Despite Patriarchate’s Church-Building Campaign, Fewer Russians Attended Christmas Eve Services This Year than Last

Paul Goble

            Staunton, January 9 – One of the regular features of the day after Orthodox Christmas in recent years has been a report by the interior ministry about how many people attended services and how many government security agencies guarded them.  This year has been no exception. (For the report, see мвд.рф/news/item/19263473.)

            For the Russian Orthodox Church, this year’s figures are a disappointment, down by 300,000 from a year ago, especially as the Patriarchate has taken credit for opening three churches a day over the past year to bring them closer to the population and thus make it easier for people to attend services (ahilla.ru/tri-hrama-v-den-ili-hrama-zdes-ne-budet/).

            This year, 2.3 million Russians attended Orthodox Christmas eve services, down from 2.6 million in 2019. In earlier years, the figures were 2.5 million in 2018, 2.2 million in 2016, and 2.6 million in 2015.  And this decline took place despite the fact that services were held in more places than earlier (ahilla.ru/kolichestvo-rossiyan-poseshhayushhih-rozhdestvenskie-bogosluzheniya-pochti-ne-menyaetsya/).

            This means that on one of the church’s holiest days, fewer than two percent of Russians attended services despite the government’s promotion of religion as one of the traditional values currently in favor with the Kremlin.  Indeed, it appears that in many places, there were almost as many siloviki guarding the churches and parishioners attending services.