Orthodox Christian churches are drawing in far-right American converts

Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a Christmas liturgy at the Transfiguration Cathedral in St. Petersburg early on Jan. 7, 2020. In the U.S., Orthodox Christianity is a relatively small faith tradition, but in recent years, it has expanded to new regions. Some new converts are using the religion to spread white nationalist views. (Alexey Nikolsky/Sputnik/AFP via Getty Images)

When Sarah Riccardi-Swartz moved from New York City to a small Appalachian town in West Virginia in the fall of 2017, she was searching for an answer to a puzzling question. Why had a group of conservative American Christians converted to Russian Orthodoxy?

"It's typically an immigrant faith, so I was really interested in that experience and why it spoke to converts," said Riccardi-Swartz, a postdoctoral fellow in the Recovering Truth project at Arizona State University.