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The Patriarch Athenagoras Orthodox Institute, based in Berkeley, Calif., has released what it is calling “the first national survey based study of the laity, ordinary church members, in the two largest Orthodox Churches in the United States: the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America (GOA) and the Orthodox Church in America (OCA).”
To a significant degree, PAOI said, the study reflects the profile of an entire Orthodox community in the United States.
“The Orthodox Church Today” study addressed four broad questions:
— What is the “image” of the Orthodox clergy in the eyes of the “people in the pews?”
— To what extent do the social and religious attitudes of the ordinary parishioners reflect those of their parish priests?
— What do church members think about patterns of Church life in their local parishes?
— What do laity think about various issues dealing with “Democracy and Pluralism in the chirch,” “Changes and Innovations in the Church,” and “religious “Particularism’ and Ecumenism?”
PAOI also compared Orthodox Church life to Roman Catholic and various Protestant Churches in the United States.
From the highlights summary:
1) The common stereotype is that the Orthodox Churches in the USA are “ethnic” Churches of certain immigrant communities. The study shows that this not the case anymore. Nine out of ten parishioners in both GOA and OCA are American-born. Further, today, more than one-quarter (29%) of the GOA and a majority of OCA (51%) members are converts to Orthodoxy – persons born and raised either Protestants or Roman Catholics.
2) Not all Orthodox are equally “Orthodox.” The study found that the gaps between the “left” and the “right” wings in American Orthodoxy are wide and that American Orthodox Christians are deeply divided among themselves in their personal “micro-theologies.” Answering the question “When you think about your theological position and approach to church life, which word best describes where you stand?” the relative majority (41%) of church members preferred to be in the safe “middle” and described their theological stance and approach to church life as “traditional.” At the same time, quite sizeable factions identified themselves as
being either “conservative” (28%) or “moderate-liberal” (31%).
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