In a post highlighting the importance of Fr. Peter Gillquist (who died recently) for American Orthodox Christianity, I mentioned that few outside of Orthodoxy would know of him, especially if we do not count those who are aware of evangelicalism in the 1980s. The reality is about 2,000 evangelicals becoming Orthodox is a blip on the American religious radar and little more. There is an entire history behind this, and so I thought a series of posts discussing this a bit could be helpful. My point is not that there is no significance for American society or religion from Orthodox Christianity, and I hope I can turn to some of that later. The reality, though, is that in many, many ways, Orthodox Christianity is culturally and religiously insignificant on the American scene. This can be seen as either a reason to pout or a challenge to be addressed. I see it as the latter. In order to help show why, I thought a series of posts on this could be helpful and this is the first in such a series. Because of my background, I will turn to some historical aspects. Before doing that, however, I wish to discuss some of the recent research by Alexei Krindatch, a sociologist doing some great work. To get a head start on this, one may visit here:
http://www.hartfordinstitute.org/research/orthodoxindex.html
That is, I want to situate us a bit before going any farther with this. I’m not going to repeat everything he’s written or concluded here, but there are a few points I would like to highlight in this first post. For now, I thought I’d start with some reflections from Krindatch’s Five Interesting Facts about Orthodox Church Geography and Demography in the United States. Here, please note I’m highlighting what I think is most relevant for us in Fargo, ND–read the full report for more information. I am also not going to focus on just his “five facts,” but on aspects from his data that are important for us.
1) We are fewer in number than a lot of books have historically claimed. In the past, it was normal to speak of the millions and millions of Orthodox in America. That helped bring clergy from the Old World but it led to an inflated number of Orthodox. In reality, we’re a little under 1% of the American population.
2) For us Orthodox in North Dakota, we have not added any parishes since 2000.
3) We are, however, a bit of a regional presence, as Cass County, ND, is highlighted as an Orthodox presence on the county map, though again, with a low population of Orthodox there (as we know all too well–we’re growing but when one is small, growing can still be small).
4) 1/4 (26%) of all Orthodox in America attend church services on a weekly basis. Given our attendance rates and our membership, we are above that, and that is something for which we should all be thankful! The OCA’s average weekly attendance is at 40% and given our numbers, I’d say we’re above that as well.
5) Notice, however, that Krindatch cites parish size as a factor. Very large parishes have quite low attendance rates. Small parishes like ours are like ours, with a majority present on any given Sunday.
That’s it for now. I’ll continue looking through this data in my next post. Again, anyone who’s interested should read the document itself, but I’ll try to highlight things that could be useful to us.
[As a postscript to this first post, I should add that although this begins a series, it does not mean that series might not be interrupted by timely posts on various other matters. Thank you for reading!]
I saw this report a few squares back and read it with interest. I think Orthodoxy and the Episcopal Church are roughly in the same numerical boat, at under 1% of the population. We probably have more people on the books, but in terms of Average Sunday Attendance (which I think is a more accurate statistic), we are in the same general ball park.
The Episcopal Church is in denial about how many people are actually Episcopalians. The spinmeisters want to speak in terms of 2 million, but I think in reality we have about 1 million registered members and around 500k or so of Average Sunday Attendance. But, we’re in denial. Our church put out this census last year, and it has been virtually ignored: http://archive.episcopalchurch.org/documents/ASA_by_ProvinceDiocese2000-2010.pdf
I bring this up because we are neither viewing this as a reason to pout nor as a challenge. We’re just in complete denial that we’ve lost almost 1 in 4 Episcopalians in the last 10 years. Some of this is people leaving, some is people dying faster than we can either have children or baptize converts to replace them. And, frankly, the numbers are only going to accelerate once the baby boomers start dying. Our answer from our General Convention seems to be the classic definition of insanity: more of the same in the hopes that somehow things will change.
