Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick: The Demonic Addictions of Our Age Are Aimed at Sterility

Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick was recently interviewed by Justin Brierley as part of the latter's "Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God" project.

JUNE 4, 2025 — In an interview recently posted to author, podcaster and public speaker Justin Brierley’s YouTube channel, Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick spoke at length about the flood of young men to the Orthodox Church and the spiritual matters that are forcing people to reevaluate their beliefs.

“I think one of the things Orthodox Christianity has in particular is that we make the unseen very seen,” Damick told Brierley. “We don’t just talk about it. It is very explicit.”

With depictions of the unseen world in our churches, liturgical practices that are right out of the pages of Scripture, hymns that deal with the reality of angels and demons, and saints who surround us and interact with our world, the Orthodox Church offers a different spiritual outlook to a Western approach that often comes across as flat and banal.

“It’s a very crowded spiritual world, and Orthodox Christianity simply makes that explicit,” Damick said.

Below is a quick recap of some of the topics touched on during the interview, which can be found in full here.

Demonic forces behind the porn industry

When asked by Brierley if there is a demonic impetus behind the “gargantuan pornography industry,” Damick gave a resounding “absolutely.”

“Pornography is absolutely driven by spiritual forces,” Damick said. “That’s why it’s so deeply addictive, that’s why it’s so deeply destructive to marriages and potential marriages… it is absolutely deeply malevolent.”

Not only does pornography destroy relationships, Damick stated, but it also prevents relationships from ever happening as people become more and more secure in their addiction.

While some of the impulses found in these addictions can be corrected and bear fruit in marriage, instead there is a demonic inversion which takes place.

“It’s amazing to me how much of the demonic addictions of our age are all aimed at sterility,” Damick said. “It’s literally destroying the human race.”

Performance vs. liturgy

Brierley said that, in the evangelical world, there is a tendency to make things accessible, but it seems that it is actually the intrigue in the mystery of Orthodoxy that makes it attractive.

Damick shared a story from when he was first looking into Orthodoxy while working as a stagehand and attending what was the beginnings of a megachurch.

“There was one point on Sunday morning that, as I looked around me and I saw the people lifting up their hands and clearly having some kind of experience, I thought to myself… ‘I can, through my professional skills, make them have this experience,’” he said.

He also shared that he has been to multiple Dave Matthews Band concerts, and that during the song “Ants Marching” there is a moment where a huge bank of lights is turned toward the audience, which creates an emotional experience.

“That is pure technique – you press a button and they’re suddenly having an experience,” Damick said. “I realized at that moment, I said to myself, ‘I’m the man behind the curtain. I can do this.’”

Knowing that he could is what led to his disillusionment and pushed him toward Orthodoxy.

Search for structure and meaning

Today, the drive toward Orthodoxy among young men is often pushed by a search for structure and discipline.

There is a feeling that the world is without boundaries and has become shapeless, Damick said, and when you encounter the Orthodox Church there is a very clear shape.

The service has a clear order to it, the clergy dress in a particular way, there is a recognizable structure and hierarchy, and, for those who have a knowledge of Scripture, it directly mirrors what you have read.

Brierley stated his belief that young men are looking for a challenge, or a rule for life, and Damick argued that one thing Orthodoxy has that is mostly absent from other kinds of Christianity in the West is the sense of asceticism.

“Fasting is a normal part of life,” Damick said. “Most weeks it’s twice a week, on Wednesday and Friday, and then for long periods right before Easter, a long period right before Christmas, a couple more fasts in the summer, and it ends up being half of the days of the year, roughly speaking.”

As modern American culture seeks to make things easier and more convenient, practices like fasting seem counter-intuitive. 

But when something is easy and super accessible, then it isn’t worth very much, Damick said.

Coming face-to-face with the demonic

People are flocking to Orthodoxy from a plethora of backgrounds, but there has been a noticeable shift in why people are seeking the Church.

Growing up in Evangelicalism, Damick said the big apologetical push was to convince people of the existence of God. Today, the question of God’s existence isn’t the main topic on the mind of those inquiring.

“They’re not so much concerned about whether God exists or not – they want to know what they can do about the demons that they are actually experiencing,” Damick said.

As people encounter evil that they have no explanation for, they seek the Church to provide the answers to why this evil exists and how to combat it.

The Christian story is the highest story

The New Atheist movement was the crowning achievement of the post-Enlightenment crowding out of God and religion from the public space, Brierley stated, but it waned quickly.

“It’s very difficult to stop people being innately religious – if it’s not the Christian story that they invest their lives in, they’ll find another story of some kind,” he said.

Currently, we’re in a moment where the Christian story is speaking to people’s lives again.

Damick believes that the reason the story is speaking to them again is the same reason it spoke to people in the first century.

“When Jesus Christ is first preached in the world, it’s a world full of worship of demons,” he said. “From a Christian point of view, that’s what the gods of the nations are – they are demons. They’re not fairy tales that don’t exist… When Jesus is preached, the message is that the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand, which means all these other kingdoms are about to get trashed.

“It’s just like the Lord's Mother said, ‘He has thrown down the mighty from their seat.’ Those mighty are the demonic powers that were oppressing the world. ‘Exalted those of low estate,’ those are the righteous that are going to be taking their place.”

As Christ is healing the infirm and casting out demonic spirits from the possessed, He is proving that His person and His story is the highest story, Damick said.

The Church is growing – now what?

While the current growth of the Orthodox Church and seemingly growing cultural shift toward traditional, religious values could be seen as a “win,” Damick issued a warning.

“Whenever Christians start to focus on success, that’s a failure,” he said. “What we’re called to is faithfulness.”

Damick said that the project at hand is to welcome the people in our churches who were not there before, and then begin the work on rooting and stabilizing them in the faith.

Orthodox Christianity has all the tools for stability, Damick said, but sometimes we don’t use them effectively enough.

“What you’re here for is to be trained, and to be trained to be a Christian,” he concluded.

A longer podcast episode, titled, "The Orthodox Boom: New Converts to an Ancient Faith," can be found here. It includes conversations with Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick, John Mark Reynolds, Jonathan Pageau, Rod Dreher, Martin Shaw, Freya India and "Apostate Prophet" Ridvan Aydemir.

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