Orthodoxy around the World Today

Counting the Orthodox is not an exact science: national censuses, self-identification, and active practice give very different totals, and figures should be read as estimates rather than a register. The Eastern Orthodox are most often numbered around 200 to 220 million; broader counts that also include the Oriental Orthodox churches — a separate communion since the fifth century — reach some 260 million. By any of these measures Orthodoxy is the second-largest Christian communion in the world.

The great majority of Orthodox Christians live in a broad band stretching from Eastern Europe through Russia and into the Caucasus. Russia alone accounts for the largest single share, with more than a hundred million people identifying as Orthodox; large Orthodox populations fill Ukraine, Romania, Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, Georgia, Moldova, Belarus, and Cyprus, where the Orthodox are the majority. Beyond this heartland, Orthodoxy is a growing presence in Western Europe, the Americas, Australia, and — through mission — in Africa and Asia.

Orthodoxy is not a single centralized institution but a communion of local churches that share one faith, one set of sacraments, and full communion with one another. Most of these are autocephalous — fully self-governing, choosing their own primate; the term is explained in the entry on autocephaly. A few are autonomous, self-governing in most matters but linked to a mother church. The traditional order in which these churches are named — the diptychs — begins with the four ancient patriarchates and continues through the younger national churches.

The four ancient patriarchates are Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, each rooted in the earliest centuries of the Church. The Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople holds a primacy of honor as "first among equals." Alongside them stand the later patriarchates and autocephalous churches: Russia (much the largest), Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, and Georgia, together with the Churches of Cyprus, Greece, Poland, Albania, and the Czech Lands and Slovakia, and the Orthodox Church in America (whose autocephaly some churches recognize and others do not). Autonomous churches such as those of Finland, Japan, and Sinai complete the picture. All confess the same faith; none rules the others.

This diversity is deliberate and ancient. From its earliest days the Church organized itself by place, so that each city and land had its own bishop and, in time, its own church, while all remained one in the faith handed down from the apostles. A Liturgy in Moscow, in Athens, in Nairobi, in Alaska, or in Damascus is recognizably the same worship in different tongues — the same Creed, the same mysteries, the same calendar of saints, drawn from every nation on earth.

The Orthodox world is not without its tensions. Questions of primacy, of the boundaries of self-governing churches, of the overlapping jurisdictions in the lands of the diaspora, and of church independence in places like Ukraine are matters of real and sometimes painful disagreement — the tradition asks that these be spoken of soberly and without taking sides. Yet beneath the disputes lies a communion that has held for two thousand years: a Church that Scripture pictures as a great multitude "of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues," gathered around one Lord.