"...what few Orthodox are remaining are switching to the more generic Orthodox church..." "Generic" Orthodox Church?? Exactly what Church does this refer to?
""...what few Orthodox are remaining are switching to the more generic Orthodox church..." "Generic" Orthodox Church?? Exactly what Church does this refer to?"
I can't imagine what this is supposed to mean. Orthodoxy is growing fast, not with new imigrants but with converts, mostly from ECUSA and fundamentalist and evangelical Protestants.
"Meanwhile, the Council reported the Greek Orthodox Church (17th largest) as having 1.5 million members; the church doesn't report annually, but just a few years ago, it had nearly 2 million members. Of course, that report itself was quite old, so the decline isn't that amazingly fast. Still, unless there is rapid, unforeseen growth in the smaller Orthodox congregations, it means that overall, the Orthodox Church is likely declining, and what few Orthodox are remaining are switching to the more generic Orthodox church."
Back in the Spyridon era the Archdiocese put out that there were 3,000,000 Orthodox in the GOA. It was bunk designed to make the numbers of insurgents look small and create an aura of great authority in the hands of that very failed Archbishop. There have been about 1,500,000 GOA communicants for some years now, with, as I have said, some good growth the past 6 years or so. The other Orthodox jurisdictions here, especially the Antiochians, are growing too, again with converts from Protestantism.
I meant no offense, criticism, or condescension. The denomination in question is simply called "The Orthodox Church in America," with no reference to whether it is Russian, Greek, Armenian, etc., and it is a member of the water-down-your-faith-to-get-along-with-Stalinist National Council of Churches, and from what I could discern (and I was not at all sure of this) appeared to be English-language. (Not a necessarily bad thing, either... I work for a group advocating the adoption of English. Not that I'd stress that *rituals* should be done in English, but I'm hardly alarmed if English is used in such rites.)
If the Orthodox Church is actually gaining converts, I consider that wonderful news. My post was not intended to be triumphantalist -- and I added a little fluff to try not to sound like I was saying, "haha! Our church is growing and yours is shrinking!" Rather, it was with alarm that I noted the decline of traditional Protestant sects.