An analysis the 2010 Orthodox Census

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24 responses to “An analysis the 2010 Orthodox Census”

1. Fr. Johannes Jacobse

   October 10, 2010

   Thank you for this Dean. Very helpful.

   Reply
2. George Michalopulos

   October 10, 2010

   For all the work that Alexei did, Dean also deserves a great big pat on the back for putting a human face on the data. I’m curious, how many of the “non-attending Greeks” have already migrated to the AOCA, OCA, and even ROCOR? Probably a better question might be how many of the “regular attendees” have bailed and are going to the Athonite monasteries? This would be an interesting development to study because these monasteries are officially in the GOA (but not of the GOA).

   This is a burning question because it directly impacts the financial well-being of the secular (i.e. non-monastic) parishes. Even if we accept for the sake of argument the Vanity Fair expose of Vatopedi monastery, the fact remains that these 19 monasteries are being sustained by some serious coin from earnest pilgrims attending regularly. Of course if these pilgrims are devout (and they are), then their attendance at the monasteries for services almost necessarily means their non-attendance at the parish churches.

   Reply
   1. Harry Coin

      October 10, 2010

      George, what it means to be ‘going to the psuedo-Athonite monasteries’ needs clarifying. Obviously for one Athonite monasteries don’t have parishioners, some male guests from time to time but that’s it. What does it even mean to ‘go to a monastery’ as a, what, regular parishioner? So the women and girls in a family go to a woman’s monastery and the men and boys go to a mens monastery? I’m thinking ‘healthy’ is an issue. Or are the ‘monasteries’ trying to be parishes and the bishops can’t get along with the abbots so we have what amounts to yet another ‘jurisdiction’?

      Personally until I see some proclaimation from an actual monastery on Athos saying that this or that monastery here is ‘Athonite’ I think what we’ve got here is a bit of ‘brand usurpation’. I’ve heard it before ‘well we have the same typikon’ and other invitations along the lines of daring taste testers to tell the difference between colas. If we go along those lines the Uniats who do services like the Orthodox are ‘really the same’ too.

      All about that special little twist in that one eensy little spot…

      Reply
      1. Isa Almisry

         October 10, 2010

         I’ve been a couple times to the Athonite Monastery in IL for DL. The ordinary Sundays there were several dozen people from all around and different backgrounds. About half identified themselves as regular attendess, who attended as families. I met two Polish Orthodox families and a Mexican American one, along with a couple Russians and Carpatho-Russians. Btw one of the monks is a Palestinian Arab.

         The DL for their feast day was packed:they rent a tent and have it outside.

         I haven’t been to Athos, so I can’t make the comparison.

         Reply
         1. George Michalopulos

            October 11, 2010

            Isa, by “Athonite monasteries” I meant the ones set up by Elder Ephraim here in America, not Athos itself. (I’ve never been so I can’t speak to it.)

            What struck me about Holy Archangels was the volume of people there on Tues or any mid-week day. Anywhere from five to a dozen. Just milling about, socializing, confessing to the abbott, helping out with chores, etc. I’m talking families too, children running about (it’s over 140 acres).

            Reply
            1. Isa Almisry

               October 11, 2010

               I just mentioned the question of Athos, because someone brought up brand name, and someone questioned it.

               The one I visited was founded by Elder Ephraim, but besides a picture of him among the pictures of the EP, Abp Demetrios etc. and some mention in the literature on the monastery, nothing much was made of that. I say that because he is often accused of leading a cult. If he is, at that monastery he is doing a poor job of maintaining the cult of personality there, which is as it should be. The monastery itself is in the middle of nowhere, and a small chapel, but the buildings and grounds are attractive and well kept, the bookstore has a fairly sizeable selectin in Greek and English, and the assortment of people seem to be varied.

               I met the elder one time, and I have to say he has a presence about him. The people surrounding him and those seeing him at that point were VERY Greek, but just in the sense in that was there background and language. I was by no means made to feel an outsider. They were humble about their Hellenism, and had no arrogance about it at all.

               Reply
      2. George Michalopulos

         October 11, 2010

         Harry, as I admitted, my experience is “rather limited” (i.e. to only one monastery.

         But this is what I saw and continue to see: entire families going there for servies and confessions. Yes, only the men can stay overnite but I’m talking mainly about families taking day trips and spending the entire day there.

         Whether this is healthy or not is beside the point. I’ll grant you that I’ve overheard iffy things second and third hand, but let’s be honest, you and I have actually seen goofy things at some of our parishes. So it may be a wash in the final analysis.

