On Religion: The Flood Of Converts Reshaping American Orthodoxy (Part 2)
(ANALYSIS) The Orthodox baptism rite includes a three-stage exorcism that is extremely detailed about the spiritual warfare that surrounds new Christians.
It concludes with this appeal to God: “Redeeming this Your creature from the yoke of the Enemy, receive him into Your heavenly Kingdom. ... Yoke unto his life a shining Angel to deliver him from every plot directed against him by the Adversary, from encounter with evil, from the noon-day demon, and from evil dreams. Drive out from him every evil and unclean spirit, hiding and lurking in his heart.”
The “enemy” is Satan. Catechumens are asked three times: "Do you renounce Satan, and all his works, and all his worship, and all his angels, and all his pomp?”
They respond: “I do renounce him.”
After several years of conversations while traveling nationwide, Father Andrew Stephen Damick is convinced these ancient prayers are painfully relevant to many converts surging into the small, but now growing, Eastern Church in America. It is no longer unusual to meet converts who have worshipped other gods and spirits.
“There's a sense of disenchantment, both in the sense of people feeling disillusioned and sort of bummed by the culture in general, but also disenchantment in the sense of a disconnection from the unseen spiritual world,” said Damick, of the online Ancient Faith Ministries.
The converts want stability and guidance. Damick, via Zoom, stressed that many have “experienced the darkness of the unseen spiritual world and want to know what to do about that.”
During a recent online forum — “American Orthodoxy in 2040” — Seraphim Rohlin, a data scientist who is also a deacon in the Orthodox Church in America, described a survey of converts in the Dallas area.
As expected, 50% were former evangelicals, but 25% were former Catholics and 25% were truly “unchurched,” including some neopagans. After a surge of young male converts, Orthodox leaders are now tracking a larger wave of young families.
As with many faith groups, some Orthodox parishes declined during the coronavirus pandemic. Other parishes stalled. Still, there have been pockets of Orthodox growth across the nation, even in areas with plateaued or declining population numbers. The biggest surge is in the Sun Belt and West, with numerous parishes doubling and tripling in size.
The key, said Rohlin, is that Orthodoxy is “bucking the trend” and seeing “net growth,” based on his work crunching numbers from the Cooperative Election Study, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, the University of California, Los Angeles, and elsewhere. A high number of converts are from Generation Z, born between the mid-1990s and early 2010s.
Working with the Orthodox Studies Institute at Saint Constantine College in Houston (where I am a senior fellow), Rohlin offered two projections of what American Orthodoxy could look like in 2040.
In a “conservative” model, the current surge “levels off,” resulting in 69% more members, which could lead to 1,385 new parishes, he said. In his second projection, current growth rates continue, producing a 115% membership increase, requiring the funding and construction of 2,305 new churches — double the number of Orthodox parishes today.
That's good news. The bad news is that America's three major Orthodox seminaries — located in the Northeast, far from the "hot spots" of growth — will need to provide 138% more seminarians to meet current needs in Orthodox America. If current growth rates continue, Orthodoxy will need 586% more seminarians to replace priests set to retire and those needed for new missions and parishes.
“There is a growing number of priests exhausted by the increased workload,” said Metropolitan Saba, leader of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America, in a recent Denver address.
“Some of our church buildings are so full on Sundays that they exceed the fire code, and parking lots cannot fit any more cars. How many inquirers have turned around and left because they could not fit into the temple? How many of our existing faithful have been neglected because their priest must now ration his time and pastoral care? ... We must respond to this urgent challenge both prudently and swiftly, recognizing it as not only a problem but also a great opportunity.”
You can read Part 1 here.
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Terry Mattingly is Senior Fellow on Communications and Culture at Saint Constantine College in Houston. He lives in Elizabethton, Tennessee, and writes Rational Sheep, a Substack newsletter on faith and mass media.