“Religion” is a complicated word, as I have noted many times at GetReligion.

Put the word “Byzantine” in front of “religion” or “Christianity” and things get really complicated, as in this secondary definition of that adjective: “ … excessively complicated, and typically involving a great deal of administrative detail.”

Frame Byzantine Christianity with the history of Russian culture and the complications are compounded. Toss in centuries of history — complex, bloody, mysterious and sacred — shared by the Slavic giants Russia and Ukraine and, well, you get the picture.

This weekend “think piece” comes from the Orthodox Christianity news website. This is an information source that, from the American point of view, is extremely conservative. This doesn’t mean that mainstream journalists should ignore it.

Why is that? Because it consistently offers direct links to online sources — documents, speeches, quotable analysis — that the vast majority of reporters and editors would not know about otherwise. This includes, for example, lots of material representing the leadership of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. That’s the historic church of Ukraine that is current caught up — along with millions of its Ukrainian members — in a violent collision between the regime of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukraine’s current government, which is backed by the United States, the European Union and the tiny, but symbolic, Orthodox church in Istanbul led by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I.

It’s easy, these days, for journalists to get government approved material from Moscow and Kyiv. The ancient Orthodox church being crushed by the two armies? Not so much. Thus, it helps to follow the Orthodox Christianity feed on X (the digital platform previously known as Twitter).

Consider the complex realities represented in this recent post: “Percentage of Orthodox is Down in Russia, but Percentage of Practicing Orthodox is up — Survey.” Read this carefully:

According to a new survey from the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Center, the overall percentage of Orthodox Christians has decreased in Russia in recent years, while the percentage of those who actively practice the faith is up.

There are especially fewer believers among young people, and the numerical advantage of Christians over Muslims is shrinking. The results of the survey conducted in July show that 57% of Russians consider themselves Orthodox today, which is down 6% from 2019 — a trend that has been observed over the past decades, writes RIA-Novosti.

According to religious scholar Roman Lunkin, the declining number comes from those who have identified themselves as “generally Orthodoxy” in the past — a diverse group that includes “unbelieving Orthodox” and Orthodox who don’t like the Russian Orthodox Church. He also proposed that less people are identifying themselves simply on cultural or ethnic grounds now.

Journalists can see parallel trends in at least two important American stories — the fading numbers of “cultural Catholics” in Latino communities and the rapidly declining number of “Easter” Christians in many Mainline Protestant pews (and some evangelical denominations, as well). In Judaism, the number of Jews is in decline, but the percentage of practicing Orthodox Jews is rising.

So, is Russian Orthodoxy headed up or down in its homeland?

As is often the case, that kind of question is directly linked to trends on the World Wide Web. Like what?

Archpriest Maxim Kozlov, the chairman of the ROC’s Educational Committee believes the drop is at least partially due to the greater availability of information about the Orthodox faith: “People are starting to learn that being Orthodox means taking on more ethical obligations, restrictions in life. Someone doesn’t want to do this, so he distances himself.”

Amongst people aged 18 to 24, the portion of non-believers has grown by 5 points since 2019 to 42% today. Among 25–34-year-olds, there is a significant number who fluctuate between belief and unbelief or who consider themselves believers but without adherence to any specific religion (10% each). 

Yet, if reporters flip that coin over and there is this:

At the same time, the number of young people identifying as Orthodox has grown from 23% in 2019 to 29% today. And while the overall percentage of Orthodox may have dropped, the percentage of those who practice — who regularly go to church, receive the Sacraments, and are attached to a particular parish — is up. In 2012, the number of those who went to church at least once a month was 7%; today it is 15%.

Thus, in recent years, those who have been “affiliated with Orthodoxy” have tended to move in one of two directions: to become active practitioners, or to stop associating themselves with the faith. …

Read it all. And click here to follow this source on X.

If you follow this feed for a week or so, you will notice links to sources of verbatim documents (that’s what careful reporters need) and other sources of information on all three sides involved in the Ukrainian drama (as well as trends in the United States and the rest of global Eastern Orthodoxy). This is a conservative source, but the online links are the key.

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