Great work ensure proper vetting of all the data. It must have been a time consuming, tiring, and difficult task. But knowing that our fellow Orthodox that are trying to track these issues have such integrity is assuring. Thank you!
I'm grateful that responsible, clear-headed people who understand the math are helping Orthodox groups in the US figure out what's going on. Between the influx of chatbot content and the effects of algorithmic individualism causing massive, ephemeral swings of opinion, it's hard to know what is real. Thanks for your work, Mr. Namee.
Yes, parishes across the country are having experiences similar to yours. Several parishes report weekly attendance numbers to us at OSI, and among those, each one grew by 20-30% year over year just from late 2024 to late 2025. In the entire OCA Diocese of the West, adult membership (i.e., baptized adults active in parishes) grew by 60% from 2017 to 2025. Many, many parishes are experiencing startling growth.
Regarding general population surveys, there are several caveats apart from the caution I expressed in my article. One known issue is that these surveys tend to skew older than the overall population, but those surveys also show that Orthodoxy is one of the youngest religious groups in America. This means that those surveys are undoubtedly underestimating the Orthodox share of the population because they are under-sampling the very demographics that are most likely to be Orthodox (Gen Z and Millennials, as opposed to Boomers and Gen X).
Another issue with general population surveys is that they’re entirely dependent on the respondent’s own self-reporting. So it’s possible to observe what seems like Orthodox stagnation in these surveys even though our parishes are filled to overflowing, because nominal, inactive Orthodox people may stop identifying as Orthodox, but never showed up at church anyway. Replace all those nominal, non-attending people with active converts, and many churches are exceeding fire code capacity.
Great work ensure proper vetting of all the data. It must have been a time consuming, tiring, and difficult task. But knowing that our fellow Orthodox that are trying to track these issues have such integrity is assuring. Thank you!
I'm grateful that responsible, clear-headed people who understand the math are helping Orthodox groups in the US figure out what's going on. Between the influx of chatbot content and the effects of algorithmic individualism causing massive, ephemeral swings of opinion, it's hard to know what is real. Thanks for your work, Mr. Namee.
Absolutely admirable, wonderful work.
Thank you!
Yes, parishes across the country are having experiences similar to yours. Several parishes report weekly attendance numbers to us at OSI, and among those, each one grew by 20-30% year over year just from late 2024 to late 2025. In the entire OCA Diocese of the West, adult membership (i.e., baptized adults active in parishes) grew by 60% from 2017 to 2025. Many, many parishes are experiencing startling growth.
Regarding general population surveys, there are several caveats apart from the caution I expressed in my article. One known issue is that these surveys tend to skew older than the overall population, but those surveys also show that Orthodoxy is one of the youngest religious groups in America. This means that those surveys are undoubtedly underestimating the Orthodox share of the population because they are under-sampling the very demographics that are most likely to be Orthodox (Gen Z and Millennials, as opposed to Boomers and Gen X).
Another issue with general population surveys is that they’re entirely dependent on the respondent’s own self-reporting. So it’s possible to observe what seems like Orthodox stagnation in these surveys even though our parishes are filled to overflowing, because nominal, inactive Orthodox people may stop identifying as Orthodox, but never showed up at church anyway. Replace all those nominal, non-attending people with active converts, and many churches are exceeding fire code capacity.
We certainly would love to see the stats on weekly attendance for the whole diocese, or even the whole country!
Which diocese are you in?