1) American Orthodox wealth and education and more
2) How American Orthodoxy is changing.
3) Abortion statistics
4) How to find out what much of the American press ignores.
5) Israeli settler attacks on Christians on the West Bank
6) Old-fashioned dancing for two or more sexes
7) Religion in the White House
8) Patriarch Bartholomew on War
That should keep you busy till next week!
1) Among American Christians, Orthodox are apparently the most highly educated, wealthier, are more male, more married, straighter and younger, over 25% of whom are converts.
I left the Episcopal Church which is wealthy, established, and rapidly declining in numbers. I thought I was joining a poor, uneducated, chiefly immigrant Church. Wrong! And today the Orthodox Church is growing rapidly.
Percent with college degree: Orthodox 45%, Mainline Protestant 40%, Roman Catholic 35%, Evangelical Protestant 29%.
See: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/02/19/which-us-religious-groups-are-most-highly-educated/
https://www.pewresearch.org/religious-landscape-study/religious-tradition/orthodox-christian/?dialogId=dialog_income&activeChartId=8062132f4097e387a9af2f77ece31524
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The following analysis is from “American Orthodoxy Today: Results from the Pew and CES Surveys, 2025” by Matthew Namee and Deacon Seraphim Richard Rohlin
Among American Christians:
1. Demographically, American Orthodoxy is unique in several ways. We are younger, more male, and more immigrant-heavy than basically anyone else.
2. However, in terms of behavior, such as church attendance and frequency of prayer, we look basically the same as other “historic” Christian groups like Roman Catholics and Mainline Protestants. We have far less “engagement” than Evangelicals, Mormons, and Jehovah’s Witnesses.
3. Roughly 6 in 10 cradle Orthodox stay in the Church as adults, according to Pew. And roughly a quarter of current Orthodox in America are converts. 60 or 70% of the clergy in my Antiochian Archdiocese are converts.
2) “Orthodoxy in America is Changing”: Father Stephen Andrew Damick
3) American Abortion Stats
These are from Guttmacher Institute *
- rated high for credibility. See: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/alan-guttmacher-institute/
Despite the increasing population, the number of abortions had been declining fairly steadily before the reversal of Roe v Wade in 2022. Since then the decline has stopped. In addition, more abortions are likely now performed sub rosa and are not reported. Can someone explain this?
1980 1.55 million
1990 1,608,620
2000 1,313,000
2021 930,160
2023 1,037,000
2024 1,038,000
2025 1,129,650
4) Do you want to know what’s going on in the rest of the world?
Ukraine: The now almost ignored and ever-more-criminal Russian war against the Ukrainian people:
Read kyiv post.com
Russia has attacked hospitals, rail stations, shopping centers, apartment buildings, power stations. On Monday September 26, 2026, at mid-day, a high speed Russian drone hit Ukraine’s National Academy of Sciences where most of that country’s scientific research has taken place.
Ukraine, however, has hit only Russian oil and gas facilities and shopping distribution centers.
How many Ukrainian civilians have been killed? 1396 during the first half of 2026. Nearing 20 thousand during the five years of war.
How many Russian civilians died during those five years? The government claims nearly 700, though no independent sources are allowed to verify this.
The Middle East: and much of the rest of the world which our American media often don’t cover. To see the continuing genocide in Gaza and the drive to get Palestines out of the West Bank and more, go to: aljazeera.com
5) Last Christian Village in West Bank attacked by Settlers
Here are videos to show you what’s going on.
And I just discovered this on CNN.
6) “Everything Old is New again” – sort of. This is my own commentary.
Not long ago in our Milwaukee newspaper a small front page headline reported that old-fashioned (even before I was young!) “swing dancing” is catching on. I thought that’s great, so I turned to the article, which informed us that instructions for the dancing had been altered so as to make it accessible to all genders, and the accompanying picture showed two men (I guess?) dancing, doing a proper swing. I just recoiled. I know this goes on (I watch YouTube), and I can’t stop it, but for heaven sake, please make up a new dance for it. Don’t ruin an old one.
Which leads to the basic issue.
Q. How many sexes are there? A. Two.
I believe this not because the Church says so, but because the obstetrician does. When a baby is born, the doctor says “It’s a boy!” or “It’s a girl!”. He does not say “It is possibly a boy [or “a girl”]. depending…” Now, how people feel about themselves later in life is another matter. There are cases (I’d guess far fewer than we are led to believe) when people feel they are trapped in the wrong body. OK, there are ways to deal with that compassionately, after they come of age and are able to make an adult decision.
And many of us have interests or tendencies which may in some circumstances be considered unusual for our gender. I was raised an “only” and never had to deal with brotherly competitiveness. In my rural high school guys normally went out for football. I couldn’t have cared less. I went for music and literature and writing. Odd, they thought at first, and I was very uncomfortable. But it never occurred to me that I wasn’t entirely male. We’d never heard of that in those days. I soon found my place, edited the class Annual, got involved in just about all the school’s music program – and in the long run, it seems to have worked out OK, I guess? Another fellow went to girls’ Home Economics courses. Now, that resulted in a whole lot of wondering, considerable talk and some smirking. But he wanted to become a cook, and he did – and he married and had children and grandchildren. No new gender. No problem.
The Lutheran university my grand-daughter graduated from is excellent scholastically. However, when I visited I noted that there were three kinds of restrooms, labeled for “men”, “women” and “all gender”. The University explains that these are “for community members who may not feel comfortable or safe using gendered restrooms”.
What am I missing here? I don’t mean to get into the details, but we are all designed either male or female. Are there more than two ways of “taking care of our business”?
One of my seminary professors said that every generation goes completely off base about something which will become obvious again in the next, when people will look back and wonder “What in the world were they thinking?!” I’m old enough to believe this is one of the present anomalies. A symptom of which is old fashioned Swing Dance altered for the sake of multiple genders.
7 ) Religion in the White Hous
Is this topic political? Yes. Is it religious? Yes.
“Trump puts spiritual adviser on White House Staff.”
You really need to watch this video. I thought surely it was fake, but I’ve checked it out, and so nearly as I call tell it is genuine. If it is not, please comment below: I will apologize and remove it. Some of her talk is “speaking in tongues”, which Saint Paul forbade unless there is an interpreter.
And while we’re on the subject:
President Donald J. Trump’s Easter Message to Iran
I also checked this out, thinking it could not possibly be authentic. But it is.
“Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the F*ckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.”
- He included the “u”.
I can’t resist including this West African proverb, famously quoted by President Theodore Roosevelt at the Minnesota State Fair on September 2, 2001. “Speak softly and carry a big stick—you will go far.”
And this:
“Brethren, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. Let us have no self-conceit, no provoking of one another… Galatians 5:22-26
8) His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew on War
May 20, 2026: “The new creation bestowed upon us by the risen Lord allows no room for hatred and enmity, only love, love without limits, compassion and understanding. By this shall all know that we are true disciples of the risen one: if we have love for one another and for all people. We must always proclaim peace and brotherhood among peoples and nations, not war, even if we baptize it as ‘holy’ to please an authoritarian secular power. There has never been, nor will there ever be, a ‘holy war’! Holiness and war are, by their very nature, mutually incompatible concepts incapable of coexisting in any form!”
What do we hear on this politically sensitive subject from our other Patriarchs and Metropolitans and Archbishops?
Next Week: The Holy Patriarch and Prophet Abraham
Week after Next: I have no idea, but I will.