Month: October 2010

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Illumined Heart: How Many Are We?

Orthodox History: Historical Census Data for Orthodoxy in America

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Over at Orthodox History, Matthew Namee makes some preliminary comparisons between the 2010 Krindatch census and the American census of the last two centuries.

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An analysis the 2010 Orthodox Census

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Over at the St. Andrew House Forum Dean Calvert analyzed some of the data collected in Alexei Krindatch’s 2010 Census of Orthodox Churches. Calvert writes:

The more I look at this data, the more fascinating I find it to be. It truly presents us with a multidimensional look at the Orthodox community in America. I’ve just finished compiling some of the tabular data into one large Excel sheet, and then just played around with it for a while. Some of the observations that jumped out at me include:

In terms of adherents, the GOA is the largest, with 46% of the total Orthodox.
In terms of adherents, the GOA is 5.6 times larger than the next largest Orthodox jurisidction (OCA).
Due to lower attendance rates in the GOA (23%) compared to both OCA and AOCA, (40% and 37% respectively) this margin drops to 3.2 times the number of attendees when compared to the OCA.
The sheer size of the Non Attending Greeks does not become evident until one calculates the number – at 369,000 people, this number is 25% greater than the total of ALL Orthodox Attendees, from all jurisdictions (294,000).
The same number, “Non Attending Greeks,” helps to explain the strategies adopted by some of the other jurisdictions – i.e. reaching out to disaffected cradle Orthodox. For example, the number of Non Attending Greeks (369500) is almost 11 times the Attendees in the OCA (33,800). Looked at differently – if the OCA could attract just 10% of the Non Attending Greeks, it would double in size!
The OCA and AOCA have very close to the same number of attendees in church every Sunday (33800 vs 27300) – surprising since the OCA has double the number of churches of the AOCA.
57% of Orthodox attending church each Sunday are in the GOA,OCA AOCA jurisdictions.
As a group, a significantly higher percentage of Oriental Orthodox attend church than Eastern Orthodox (35% vs 26%). However, much of this difference is due to the low attendance of the Greeks. When the GOA is removed this gap narrows significantly (35% vs 31% without the GOA included).
In terms of total attendees – the Coptic church is the second largest in the country after the GOA – due to significantly higher attendance rates (51% – one of the highest). The number of Attendees, 46,900, is almost 40% greater than the Attendees in the OCA (33,800).
Ranking in terms of attendees is interesting GOA/Coptic/OCA/AOCA.
The change in number of parishes between 2000 and 2010 is interesting. While the GOA is far and away the largest jurisdiction in terms of adherents and attendees, it falls to the #5 spot in terms of number of new parishes built, behind OCA, Coptic, AOCA AND Malankara
In terms of new parishes – the Oriental Churches are growing significantly faster than the Orthodox – 36% vs 13%.
The OCA opened almost half (43%) of the new Eastern Orthodox churches from 2000 to 2010 – despite the troubles experienced by that jurisdiction during the same time period.

For anyone interested, I’ve compiled the relevant data from the various tables into one Excel sheet – makes the analysis a little easier. It also allows for rankings.

Click here to see the Excel spreadsheet. (All source data from Alexei Krindatch.)

Orthodox mission in America (no, not the history, the future)

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Rereading the post where I argue that the contemporary definition of Hellenism is truncated (an Islamic captivity? dhimitude?), I see it fits into an article I reread earlier this morning and posted on OrthodoxyToday.org again: Orthodox Mission in the 21st Century by Metropolitan Hilarion of the Russian Orthodox Church.

A highlight:

Sts. Cyril and Methodios

To recover the missionary dimension of the Church is today’s greatest imperative. We have to recover a very basic truth: that the Church is essentially Mission, that the very roots of her life are in the commandment of Christ: ‘Go ye therefore and teach all nations’ (Matt. 28:19). A Christian community that would lose this missionary zeal and purpose, that would become selfish and self-centered, that would limit itself to ‘satisfying the spiritual needs of its members’, that would identify itself completely with a nation, a society, a social or ethnic group – is on its way to spiritual decadence and death, because the essential spiritual need of a Christian is precisely that of sharing the life and the Truth with as many men as possible and ultimately with the whole world. Mission thus is the organic need and task of the Church in the world, the real meaning of Church’s presence in history between the first and the second advents of her Lord, or, in other terms, the meaning of Christian history. Obviously not all members of the Church can go and preach in the literal sense of the word. But all can have a concern for the missionary function of the Church, feel responsible for it, help and support it. In this respect each diocese, each parish and each member of the Church are involved in the missionary ministry.

The current sluggishness, even outright hostility, to bringing the Gospel to America need not thwart those Orthodox who understand that this missionary imperative and the revitalization of the Church in America and all that implies (cleaning up corruption, proper catechesis — especially for adults, the cultivation of capable priests and bishops, an educated laity, care for the poor with increasing support of organizations like FOCUS, etc.) go hand in hand. Don’t despair. You are on the side of the angels.

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Some thoughts on the Wesley J. Smith lecture at St. Tikhon’s Seminary

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I listened to Wesley J. Smith’s lecture a few days ago and have been thinking about it ever since (listen to it here). Some thoughts in no particular order:

1. It is very good that St. Tikhon’s invited Smith to speak for several reasons. First it introduces the seminarians to the concrete questions debated in the larger culture and thus the hospitals, nursing homes, and hospices where end of life decisions are made. They will be called on to consult with families to help make these decisions and must be able to recognize the ideas behind the differing opinions that health care professionals offer in these situations.
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