Issue 8

Growth

Sometime in the late-1930s, Robert Royster (whom we now remember as Archbishop Dmitri) and his older sister, Virginia, visited a Greek Orthodox parish for the first time. They were teenagers, raised as Baptists; and this was in Dallas, their hometown—a place where Eastern Christianity did not have a major presence. They had learned about the faith from a coffee-table book on world religions.

There’s no record of what that visit was like, but the pair must have gotten strange looks. At the time it was nearly unheard for Americans to join the Orthodox Church, except in the context of marriage. Even so, the siblings kept attending. They had to wait two years for a chance to speak with the bishop, when he visited from New York, and ask to be received into the Church. He probed them about why they wanted to join, but ultimately gave permission. They were received in 1941.

In the 1950s, the siblings established a mission parish with services in English. Royster became a priest, then a bishop. And over the decades that followed, he played a key role in the OCA’s development, working with Rev. George Gladky and others to build up the Diocese of the South.

Now, almost a century after that first visit, the Orthodox situation in the US is unimaginably different. Not only is it fairly normal for Americans to convert, but during these last few years, parishes have been experiencing a growth spurt unlike anything we’ve ever seen. It has become normal to hear about communities receiving 20 or 30 new converts at a time. The available data is spotty, but one recent survey (conducted by the recently founded St. Constantine College, in Houston), involving 20 parishes and spanning half a dozen jurisdictions and 15 states, found that conversion numbers in 2022 were up 78% from 2019. Anecdotal evidence suggests that they haven’t gone down since then.

The mainstream press has taken notice. The Wall Street Journal, the BBC, and NPR have all published or broadcast recent stories on this explosion of interest in our faith.

In this issue of Jacob’s Well, we explore the challenges and opportunities brought about by this influx of converts and Orthodoxy’s increased visibility in the public sphere.