“When you have a culture that is dedicated to the principles Western civilization -- which is what the South is -- Orthodoxy doesn't fit very well into that. Orthodoxy is more or less an ethnic religion. You have Russian Orthodoxy. You have Ukrainian Orthodoxy... so forth and so on. It's ethnic.

“I think that Culturally, Orthodoxy is very very foreign to the American South.... There is a history of Catholicism in the South. Particularly around New Orleans and around different coastal regions, Maryland... people moved from Maryland to the bluegrass region of Kentucky. I fail to understand why, particularly young Southern men, are becoming attracted to Eastern Orthodoxy. It's a different culture. It's not our people. It's Christian, but it's not a part of the universal papacy.