You raise a good question one which is likely not to be answered.
To be honest, I don't see the Assembly of Bishops authorizing such a study. As for the FIRE data, I suspect we're simply too small and marginal to American society to merit this kind of precision.
As I pointed out in my comment of Burge's blog as with other minority groups, from the outside Orthodox Christianity in America can seem rather homogeneous. In fairness, this is something which many of us (I'm a Ukrainian Orthodox priest and social scientist) intentionally cultivate. So why would FIRE do a breakdown? It's all pretty much inside baseball.
That said, seeing the breakdown for those kids born in an Orthodox family and those who became (with or without their families) later in life would be interesting.
Likewise, how do Greek Orthodox (the largest community in America) students compare with those from other Orthodox ethnic communities (Ukrainian, Russian, Serbian, Arab, etc/)?
We might ask if the students are immigrants, first or second generation. Likewise, if their parents converted to Orthodoxy, were the respondents raised in the Orthodox Church (making their experience likely closer to a so-called "ethnic" Orthodox Christian raised in say a Greek family that was also Orthodox).
Like I said above, at ~.5% of the adult US population, there are likely too few Orthodox Christians to get a representative sample. But I think even anecdotal would be pastorally interesting.
I notice these numbers reverse the usual Catholic vs. Orthodox comparison, as every other survey I have seen over the years has Orthodox respondents slightly better than Catholic (but only just). Anecdotally, I have only experienced a couple of people within Orthodox parish life who explicitly identified as homosexualist, argued for its normalization, etc. On the other hand I sent my children to Catholic schools and youth groups (no Orthodox option being available) for years and we had to dodge the LBQT alphabet folks too often, and was one of the factors for us deciding to switch to a school ran by evangelicals ("soft" Calvinists?) as they did not tolerate it.
As I mentioned to Steve, Orthodox Christians are ~.5% of the adult US population. This makes data collection and comparison to other Christian and non-Christian tradition very difficult. Given our small numbers, that you (or anyone) would only meet a few gay Orthodox Christian is again not really all that surprising.
I think it would be fascinating to see the Orthodox numbers parsed by jurisdiction and "cradle/convert" demographics.
You raise a good question one which is likely not to be answered.
To be honest, I don't see the Assembly of Bishops authorizing such a study. As for the FIRE data, I suspect we're simply too small and marginal to American society to merit this kind of precision.
As I pointed out in my comment of Burge's blog as with other minority groups, from the outside Orthodox Christianity in America can seem rather homogeneous. In fairness, this is something which many of us (I'm a Ukrainian Orthodox priest and social scientist) intentionally cultivate. So why would FIRE do a breakdown? It's all pretty much inside baseball.
That said, seeing the breakdown for those kids born in an Orthodox family and those who became (with or without their families) later in life would be interesting.
Likewise, how do Greek Orthodox (the largest community in America) students compare with those from other Orthodox ethnic communities (Ukrainian, Russian, Serbian, Arab, etc/)?
We might ask if the students are immigrants, first or second generation. Likewise, if their parents converted to Orthodoxy, were the respondents raised in the Orthodox Church (making their experience likely closer to a so-called "ethnic" Orthodox Christian raised in say a Greek family that was also Orthodox).
Like I said above, at ~.5% of the adult US population, there are likely too few Orthodox Christians to get a representative sample. But I think even anecdotal would be pastorally interesting.
In Christ,
Fr Gregory
I notice these numbers reverse the usual Catholic vs. Orthodox comparison, as every other survey I have seen over the years has Orthodox respondents slightly better than Catholic (but only just). Anecdotally, I have only experienced a couple of people within Orthodox parish life who explicitly identified as homosexualist, argued for its normalization, etc. On the other hand I sent my children to Catholic schools and youth groups (no Orthodox option being available) for years and we had to dodge the LBQT alphabet folks too often, and was one of the factors for us deciding to switch to a school ran by evangelicals ("soft" Calvinists?) as they did not tolerate it.
As I mentioned to Steve, Orthodox Christians are ~.5% of the adult US population. This makes data collection and comparison to other Christian and non-Christian tradition very difficult. Given our small numbers, that you (or anyone) would only meet a few gay Orthodox Christian is again not really all that surprising.