         Reply
         1. Harry Coin

            October 12, 2010

            George, Monasteries whose occupants do not work as they do in Athos, monasteries who in fact plainly or by innuendo or implication or hints of psychological suggestion need or seek to take from ‘parishioners’ to survive can’t rightly call themselves ‘Athonite’ no matter the extent to which their service patterns follow this or that monastery in Athos.

            Here new on the list of

            ‘fat monk’ and ‘fat monk-priest’ and ‘fat monk-bishop’

            and

            ‘rich monk’ and ‘rich monk-priest’ and ‘rich monk-bishop’

            we can add

            ‘monastery parishioner’ — one who drives further to the monastery than several nearby parishes, who relies on the often not present abbott to protect the parishioner children and other vulnerable from the often profound temptations besetting the monks to ‘retreated’ to a monastery for good reasons to begin with. L I A B I L I Y R U S.

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            1. George Michalopulos

               October 12, 2010

               Harry, I wasn’t trying to pass a judgment as much as make an observation. Nature abhors a vacuum and for whatever reason, the parishes, ruled as they are by priests who are fearful of their bishops and a worldly elite, have been dropping the ball.

               Personally, I think that it’s sad state of affairs when laymen feel they have to drive 4 or more hours to go to a monastic church for services. But isn’t that what we’ve been doing afte a fashion because of our divisions? How many ethnic Serbs who live 2 mi from a Lebanese parish drive all the way across town to attend the Serbian parish? What’s the difference except mileage at that point?

               Reply
            2. Harry Coin

               October 12, 2010

               The difference I sense in the scenario you mention George is: Aunt Mable’s special fellowship hour dessert. People go to the ‘ethnic’ church driving past the other Orthodox churches because their family and the people they grew up with go there. It isn’t about the priest or the ethnicity per se, it is about the people. People who are ‘fresh’ to a town with no family ties to this or that parish I hope choose the closest one.

               Reply
            3. George Michalopulos

               October 17, 2010

               Harry, point taken. Your example is still not off the mark by much with regards to mine. Aunt Mabel’s apple pie is something which helps solidify fellowship, hence the ethnic Serbs/etc. driving 10 miles out of the way by-passing the closer Lebanese/etc. parish. But this same “something” is what the growing number of GOA parishioners are finding at the monastic churches. (Liturgy in Greek, no fund-raising appeals, people fellowshipping after Liturgy not talking about what a scoundrel the Sr Warden is, etc.)

               Reply
3. Harry Coin

   October 10, 2010

   I’m curious, were the counts based on researchers counting cars in the parking lots and heads in the churches? Or was it based on something less objective?

   Reply
   1. George Michalopulos

      October 10, 2010

      Harry,

      besides my challenge to go into any GOA parish and do an estimate, I’d ask my correspondents to count not just those in the pews, but the dozen or so men milling about in the Narthex, the 50+ children in the Sunday School, and how many are just wandering about in the offices/adminstrative hall/parish hall? Add all these subsets in as well and you might get 300.

      Reply
   2. Dean Calvert

      October 11, 2010

      Hi Harry,

      One of the things that got me started on this was listening to the AFR interview of Alexei Krindatch (see http://ancientfaith.com/podcasts/illuminedheart).

      In that interview, he explains his methodology – which appears to have been an effort to contact every single church. Right or wrong, I’m sure that’s the first time that’s ever happened..and it intrigued me.

      In the process, Alexei admitted the shortcomings inherent in the 2000 surveys – which were not done this way.

      You know how i like data…so when i heard the interview, I thought, “This guy may have just come up with something worth taking a look at,” and plowed into the data.

      By the way, be sure to look at the data along with the Powerpoint presentation which is also available at the orthodoxreality website. The PPT data was primarily done thru interviews at GOA churches..and he comes up with some dousies….67% of Greeks believe you can be a good Orthodox Christian and not go to church! The data shows (100-22% attendees = 78%) the number is even higher.

      It also shows, however, that the Eucharist is what people really believe in..that’s it’ Anyway, take a look…it’s worth the time.

      Best Regards,
      dean

      Reply
      1. George Michalopulos

         October 11, 2010

         Dean, where can we access the power point presentation you’re talking about?

         Reply
         1. Fr. Johannes Jacobse

            October 11, 2010

            George I will try to post it.

            Reply
      2. Harry Coin

         October 12, 2010

         Dean, thanks. Yes I agree plainly what’s valued most appears to be parish life. Many of its aspects of importance appear to be valued for dubious reasons and inconsistently… but plainly to the extent there is a ‘king of the value hill’, that’s it.

