Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew is often referred to as “the spiritual leader of the world’s [200, 250, 300] million Orthodox Christians.”
So what is it? 200 million? 250? 300? Something else?
I went through every country in the world, and my best estimate is that there are between about 160 and 225 million people who profess to be Orthodox Christians in the world today (not counting the non-Chalcedonians). The mean estimate is 192 million.
Russia, of course, has the largest number of Orthodox Christians — but also the largest amount of uncertainty in terms of how many people are, in fact, Orthodox. Many estimates put the Orthodox percentage of Russia’s population at around 70%, but others, such as the Arena Atlas of Religions and Nationalities in Russia, report a much lower percentage — closer to 40% — which might be more realistic. For Russia, then, we’re looking at somewhere between 62 million and 104 million people who profess to be Orthodox Christians. The mean of the two estimates for Russia is around 83 million.
For each country, I tried to find two estimates, based different on data sources, although in some cases I could only find one number. Most of the data came from official censuses or surveys of the population. Here’s the top ten, based on the means of the estimates.
- Russia, 82.9 million
- Ukraine, 31.9 million
- Romania, 16.2 million
- Greece, 9.7 million
- Serbia, 7.5 million
- Bulgaria, 5.5 million
- Belarus, 5.2 million
- Kazakhstan, 4.5 million
- Moldova, 3.7 million
- Georgia, 3.4 million
The number for Ukraine, by the way, includes all groups claiming to be Orthodox. The top ten countries account for 89% of all Orthodox Christians in the world. The majority of the remaining 11% come from the next ten countries:
- Italy, 2.2 million
- Uzbekistan, 1.8 million
- North Macedonia, 1.4 million
- United States, 1.3 million
- Bosnia & Herzegovina, 1.1 million
- Germany, 1.1 million
- Spain, 913,000
- France, 783,000
- Cyprus, 777,000
- Kenya, 756,000
That’s right — the 11th-largest Orthodox population in the world is now in Italy, where Orthodoxy is basically tied with Islam as the second-largest religion. There are more Orthodox Christians in Italy than in the United States and Canada combined.
The Uzbekistan estimate is very uncertain: in 2010, Pew estimated that 1.7% of the Uzbek population was Orthodox, while the CIA World Factbook puts the Orthodox at 9%, which pushes up their mean estimate a lot. If you don’t trust that data and kick Uzbekistan out of the top 20, they’d be replaced by Kyrgyzstan, at 637,000. France also has a big range, with a variety of surveys putting the Orthodox percentage anywhere from 0.4% to 2.0% of the population (so, anywhere from 261,000 to 1.3 million people).
Lebanon and Syria are #24 and #28, with just shy of a million Orthodox between them, although that number is very uncertain given all the upheaval in the region.
Albania and Poland both have autocephalous churches, but both are extremely small, ranking #29 and #32, with around 400,000 Orthodox in each country. The autocephalous Church of the Czech Lands is even tinier — combined, the Czech Republic and Slovakia have around 65,000 Orthodox people, which puts them just a little bit ahead of Ireland (#53). Finland, an autonomous church under the Ecumenical Patriarchate, had 61,000 Orthodox based on its latest national census, but recent survey data suggests a number as high as 111,000.
Antiochian Orthodox Paschal celebration in the Hatay province in Turkey, 2018
Turkey is home to not one but two ancient patriarchal sees: everyone knows Constantinople, but don’t forget that Antioch (now called Antakya) is in Turkey, and where the Patriarchate of Antioch still has canonical territory. The Antiochian Orthodox, concentrated in southeastern Asia Minor, were not subject to the forced population exchanges between Turkey and Greece in the early 1920s, and today there are vastly more Antiochians than Greeks in Turkey — possibly ten times as many. So when you see reports that “only 2,000 Orthodox are left in Turkey,” remember that it’s only talking about Greek Orthodox. In addition to the Antiochians, we can add to that tens of thousands of foreign workers in Turkey, including something like 50,000 Russians — many of whom are Orthodox. And Ukrainians, Bulgarians, Serbs… add it all up, and I’m estimating something like 100,000 Orthodox Christians in Turkey, of various nationalities.
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Orthodoxy grew rapidly in Sub-Saharan Africa in the 20th century, and along the way the Patriarchate of Alexandria — which historically had been limited to North Africa — annexed the rest of the continent. An estimated 1.3 million Eastern Orthodox now live on the African continent, with over half of those in Kenya. There are a surprising number in Ivory Coast, with an estimate of about 100,000. Of course, these numbers don’t include the non-Chalcedonians, which have far more faithful in Africa (particularly Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Egypt).
What about Western Europe — countries that would generally have fallen under the jurisdiction of the Church of Rome prior to the schism? I’m estimating 7.1 million (with a low/high range of 5.6 to 8.6 million). A great many of these people are ethnically Romanian.
Many of my readers will likely have a particular interest in the U.S. and Canada. For the U.S., my two estimates (856,000 and 1.65 million, with a mean of 1.26 million) were based on (a) the 2010 census of American Orthodox parishes conducted by Alexei Krindatch, which estimated that around 0.26% of the U.S. population is associated in some way with an Eastern Orthodox church, and (b) the Pew 2014 U.S. Religious Landscape Study, in which 0.5% of participants identified as Orthodox. Both of these sources have significant flaws, but they’re the best we have to work with right now.
