Only aout 3% of the population attend churchr egulary. Even if a church is crowded with overflow (which happens only on great feasts), it is an insignificant number compared to the rest of the population. This is not much better than, say 5-6% in Germany, where nearlym 1/3 of the population (actually 29%) considers itself atheist.
In America, a profoundly secular country if we judge it by the way of life, trends, fashions, behavior, and so on, the attendance figures are vastly inflated, especially among the Evangelicals. All one has to do is pay attention to people on a Sunday as one drives to church. The vast majority is not going to churches. That much is obvious.
In my parish, there were seven people, priest included, at the Holy Thursday vespers. On regular Sundays, perhaps 30, if that many (it's an ethnic Serbian parish, so it is not very large). On Paschal Sunday, or Christmas Eve, there were hundreds of people present.
It's a minimalist religious culture. Like those chicken-hawks who never could give up three years of their lives to serving/defending their country, they find it impossible or too burdensome to give God two hours of their precious weekned.
It's a miracle the Churech survived communism. The rest will follow naturally, in spite of everything.
true stuff. i find that with the Russians too, even amoung the orthodox folks i often hear folks profess the most ludicrous pagan ideas...
attendance at the parish we go to now is pretty steady, and its a pretty even mix of convert-children of russians who immigrated before-new russian immigrants.
pascha was definitly packed but only about 1.5 to 2 times the usual attendance. i’m surprised that with everyone standing it fills up as easily as it does, it’s not a big building but with everyone standing you’d figure on there being a lot of room.
the oca parish we used to go to (and sometimes still do... we haven’t jumped ship per se, i don’t have any problems with the other parish) typically has 2-3 times the usual attendance on big feast days.
i’ve never been in russia on a major feast day to see how attendance is affected. that said most of their parishes are accessible daily which is something i find rare here.