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The Patriarch Athenagoras Orthodox Institute has just released the findings of a national survey and study. The report is quite extensive and can be downloaded from the PAOI website. [orthodoxinstitute.org]

In IC XC,
Father Anthony+

Слава Ісусу Христу!

Wonderful! Very interesting. Thank you.

Father Anthony, bless.

I just read the summary, I will be studying the details later.

Do you think that the "average" parish size of 545 (1,200,000 souls divided by 2200 parishes) is a fair figure or does this this confirm the "a majority believe that....church attendance is nonessential"?

Fr Deacon Paul

The numbers game is always a difficult one. I think the number of Orthodox Christians in the US is much more. If you take the Orthodox Church in America, for example, there are something like 400 parishes. Estimates on the number of faithful are anywhere between 30,000 (pretty low) to 1 million (ridiculously high). Even if there are only 100 faithful per Church, that is still 40,000. However, I think that the number is nearly 100,000. It all depends on how one qualifies active, socializing, supporting member of the Church.