Orthodox Church in America Increasing
Kendall Harmon of the Anglican blog TitusOneNine, a CAS must read, notes a recent USA Today article on a welcome trend among the Orthodox Church in America. Namely, their congregations are increasing. Not only are they increasing, but the congrgeations are swelling with both Catholic and Reformation Christian converts.
According to a study by the Patriarch Athenagoras Orthodox Institute in Berkeley, CA, 29% of Greek Orthodox in America are converts. Amazingly, as many as 56% of clergy among the Orthodox Church in America (OCA) are converts.
A commenter Ad Orientem on TitusOneNine noted:
"The fundies generally come to Orthodoxy when they start discovering church history. By which I mean the part between the end of the New Testament and Martin Luther / John Calvin. To read the Fathers is to end forever the weird ideas that so called “Bible Christians” have about things like sola scriptura etc. I have yet to meet a fundamentalist Protestant who was well read in the Fathers and early Church history. It is absolutely impossible to square Protestantism with the faith of the first millennium."
If you'd like your voice to be part of the discussion, click over to TitusOneNine. Don't forget to set a bookmark while you're there.
Related Posts:
Pew and the U.S. Religious Landscape
Ordination Prayer for Women Deacons Differs
Source: Study finds more U.S. Orthodox Christian converts
According to a study by the Patriarch Athenagoras Orthodox Institute in Berkeley, CA, 29% of Greek Orthodox in America are converts. Amazingly, as many as 56% of clergy among the Orthodox Church in America (OCA) are converts.
A commenter Ad Orientem on TitusOneNine noted:
"The fundies generally come to Orthodoxy when they start discovering church history. By which I mean the part between the end of the New Testament and Martin Luther / John Calvin. To read the Fathers is to end forever the weird ideas that so called “Bible Christians” have about things like sola scriptura etc. I have yet to meet a fundamentalist Protestant who was well read in the Fathers and early Church history. It is absolutely impossible to square Protestantism with the faith of the first millennium."
If you'd like your voice to be part of the discussion, click over to TitusOneNine. Don't forget to set a bookmark while you're there.
Related Posts:
Pew and the U.S. Religious Landscape
Ordination Prayer for Women Deacons Differs
Source: Study finds more U.S. Orthodox Christian converts
Labels: Demographics, Eastern Orthodox, Statistics
1 Comments:
Look at the baptism records and old parish photographs -our parishes used to be MUCH bigger. Read the Hopko letter - he laments that nowadays a parish of 200 is considered large, and some OCA diocese have fewer members throughtout as our old cathedrals did.
Estimates on OCA membership are tricky to be sure. If there is anyone that still believes it is 1M+, I have this great ocean-front property in Arizona I need to get rid of for rock bottom prices, please call me...
The last OCA yearbook lists 1026 clergy - 180 some deacons, the rest priests...
Using the Hartford Institute's estimated membership of 39,000 for the OCA...
(per: http://hirr.hartsem.edu/research/tab2.pdf)
You get -
ratio of clergy to laity: 38.01
ratio of priests to laity: 47.04
39,000 / 456 parishes = 85.52 members per parish
Using Fr. Jonathan Ivanoff's estimated membership of 27,196
You get -
ratio of clergy to laity: 26.50
ratio of priests to laity: 32.85
27,196 / 456 parishes = 59.64 members per parish
If some sources are correct, that the OCA active membership is closer to 15,000 you are getting to a point where 1 in 15 members of the OCA is a deacon, priest or bishop. Not great any way you slice it.
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