But, I noted with extreme interest the charts in the link you suggest. You have several places, particularly in religious regions like the Upper South where I am originally from, that show exponential growth. That’s astounding and to be commended. Meanwhile, in the Episcopal church, we lose people in droves in regions like that because people are out the door, looking for somewhere that is an expression of authentic Christianity.
Suffice is to say, keep the faith. You have productivity to work with. That’s a great starting point. More so than anything we have.
We have had some important growth, indeed, and I will speak to that in the future at some point. We have experienced growth here in Fargo as well. The other important difference between our churches is that the ECUSA has been steadily questioning and rejecting standard traditional Christian teachings. My point is not to start a fight, for I know you’re concerned with that as well, nor am I claiming our clergy and hierarchs are not sinners, for well too often we are. I’m simply noting that that is a difference. Has it affected membership trends in our churches? I think so, but that’s probably a different post for another time as well. We’ll see how this all all washes out but for now, this series is to help put American Orthodoxy in perspective.
I would think that the history of Orthodox churches in the U.S. would mirror in some respects the history of the Eastern Catholic churches. Both have histories based on cycles of immigration, assimilation, new immigration. Both have experienced the addition of converts from Protestant and Anglican traditions which have created new dynamics. (Not all of those travelling with Gilquiist became Orthodox. Many became Catholic, east and west.) Both have seen the growth in the South mentioned in the above comment. (I’m not sure if this is due to migration from the North, migration, especially from the Middle East, straight to Southern states, or converts.) Both have struggled with the tensions between being an ethnic/immigrant church or an eastern church for Americans.
What about Holy Resurrection? How many are cradle Orthodox? Converts from Protestantism? Adult “new” Christians? Converts from Catholicism?
All good points and questions. With the Evangelical Orthodox Church, most did go with Gillquist into Orthodoxy, but as you note, some went elsewhere and there is actually still a very small Protestant denomination known as the Evangelical Orthodox Church. The patterns of immigration are similar, especially when one remembers they were coming from the same geographical regions often. I think the aspect of “assimilation” or “Americanization” is something that needs to be investigated more and it is an area I have begun looking into. It’s an active area of research for a lot of people studying American religion, really. I just happen to concentrate on the Orthodox dimension at this point. Perhaps I’ll write more on this later.
For the OCA in the south, the growth is, from what I know, mostly growth in the numbers of very small parishes, most of which consist of converts of various backgrounds. The new wave of immigration is different from the older waves. Many in the new wave know little of the faith, but that is not always the case. Here at our parish, for instance, our “newer” and new immigrants see the parish as something in which they ought to be involved, though as with any group, there are those who define participation in minimalistic means. That happens, but the vast majority of our newer and new immigrant members are regular attendees here. It should be noted that not all newer/new immigrants attend our parish. There is a small group that meets occasionally in North Fargo when a Russian priest comes to visit them because they wanted to be part of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia and did not share our parish’s vision of a pan-ethnic approach. That happened with the old wave and I suppose it shouldn’t surprise us to see it happen sometimes now with the newer waves.
In our parish, I’d say about 3/4 are part of the newer waves of immigration, with about 1/4 being converts. I’d have to crunch the numbers precisely to give a better estimate, but that’s what I’m thinking. There are also some that are sons and daughters of converts. Where to include them, I don’t know. So, my numbers are quite general right now. As for backgrounds of converts, it mostly runs the range of various forms of Protestantism, with only a couple of possible exceptions, which would include Catholic. Two members, at least, had been Roman Catholic, but one used a bit of Protestantism as a segue and former Catholics have not been an area of significant growth for our parish. I believe it has been more common in other parishes, but I suspect a lot of that growth has died down as we’ve gotten farther from Vatican II. I suspect most Roman Catholics that leave now, do so for other reasons, though again, in other parishes it is different. Indeed, I have a godson who became Orthodox from Rome (but he had originally been raised Protestant).