www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Parish Life & Evangelization EC's Growing or Shrinking?

Dear Friends,

Thr topic of growth in the Byzantine churches in the USA has been discussed on this forum in the past.

I never got the message as to wether the overall US Eastern Churches' population is increasing or decreasing.

What are the estimates? Remember I am asking for the aggregate number of US Eastern Catholics of every tradition.

While I am asking, are Orthodox Churches in the US growing or decreasing in membership?

Paul

The Hartford Institute for Religion Research makes the following statement:

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.

for the rest of the report, see:
http://hirr.hartsem.edu/research/quick_question17.html#table

The following link is also interesting:

http://hirr.hartsem.edu/research/research_orthodoxindex.html

Christ is Risen!
Truly He is Risen!

But not on a day He would be glad to see Vasiloupoulos considered Orthodox...

Or HOCNA...

Did these people look for every schism they could find while doing this survey?

By the way, unlike Protestant churches, it is quite common for most GOA churches to have fully 1/2 + of their regular members and over 1/2 of their parish councils not on the stewardship roles for any given year. The same is true, sadly, of OCA and Ukrainian parishes as well. The higher the immigrant population, the less likely you are to find "REGISTERED" stewards, although you will find ACTIVE, committed members of the parish who are financially supportive, you will often NOT find those same people filling out cards with their names as stewards, hence not being "pledged members" of a church they may give thousands to. I have seen this happen many times.

Gaudior, unamused.

Paul,

I'm very interested in this as well. The answer I hear most often is that the UGCC is decreasing in North America but increasing in Eastern Europe. Overall, I'd bet that the UGCC is shrinking, but of course I'm without statistics.

I don't know about the other Eastern Catholic Churches in the USA. Don't know about the Orthodox Churches in the USA either. Sorry.

Logos Teen

Logos Teen,

Where's Alex? Probably at the vending machine.

You can't find a good sociologist when you need one.

Paul

Go here for comprehensive Eastern Catholic statistics:

statistics [cnewa.org]

It has a breakdown of every Eastern Catholic Church from 1990 to the 2003.

Interestingly, the Ruthenian Byzantine Eparchy I live in (Passaic) has decreased from 85,000 in 1990 to only 24,000 in 2003. The overall Ruthenian Byzantine Church in American has dropped from 268,161 in 1990 to only 100,688 in 2003. Not good news.

Most of the other American Eparchies are not growing either; although most are not dropping like the Ruthenian Church.

I haven't looked at the statistics from other countries as closely, but you can find them on that page.

Dear francis,

Thanks so much for the population trend numbers in Eastern Churches. I too am sad to see that the Ruthenian Byzantine Catholic Church population has delined.

I will look at the other stats later.

Christ is our peace.

Paul

Francis,

That presupposes the original reported figures were correct. They were not. The current figures are possibly the first accurate ones given. This is not only a problem with us either. Another study showed Orthodox figures are grossly overstated as well. For example, the OCA which claims 1 million members was shown to have a little over a 100,000. Quite a difference. That is not to say we have not lost members, I am sure we have, but it does put the paper numerical loss in perspective.

Fr. Deacon Lance

I was a Ruthenian Catholic. Another one of the Parishoners at my parish is a former parishoner of the Annunication in Anahiem. We have another former EC from up in Seattle who just moved to our parish.

I went back to my old byzantine parish, and it was really dimminished in numbers, since ive left. There is like one new person. I think the only acutally byzantine catholics there are the priest and and 6 other people the rest are Romans.

Seems like alot of them are coming to Holy Orthodoxy. The parishoner whos family goes to annunication in anahiem, his family is still there.

In Christ
Nektarios

Dear: Teen

The Antiochian Church in america is growing very very rapidly, we have lots of parishes with in a few miles of each other in each state, and there are Antiochian Mission Churches opeining what seems like very frequently, looks that way when you look at the directory at the Archdiocese website.

For the most part all of the Orthodox Parishes in this country are full.

In Christ
Nektarios

Dear Deacon Lance,

Christ is risen!

I am a little curious where "the OCA...claims 1 million members."

Thanks!

Tony

Part of the problem, if you believe there is a problem, are the massive numbers of disaffected Latins coming into Byzantine churches, not changing themselves, but changing the parshises. It pushes the non-Latins out. Once the Latins find a nice conservative Latin parish closer to home they leave.

That's been my experience, at least.

Tony,

That is what the study cited. I will try and find the link for you.

The same figure is also cited in:
1997 Yearbook of American & Canadian Churches; World Almanac research]; pg. 653.

Fr. Deacon Lance

Fr. Deacon Lance,

Why do you say the original reported figures are inaccurate? If the same methodology is used in 1990 and 2003, why is one considered inaccurate and the other not? I'm not disputing your claim - I just don't understand it.

I'm not trying to pick on Ruthenians. They are the ones I was interested it, as I sometimes frequent a Ruthenian mission nearby (I'm Roman Catholic myself), and their drop seemed the most precipitous in this country. But the news is bad all over - not just for Ruthenians.

Churches grow in two ways - internal (babies) and external (evangelization). My (non-scientific) analysis is that Eastern Catholics are older (so less babies) and culturally set apart (so less evangelization). This leads to a "perfect storm" of declining membership. I know there are exceptions to this generalization, but I've seen nothing on a large scale to dislodge me of this impression.

Note that I am not trying to attack the Eastern Catholic Churches - I have a great love for them and I would love to see them grow. But the cause of any problem must be analyzed and confronted before a solution can be found.

I have a hard time believing this is happening on a large scale. As a Roman Catholic for over a decade, I can say that the most common attitude among "Latins" toward Byzantine churches is ignorance - most don't even know they exist. We have a Ruthenian Mission across the street from our Roman Catholic parish, and I would bet 80% of our parish doesn't even know it exists, much less are they interested in it. It is hard for me to believe that "massive" numbers of Latins are coming to Byzantine churches.

And also, it is definitely and objectively a "problem" if one's church is not growing. The cause might be debatable, but since we were all commanded by Christ to "go and make disciples", any Christian church that is not growing has a serious problem.