Blog article from the author of Turning to tradition: Intra-Christian converts and the making of an American Orthodox Church. Fr. Oliver has approached me to be a source for an article he plans to write on converts to Orthodoxy who leave the Orthodox Church. His blog article here also speaks to that phenomenon, though it is chiefly concerned with Greek Americans' widespread abandonment of the Greek Orthodox Church. Some highlights:
A recent Pappas Post article has highlight that 90% of people in America with Greek heritage are no longer Greek Orthodox. It has been making rounds amongst Orthodox and seems to be stirring up some amount of surprise. Frankly, I’m not so sure it should surprise us. It may surprise us because in many Greek parishes Greek heritage is emphasized. It may also surprise us because Orthodox literature since the 1980s has tended to overemphasize (in some cases simply exaggerate) the movement of converts entering into American Orthodoxy. Converts have been a significant movement within Orthodoxy. Given my most recent book on this very topic, I would be the last person to deny that. However, if one reads the introduction even in there, one will realize that Orthodoxy brings in about as many as it loses. Our growth, to be blunt, seems statistically insignificant. That there is growth may be a good thing, but we also need to be honest about the losses. So, if we’ve done our research, we shouldn’t be surprised to learn of losses. . . .
If we Orthodox can set aside our triumphalism for a few moments, I think we’ll find that what is happening in such cases speaks to a truth. I also think that we have before us the elephant in the room. People are leaving our church and are leaving in droves. My prediction is that unless we get another large convert movement into Orthodoxy, we will find our gains in the 1980s and 1990s were simply the “one step forward” to our “two steps back.” We even have a seminary of a particular jurisdiction with a monastery and I have been told that in terms of numbers and participants, it is a shadow of what it used to be (even while still functioning well enough over all for the moment). This is not just a Greek problem. It is an American Orthodox problem and the solution is not to make Orthodoxy an increasingly niche religion.
Trouble in paradise. In a previous post, I noted Orthodox theologian Bradley Nassif's acknowledgment that there is a signficant exodus of converts to Orthodoxy from the Orthodox Church. He speculates that as much as 50% or more have either reverted or gone on to something else. It will be interesting to see if Herbel can confirm or correct Nassif's metrics in his forthcoming research. As his new blog article suggests, however, the exodus of converts is only one worry, since there appears to be a rather significant exodus of cradles as well.