The Rev. Mark Shinn leads a service at St. Andrew's Russian Orthodox Cathedral in Northern Liberties, a neighborhood that was once a magnet for arrivals from Eastern Europe. Its Orthodox churches survive, but demographic changes through the decades have left them struggling. (ELIZABETH ROBERTSON)<\/p><\/div>
\nHardly anyone notices.<\/p>\n

The ages-old glow of Christendom’s most elaborate, enigmatic liturgy no longer is a guiding light for the community. But inside St. Andrew’s Russian Orthodox Cathedral, beneath four blue onion domes, the sanctuary is as luminous as the day it opened in 1902, if not nearly as brimful of youth and hope.<\/p>\n

The Rev. Mark Shinn, bearded and gold-caped, appears through the “royal door” before the altar, an ornate chalice in each hand. Murmuring a prayer, he raises the goblets toward the worshipers, who bow and make the sign of the cross under the wide-eyed gaze of saintly icons. In a gesture of humility, some sweep their fingertips across the oak floor. A few prostrate themselves to kiss it.<\/p>\n

They do not retake their seats. There aren’t any. The congregants stand for a candlelit service lasting at least two hours and celebrated almost wholly in Old Church Slavonic, an archaic Eastern European tongue.<\/p>\n

On a typical Sunday, about 80 people attend. For that, the archpriest is grateful.<\/p>\n

“We keep no rolls and collect no dues,” Shinn said. “If you come, you’re a member.”<\/p>\n

If you come.
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\nTherein lies the challenge for the five historic Eastern Orthodox churches in Northern Liberties, some hanging on for dear life on this one-third-square-mile patch north of Old City. Their very reason for existence – the Eastern European immigrant wave of the early 20th century – has come and gone from a neighborhood transformed into Philadelphia’s trendiest avant-garde niche, population about 5,000 and climbing.<\/p>\n

“I don’t see much interest in religion in these people,” said the Rev. Vincent Saverino of St. Michael the Archangel Orthodox Church, which marked its 100th anniversary last month.<\/p>\n

Attendance may swell to nearly 300 on holy days – including the Orthodox Christmas on Thursday – but on routine Sundays it is about 60. As in the other Orthodox churches, not one member is from the neighborhood.<\/p>\n

“They come from all over, just not here,” Saverino said, twirling a finger to indicate Northern Liberties.<\/p>\n

Stop newcomers on busy streets and chances are they will say they aren’t religious so much as spiritual. The faith described is free-form, unfettered by institutions.<\/p>\n

“It just manifests itself in different ways than attending church,” said Chris Clark, 33, who works in public relations for a pharmaceutical giant. “I try to be a good person. I try to treat others as I’d like to be treated.”<\/p>\n

Youth’s increasing disconnection from organized religion has been well-documented among the urban educated nationwide. But the pastors of Northern Liberties have their own telling numbers.<\/p>\n

The area also is home to a handful of Catholic churches that, like the Orthodox, took root in Old World ethnicities. The massive gold dome of the 1,810-seat Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception is a beacon on the city skyline – to about 40 people on a typical Sunday.<\/p>\n

“We are barely surviving,” lamented Msgr. Peter Waslo.<\/p>\n

St. Peter the Apostle Catholic Church is an anomaly, for it holds the body of St. John Neumann. Its six Sunday Masses pull more than 1,000 from all over the region, but the Rev. Bob Harrison said the church wasn’t having a magnetic effect on Northern Liberties, where it was founded in 1842 for Bohemians (now Czechs).<\/p>\n

Harrison and fellow clergy sometimes lunch at the voguish complex Piazza at Schmidt’s. They dress in priestly blacks “so we can be a visible presence, so people know we’re walking-distance away,” he said, and joked, “We’d probably do better if we had a doggy day care.”<\/p>\n

The renaissance has inspired a few micro-efforts to reach souls. A start-up evangelical congregation, Restoration and Redemption Ministries, moved into a rowhouse. And Chabad-Lubavitch, an international Hasidic Jewish movement, began renting space four years ago in the old Ortlieb’s bottling plant.<\/p>\n