Houston, March 5, 2026
Photo: pravoslavie.ru
A new analysis from Matthew Namee of the Orthodox Studies Institute (OSI) examining cradle Orthodox retention rates in America has found that approximately six in ten people raised Orthodox remain in the Church as adults, based on data from Pew Research Center’s 2014 and 2023–24 Religious Landscape Studies.
In the 2024 Pew survey, 64% of the 260 respondents who grew up Orthodox still identified as Orthodox. The 2014 figure was similar, at 58% of 231 cradle Orthodox respondents. These numbers place Orthodoxy above Catholics (56%) but below Protestants (70%) in the 2024 data.
Of the 96 cradle Orthodox who had left the faith in the 2024 survey, the majority (54) left religion entirely, with the remainder distributed between Protestant denominations, Catholicism, and non-Christian religions. Despite the retention rate of 64%, some 74% of cradle Orthodox still identified as Christian in some form in 2024, a figure consistent with the 76% recorded in 2014.
Gender differences proved minimal in the aggregated data. Combined across both Pew studies, male retention stood at 63% and female retention at 60%.
OSI also aggregated data from ten smaller surveys conducted between 2014 and the present, totaling 237 cradle Orthodox respondents, of whom 128 remained Orthodox — a 54% retention rate. The General Social Survey for the same period recorded 52% retention among 94 cradle Orthodox respondents. Earlier data from 2000–2012 showed slightly higher figures, with the GSS recording 71% retention, though OSI cautioned that sample sizes are too small to draw firm conclusions from the trend.
Namee notes that OSI plans to conduct its own future research into cradle retention and engagement to better understand the factors behind why some individuals raised Orthodox leave the Church as adults.
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