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Hartford Institute for Religion Research
HT: Orthodox Christian Laity
A Quick Question
How many Eastern Orthodox are there in the USA?
The quick answer: Far less than usually reported.
The longer answer: According to a recent study of Orthodoxy in the United States, the real membership (number of adult adherents and their children) in all Eastern Christian Churches in the USA can be estimated at about 1,200,000 persons. This figure is considerably less than the commonly accepted estimations, which range as high as over four million.
The greatest disproportions between “claimed” and actual memberships were found in the two largest Orthodox jurisdictions:
Greek Orthodox Archdiocese (typically claimed 1,954,500* members versus 440,000 actual adherents)
Orthodox Church in America (1,000,000* versus 115,000 actual adherents)
* membership figures are from the Yearbook of American & Canadian Churches, National Council of Churches, 2000.
The most likely reason for this discrepancy is the common practice of equating Church membership with the total number of representatives of a corresponding ethnic group including second and third American generations of the original immigrants, independent of these persons actual relationship to the Orthodox Church.