At the dazzling white Valamo monastery in southeastern Finland, the monks have just finished breakfast and are getting to work. Their numbers here have grown, with the brotherhood almost doubling from 10 to 18 monks in the last few years, part of a wider trend that has surprised experts. Christianity and conservatism have been winning over young men in what is a predominantly secular and progressive country.
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00:00I
00:22think it's maybe quite uncertain times that we are living in and people want to have
00:31something steady, something to stand on.
01:01I did imagine myself becoming a family man and starting a career and all of this once,
01:18but during my studies I didn't feel comfortable with that kind of idea for myself, even though
01:31I thought I would enjoy it, but I decided otherwise.
01:42I think that's another very major trend. Young men are more conservative than females. That
02:08also plays into the trend of young men coming to orthodoxy, because orthodoxy in some sense
02:15is very patriarchal, conservative, and orthodoxy even considers tradition with a large T, so
02:28tradition is very important. So yes, orthodoxy attracts the more conservative.