Spending a pleasant Sunday catching up on things, I came across this recent article from USA Today entitled “More Americans Join Orthodox Churches.”

In the United States, Orthodox Christians are a fraction of religious believers, numbering about 1.2 million, according to estimates by Orthodox researchers.

In the past, their growth had been largely fueled by immigration, with churches forming mainly along ethnic lines. Some converts came to Orthodoxy through marriage to a church member.

But now about one-third of all U.S. Orthodox priests are converts — and that number is likely to grow, according to Alexei D. Krindatch, research director at the Patriarch Athenagoras Orthodox Institute in Berkeley, Calif. A 2006 survey of the four Orthodox seminaries in the country found that about 43% of seminarians are converts, Krindatch said.

There are no exact figures on the rate of conversion across the 22 separate U.S. Orthodox jurisdictions. But when Mencotti began attending Orthodox worship, the church was packed with converts, including the church’s pastor, the Rev. John Dixon.

The Rev. John Matusiak, pastor of St. Joseph Church in Wheaton, Ill., part of the Orthodox Church in America, said his parish has grown from 20 people in the early 1990s to more than 600 today, with the overwhelming majority of new members younger than 40.

Krindatch’s research found that one-third of the more than 200 U.S. parishes in the Antiochian Orthodox Church were founded after 1990.

I wish they had harder numbers to attach to the claim. It’s interesting to know that 43% of the priests in Orthodox seminary are converts, but I’m more interested in knowing if the number of priests has gone up. And hearing from two people that their churches have grown tremendously is great news, but it’s anecdotal. I wonder why it was that “There are no exact figures on the rate of conversion across the 22 separate U.S. Orthodox jurisdictions.” Do we not keep track of membership? (Maybe not. I don’t really know.)

Anyway, it’s good news, and it’s a good article. Though they’re sparse on the Church history, all the statements are accurate, which I appreciate. And they even have a quote from Fr. Joseph “Orthodixie” Huneycutt (although their hyphenation of Antiochian — “Anti-ochian” — is a bit strange. Makes it look like they’re the church that’s against the Ochians).

Let’s hope we are trending up. Not that it hasn’t been fun being a member of the Christian Church no one’s ever heard of. But enough’s enough.