         I always thought people were in an insignificant minority who said ‘if the priest gets more expenseive we’ll just stop paying Chicago and if they don’t send us another priest we’ll be better off, maybe one will come a few times per year.’ Now I see that their number might be closer to a majority in the GOA!!

         Reply
4. Dean Calvert

   October 10, 2010

   Fr Hans,

   I honestly think the title of this should be, “The Good News: Judgement Day is not Today” or, “What Alexei Krindatch was too polite to say”

   This is the most damning indictment of the current system of governance that we are ever likely to see. GOA records claim to have baptised 248,000 between 1971 and 1998…where are they? Immigration from the Eastern European countries and Greece between 1970 and 1990 was 350,000 people…where are they?

   By any objective measure, we have a bankrupt institution on our hands – plain and simple.

   I’m reminded of a bishop that I met with in Chicago at one of the previous Pan Orthodox meetings. He was in Chicago, I was in Chicago, so we decided to meet at the hotel during the meetings to discuss whatever it was we needed to talk about. He had only been a bishop a short while, and was clearly shocked by what he had just witnessed in the meetings.

   “Don’t they worry about Judgement?” he said. “We get reports showing we have lost all the youth, and the response is…’Next report.’ We are going to be judged for this,” he said, with a terrified look on his face.

   Anyone gloating about ANY of this information is simply not paying attention. It’s a complete, utter disaster…and we ALL share responsibility…laity, clergy AND hierarchs. And anyone thinking what we are doing is working…well, as I’ve told management teams (of failing companies) before, “If you think what we are doing is working, you should probably leave right now.”

   Like I said, the only good news I can find is – there’s time to change it – Judgement Day is NOT today (so far anyway).

   Best Regards,
   Dean

   Reply
   1. Andrew

      October 10, 2010

      Dean hits the nail on the head with his spreadsheet. One thing that catches my eye is the figure of each GOA parish having on average 908 adherents and 200+ attendees on a Sunday. I don’t think this number coincides with reality at any level anywhere in the country. This is why I see the GOA numbers as fantasy.

      Dean’s data breakdown also makes one humble. 28% of Orthodox attend Church regularly. This is a major failure and shows that any Orthodox triumphalism is certainly out of line.

      What I see when I read Deans breakdown is the existence of a bureaucracy that serves as a de-facto welfare system for failed and unaccountable leadership. Despite the obvious failure -the same folks are put in charge over and over again. The result is the same over and over again.

      It is obvious that there are alot of people who are invested in and get rich off of this system of mediocrity.

      Reply
5. Dean Calvert

   October 10, 2010

   Andrew,

   I have to be honest…that was the one thing that kept haunting me as I went thru the data – i.e. the question: Who does this serve?

   It’s certainly not us – we have a system which is practically guaranteed to lose all it’s members over time – particularly the ethnics.

   It can’t be the local priests, or even the local bishops…they have to deal with the results. I’m not even sure the local archdioceses are well served by this mess.

   Who is served by this?

   I think you are going down the right path.

   Best Regards,
   dean

   Reply
6. Andrew

   October 10, 2010

   Dean, consider the following. Despite the poor economic conditions in the USA. Despite the fact that most people in the pews are not getting raises and are settling for less. Despite all these things….. the GOA voted itself a budget increase in Atlanta. People have to do with less, Families have to do with less but 79th Street needs to spend more. If this does not show a disconnect to reality I am not sure what does. 79th Street cannot even show a moment of asceticism and take a 5% cut in solidarity with the people in the pews.

   Reply
7. George Michalopulos

   October 10, 2010

   Dean, again, I can’t thank you enough for this meta-analysis of Krindatch’s work. Where to begin?

   In no particular order:

   the good:

   1. 28% attendance is probably not so bad, all things considered. In Europe, church attendance is less than 5%. Even in Greece. that’s the good news, thin gruel though it is.

   the bad:

   1. the 200 number/GOA parish is in reality the true number of GOA adherents. I would gladly eat major crow if anyone could identify for me the ten largest GOA parishes. Once identified, I would ask our correspondents living in those cities to pick any Sunday in November, go, and do an estimated head-count. I would be genuinely shocked if in those ten 1,000+ parishes there were more than 400 people there in all ten of them.

