Source: Orthodox History
December 5, 2024
This meme has been circulating online, making inaccurate claims about the US Orthodox population.
Lately, a meme has been circulating online, claiming that the number of Orthodox Christians in America has grown from 700,000 to six million in just four years, 2020 to 2024. This is a complete fiction – but it has quite a history.
The Earliest Estimates
In 1890, in conjunction with the decennial census, the US Census Bureau surveyed churches, resulting in a Report on Statistics of Churches in the United States. The report shows a grand total of 13 Orthodox churches in the territory of the United States – eleven in Alaska (which wasn’t yet a state), one Russian church in San Francisco, and one Greek church in New Orleans, which reported itself to be part of the Athens-based Church of Greece. Altogether, they found 14,104 Orthodox, with just 600 in what we now call the “Lower 48.” Here are the reported numbers of “communicants or members” by state/territory:
- 13,504 in Alaska Territory
- 500 in California
- 100 in Louisiana
American Orthodoxy grew dramatically in the years that followed, thanks to the flood of immigration (much of it through Ellis Island) and the conversion of Uniates to Orthodoxy. The next time the Census Bureau surveyed churches was in 1906. Four Orthodox groups were included – Greek, Russian, Serbian, and Syrian – and in total, they claimed 129,606 “communicants or members.”
The next census of religious bodies was in 1916, and by now, Albanian, Bulgarian, and Romanian parishes had been added to the mix. This time, the Census Bureau found 249,840 Orthodox in America.
...Read the rest at Orthodox History.
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