In some cases, I take a view that I think
@ArmyMatt would agree with, and I hope you would as well my dear friend
@Yeshua HaDerekh - that the heretical content is sufficiently wrong and dangerous that it is best left unacknowledged, to avoid giving any platform to it. On the other hand, there are many instances of people repeating common misunderstandings and disinformation about the Orthodox, and where these misunderstandings and disinformation are common, it is entirely reasonable for us to respond in a gracious and loving manner.
I do not believe in the use of negative proselytism to try to convert people - I have written polemics about SDAs and certain other groups whose teachings I regard as contradictory to the Apostolic faith, who I have also found on multiple occasions trying to infilitrate Orthodox churches (most recently I was invited to lunch by a member of a Greek Orthodox church only to be ambushed at the lunch by two Adventists who had nearly succeeded in converting him to their heretical sect, which was very unpleasant; had I known that would have happened I should not have joined him for lunch). These polemics however are not intended to convert members of these churches but rather to discourage other Christians outside of Orthodoxy from considering these churches as a viable option among churches to attend and also to respond to the abusive things members of these churches often say about Roman Catholics which applies to the Orthodox indirectly, for example, their ludicrous claim that the Council of Nicaea was a conspiracy led by Emperor Constantine and the Pope of Rome to ban worship on the Sabbath, or their preposterous assertion, recently made on several forums on CF.com, that the Roman Catholic Church killed 120 million people during the Inquisition (attempts at explaining to them that this would mean the Roman Catholics had killed the entire population of Europe were unsuccessful, but the information provided by myself and other members, including other Orthodox members, has had the effect of showing the serious flaws in their arguments.
It has been correctly asserted by many Orthodox leaders like Fr. Andrew S. Damick that we cannot debate people into becoming Orthodox, and therefore we shouldn’t even try. Rather, the goal of any communications effort concerning misconceptions and disinformation about the Orthodox Church should be providing true and accurate information in order to counter the false claims, not with the goal of converting those who propagate the false claims, who have probably already come to believe an anti-Orthodox position, and whose salvation we must entrust to God (many believe this is the real meaning of anathematization - we are offering up those who have embraced heresy to God in the hopes that he can persuade them to reject the heresy and embrace Orthodoxy, which has worked both in the case of people informed that they were being personally anathematized, and in the case of people who incurred an anathema unknowingly by violating an ancient canon. These anathemas should not be regarded, at least in our case, as being curses; perhaps they came to mean a sort of liturgical curse in the Roman and Anglican churches (and insofar as they did not, the grotesque Anglican service that used to be conducted at the start of Lent known as the Commination, which according to Cranmer was a practice of the early church, but I have found no evidence of this, did amount to liturgical cursing of people who violated the ten commandments).
What we can do, however, and what Fr. Andrew has done, and many others, going back to St. Irenaeus of Lyons and St. Epiphanios of Cyprus and St. John of Damascus, and indeed St. Athanasius and the Three Holy Hierarchs (which would be an awesome name for a jazz ensemble) is to provide information on the nature of various heresies and theological errors, so the faithful can avoid them, while also having access to information about the true beliefs of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.
*to my knowledge, we are the only denomination that officially defines ethnophyletisim as a heresy, although it is an implied heresy within Oriental Orthodoxy and Anglicanism; conversely, one could argue that it still remains an issue in Roman Catholicism as ethnocentric Catholic parishes even in the Roman Rite continue to exist, and also persons received into an Eastern Catholic Church from an Orthodox Church or the Assyrian Church of the East will be automatically assigned to the corresponding Eastern Catholic Church, which in some cases, for example, Greek or Russian converts, could be extremely inconvenient considering the miniscule size of the Greek Catholic and Russian Greek Catholic churches - and one must write a letter to the Vatican in order to change one’s liturgical rite.