   2. even with the triumphalist GOA tone that is superficially counted here, will we see The Orthodox Observer reporting that “actual” count or will they keep on peddling the Greek myth of “1.5 million people in the GOA”? Yeah, I thought so. (That will show you that these numbers aren’t serious, after all, if you’re going to lie about numbers, might as well lie using the bigger number.

   the ugly:

   Once we settle on the real number of GOA adherents (200+/parish x 525 pariehes = 105,000), then we have to look even deeper into this number. How many of these 105K are now frequent or regular attendees at the nineteen Athonite monasteries?

   This gets tricky. From my own admittedly limited experience with one such monastery in the Hill Country of Texas (we’re talking major boonies here), I’ve seen people of all ethnicities and races, Orthodox as well as inquirers, catechumens as well as bystanders, going there at all days of the week and seasons of the year. On Sundays, the basilica is quite full. On the feast days it’s wall-to-wall. Let’s assume that the overwhelming majority who go there are GOA, we can safely state that among those who go regularly (at least once a month), they now view that monastery as their spiritual home. We’re talking confessions to the abbot, regular Eucharistic participation, and significant donations of money, labor, and resources (I myself have done manual labor at this monastery).

   From conversations I’ve heard and engaged in, the regulars (let’s call them what they are –pilgrims) have volunteered their reasons for eschewing parish life. The reasons run the gamut from generalized dissaffection, to worldliness of the parish, political in-fighting and back-stabbing, incompetent priests, tyrannical bishops, etc. (Yeah, I know the bihsop are nominally in charge of the monasteries but the monks there are far more independent and outspoken than your typical parish priest.)

   This is where it gets even murkier: the monasteries are officially part of the GOA, no doubt about that. But in reality, they are a seperate GOA, providing a spiritual oasis without all the pseudo-helladic triumphalism. Let’s say that of the 105K actual adherents in the GOA just 5% go to these 10 monasteries, that means on any given Sundday 5,250 GOA pilgrims are attending these monasteries. Leaving aside The Vanity Fair expose, is it any wonder the GOA “metropolitans” have put the kibosh on the building of many more of these? And even though we’ll never know for sure how they acquired their start-up capital, it’s clear that with the collapse of the Greek economy and our own recession here in America that they are surviving on real-time donations.

   What if in reality it’s more like 10% of GOA adherents going to these monasteries? Then there’s the real possibility of a critical mass attaining which could cause the further disentrigration of the parishes. And no, I don’t think that the mets can or would do anything to quash them further. In my own talks with some of these monks, if they felt that the GOA was going further down the path of liberalism, they’d just up and leave. And then the GOA dioceses would be left with a whole lot of unused real estate, much of it still indebted.

   Perhaps your analysis should have been called “My Big Fat Greek Decline”?

   Reply
8. Fr. Andrew

   December 7, 2010

   As someone who received the survey in question and filled it out for his own parish, I think the phrase “non-attending” is an incorrect characterization.

   The two relevant questions were to ask 1) how many people were associated with the parish and 2) how many attended on a typical Sunday. In my own parish, those numbers are roughly 240 and 85. Does that mean I have 155 “non-attenders”? No, because those 85 who are there are not always there, and the 155 who are absent aren’t always absent. Some people come every Sunday. Some come a few times a month. Some come only once a month. Some come only a few times a year.

   The way I keep my records, if we don’t hear from someone in some way for more than a year, they are dropped from the official membership rolls (though we do try to contact them to see if they will come back). As such, it is likely that nearly all those 155 will attend at least once during the year. 85 is not my “real” membership, and it would be wrong to characterize those 155 who aren’t here on a typical Sunday as non-members just because they aren’t there every single Sunday.

   I know that not all parishes keep count exactly the way we do, but I also know that just because only 23% of GOA members are in church on a typical Sunday does not mean that the other 77% never come. “Non-attending” is not the right term for these people, since some of those 77% will be there when some of those 23% are not. Church membership is not dividable into “always there” and “never there.”

   Reply
9. George Michalopulos

   December 10, 2010

   Fr Andrew, that’s a great clarification. In going over Krindatch’s numbers, I think we first have to thank for doing a herculean job. However, in regards to the overall GOA numbers, we’re still dealing with the phenomenon of GIGO (garbage in/garbage out).

   Allow me to explain: although he has slain the fantastical dragon of the exaggerated number of “1.5 million adherents” (which the GOA still has not done yet if The Orthodox Observer is still to be believed, the much more modest number of 565,000 is still just as unrealiable. The previous number of 1.5million meant that there were 2700+ adherents per church (1.5million/549 parishes). At 565,000/549, that would put us down to 1029 adherents per parish. Again, does anybody really believe this to be the case?

   Reply