700k to 6 MILLION U.S. Orthodox?! The Real Story - with Matthew Namee

There are memes and headlines going around tracking a change from 700,000 American Orthodox Christians in 2020 to 6 million in 2024. With the convert surge going on, this sounds... plausible?

Matthew Namee joins Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick to talk about not only whether those numbers really make sense but also the history of how Orthodox Christians in America have been counted. He also unpacks for us his discoveries about the demographics of Orthodox in America, culled from studies of the general American population.

Related resources:

#orthodoxy #orthodoxchristianity #orthodoxyinamerica #orthodoxhistory #demographics

--

BOOK ME FOR YOUR EVENT: See email in channel description.

If you would like to support the work that I do, you can make a tax-deductible donation to Ancient Faith Ministries.

[Ben-lhjg]

Lots of people found about the Orthodox through the internet. That's how I found out about it. I grew up Protestant and my whole life thought if I wanted to be a Christian I had to choose between Protestant and Roman Catholic, until I discovered Orthodoxy. I became a serious inquirer and haven't looked back. Attending a Divine Liturgy at an Orthodox Church was a game changer for me.

[HeathDeGaramo]

The 6 million figure of course is silly, but I will mention my ROCOR parish in Northeast Tennessee actually is approaching 10x from around 5 years ago lol. Glory to God!

[tubalcain]

I'm 66, and I was born into evangelical Protestantism. Late in life I had enough, walked away, was received into Orthodoxy ☦️, and never looked back.
My little Antiochian parish in Kansas has been growing exponentially in the last 4 years, with young families, and especially men, particularly young men.

[bonniejohnstone]

I know a Priest that was called in to help a dying church on its last leg. They were desperate! None of the services were in English in an English speaking town, and the children and grandchildren of the parishioners only spoke English.
When the Priest said that the church should begin using English, the parishioners started yelling and kicked him out of the building “We would rather die than use English!”
The Priest had to call for an uber to take him to the airport because nobody from that parish would give him a ride.
He wasn’t a convert Priest.

[josephcbeck]

59:33 i work as the office administrator at a small to medium sized Greek parish, and we have experienced this sort of thing when we changed priests. We used to technically have over 300 people “involved in the parish” according to our database, but less than a hundred actually came to church. When we got a new priest around 2020, he cleaned up the database pretty significantly, so that our database shows less than 300 people actively involved. However we now have around 125 people in church every Sunday. It seems counterintuitive, but so much of it has to do with cleaning up records and being more intentional and realistic about church participation.

[Nashmax]

My Antiochian Parish in Tennessee is bursting at the seams. Since early 2023, we have so many visitors and catechumens that we now commonly put late arrivers into our old temple as overflow during DL. Pascha this year (2024) was insane, and I just don't see how it's going to work in 2025.

[bonniejohnstone]

After 30 years as a convert, estimates have primarily been based on East/West Coast populations. The ‘revival’ in Orthodox Christianity isn’t happening in the traditional large ethnic communities and I don’t think studies know what to do with new data.
I have been in 2 jurisdictions… lived in the West Coast and now in a Colorado town of 80, 000. In 2017 my Colorado Parish population was 175.
2024 our Parish population is over 600 and our church is debt free without ever having a festival.
A Sunday morning will usually have 500 attendance or more primarily because we have no more room. Even the Narthex has chairs.
Participation is over 60% in the life of the Church.(we tithe time and talent to serve the poor)
Other Parishes in our Metro area are booming also.
Do we get visits from East Coast Hierarchs? No.
Instead of ethnic schools and dance groups, we have Bible Studies, special speakers for seminars, Sunday School for adults and children and book studies etc.
Spiritual health (Christ first).
We have 3 Deacons right in the middle of the Priest shortage.
No 1 Priest can serve the Eucharist alone to a congregation that actively receives (400 or more people).
People are not going to wait another hour Sunday morning in line!
(It takes us 20-30 minutes with 3 Deacons and 1 Priest serving on Sundays to serve the Eucharist. Our Priest primarily gives blessings.)
We have been running our Jurisdictions like we live in a village afraid to change anything or at least suspicious.
We don’t have to and should never change our faith… but there’s a ridiculous amount of nonsense that isn’t Orthodox or even Christian dragging our Church down. (A friend on the East Coast goes to a Parish where the Priest will not hear confession if your tithes aren’t up to date. You can’t receive the Eucharist. Shocking!)
Ethnic Priests and congregations don’t know what evangelicals believe or why they would want to become Orthodox.
“You have your own religion, why do you want ours?” (I have been asked this)
When I share a summary of the difference in beliefs the response has always been positive especially when I explain that the Theotokos isn’t venerated at all!
One last thing.
My Parish is ethnically diverse in a town that isn’t very diverse at all.
This has just happened as a result of the love and acceptance of our congregation and the testimony of Orthodoxy in the World.

[itssslashhere]

The internet defiantly grew Orthodoxy and is doing amazingly. The biggest complaint of Orthodoxy is on the lack of Churches around the area for people to go into. Which sucks but I guess it needs more time, in about 10-20 years those number might quadruple which is exciting.

[zzzaaayyynnn]

Great discussion, as usual. I've seen those memes. How we define "Orthodox" and "Christian" makes a big difference in how we count the numbers.

[kaybrown]

Our parish is blessed with lots of catechumens, many babies, and young children. It’s a beautiful thing, glory to God!

[AthanasiusofIreland]

Our parish in the Pacific Northwest has about 30-40 people with 10-15 catechumins and recent converts.

[andlnull]

I would really love a video about how orthodoxy has been transitioning to English in services, translation of popular texts, orthodox texts written exclusively in English...

[NepticChronicles]

I’m a Canadian immigrant from a non orthodox ancestral background, have US citizenship and converted to Orthodoxy in 2021.

[onebadpig]

I know a guy online who lives in Malaysia who started claiming to be Orthodox. When queried, he wanted to become Orthodox but didn't know of any parishes where he was. I connected him to the Russian bishop in Hong Kong, and he was able to find a local parish and convert. There are still plenty of areas here in the US where a person may want to convert, but there's simply no parish close enough.

[matheusmotta]

Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me, a sinner. May your Church grow, oh Lord!

[cellospot]

My church in the boonies of Idaho has doubled in size since 2020. This year, we had around 22 catechumens at one time, which is huge. When I was a catechumen, I was the only one, and then after me, we only had 1 catechumen in the course of two years.

[wyntersynergyundignified]

Is it possible the 6 million Orthodox also included Orthodox Jews, which to this day is still a confusing term to many when I tell someone simply “I’m Orthodox”?

[Deathbytroll]

I joined an Antiochian parish and it’s got a lot of people and it’s looking to expand missionary efforts to places around it

[thereccereport]

I appreciate that you mentioned increasing engagement in Church life. Many parishes would be full wall to wall every Sunday if they won back all of the potential reverts.

[whatshisface]

As an Idahoan, who is also Orthodox, Idaho has about 1.5 million people in the whole state today. There’s no way there was anywhere near 7 million Orthodox people in Idaho over 60 years ago.