Canada collects religious affiliation information in its census, the most recent of which (2011) found that 1.52% of the population was Orthodox (not counting non-Chalcedonians). A separate source had a slightly lower estimate (1.38%). So our range is 521-574k, with a mean of 548,838.
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You can view all my data, including links to sources, by clicking here. All these estimates are just that — estimates — based on the best publicly-available information I could find, and I’m happy to be corrected on any of these numbers.
Next time, I will examine a different and perhaps even more interesting question: How many practicing Orthodox Christians are in the world?
It may be fair to play the numbers game with Russia, but then it is only appropriate to apply that all other Orthodox/Christians too.
Most of those other countries have consistent numbers across a variety of sources. Russia is unusual in this regard.
Ethiopia has the second biggest orthodox christians in the world after Russia, where is in the list?
The article was about Eastern Orthodox Christians (Chalcedonian) and did not include Oriental Orthodox (Non-Chalcedonian). No insult or anything was intended – I was just looking at EO numbers.
If, The article was about Eastern Orthodox Christians then why don’t you say so…
“How Many Orthodox Christians Are in the World?” Is the title 🤔
You are right in terms of Orthodoxy. But there are two groups, here they are talking about EASTERN ORTHODOX CHURCHES!
We have some differences though we are all in orthodox category
The very idea that there are three quarter of a million Orthodox in Kenya is ludicrous, as are the usual figures cited for other countries. The metropolitan of Kampala once claimed, in my presence, that there were “300,000” Orthodox faithful in Uganda. I have personally visited almost every parish in that country, and my rough estimate would be around 3,000. Yes, one percent of the figure claimed— and cited by organizations like the OCMC.
There used to be a million members in the OCA, too, until Alexei Krindatch actually studied the matter.
So what is authority then on the number of Orthodox in each county, esp the jurisdictions in the US? I’ve attended over. dozen Orthodox churches in Indiana and Texas, some on a regular basis and my anecdotal observation is they were always packed. That includes several OCA churches in both states. So if anecdotal evidence is worth anything than I guess my observations are just as good.
Deborah, no need for anecdotal evidence, at least in America. See Alexei Krindatch’s work— https://orthodoxreality.org/
If you were replying to my note about Africa, i will stress that when i visited those churches, i was always with the bishop (and sometimes the Patriarch of Alexandria), so there’s a pretty good chance that everyone who could have been there that day, was. And the numbers added up to maybe 1% of what was claimed.
Krindatch himself famously showed that the number of Greek Orthodox— often cited as “seven million” was actually somewhat less than a third of that (as i recall; haven’t looked at the study in a while).
You can play this game with every religion, though. Some 75% of the US population claims to be Christian, but only about 17% are actually in church on Sunday. The article said “profess to be Orthodox”, not “attending Orthodox”. For Jews, it’s even worse (9%) because you can claim to be Jewish based on ethnicity rather than religious belief.
Occasionally somebody asks me, “What’s the difference between your church and the regular Christian church?” and I tell them, “We are the regular Christian church. There are more of us in the world than in all the Protestant churches put together. It is very sad that most Americans know nothing about us.
There are an estimated 800m to 1b Protestants, all together.
And of course there are even more Roman Catholics.
How Many Orthodox Christians Are in the World? Then you don’t even mention Ethiopian Lol, tgen you say “The article was about Eastern Orthodox Christians” maybe you should adjust your title.
What about Egypt. The Coptic Orthodox Church is the mother of all orthodoxy in Africa. After Armenia Egypt is the second Christian country in the world
Saba Demian, wasn’t Ethiopia Christian before Armenia? But I don’t think you could call the Coptic Church the mother of Orthodoxy in Africa. It is pretty much limited to Egypt. All Orthodoxy south of Egypt is Greek Orthodoxy because (largely due to Islam, the difficulty of crossing the Sahara, and the identification of the various churches with their respective national cultures) there were never any missionary efforts from either the Coptic or the Ethiopian churches toward the rest of Africa. And for the most part, even the Greek missions are a very recent phenomenon; all of the Greek churches except Uganda/Kenya and Ghana started as outposts that served the expatriate Greek community exclusively..
Why Ethiopia isn’t in the list when it’s second big population in the world
This article is about Chalcedonian Orthodox only.
And then change the title!
The title is misleading!
You and most others ignore the 500,000 Orthodox in UK.
No, I did not. If you click on the link to my data set (linked at the end of the article), you’ll see that my estimates for Orthodox in the UK range from 448k-612k — basically, right in line with the number you presented. The fact that I didn’t highlight this in my article does not mean I ignored it.
Have you yet examined the subject of your closing remark?
I have studied this, but I haven’t gotten around to writing up an article. Based on the best available data, somewhere around 26.5% of Orthodox Christians attend church on at least a monthly basis. This looks precise but it’s actually a very, very rough estimate — I think we’re looking at something like a 20-30% attendance rate, basically. This works out to roughly 50 million “active” Orthodox Christians in the world.
Thank you for your work, Matthew. It’s sobering.
Bien
In Ethiopia there are more than 60 millions to 75 millions of population is Orthodox Christian.
This article is about Chalcedonian Orthodox only !!!! I am right ?