AHC: Get Orthodox Christianity to be a major religion in the US

[Max Sinister]

Just for comparison: How many Irish emigrated, as percentage of the population?

 

[PuffyClouds]

Ukraine can support 300 million alone, and look at how few people it has.

How was this number calculated?

 

[Max Sinister]

How was this number calculated?

Probably by rule of thumb: 600k sq km * 500 people per sq km = 300M. Many parts of western Europe have settlements this dense, but I don't know whether extrapolation would work like this.

 

[Dathi THorfinnsson]

I just had a thought.

The papacy makes some decision that totally pisses off the US catholics, lay and clergy alike.
Now, realistically, the result of that would be an independent American National Catholic church, but theoretically they could join the Orthodox as a protest.

 

[Vuu]

How was this number calculated?

I'm not sure - someone from here did it, I think it was using crop yields and stuff, and Ukraine has very fertile soil so it made the number jump up so ridiculously

 

[John Roscommon]

I just had a thought.

The papacy makes some decision that totally pisses off the US catholics, lay and clergy alike.
Now, realistically, the result of that would be an independent American National Catholic church, but theoretically they could join the Orthodox as a protest.

Real life example (circa now). My father was raised in the Orthodox Rite and at his funeral someone commented that a number of the older nuns from the Catholic Parish down the street from the Orthodox Church went to Orthodox Mass because Roman Catholicism wasn't hardcore enough for them.

 

[pattersonautobody]

So the US is 73.7% Christian, with 48.9% being Protestant, 23% being Catholic, and the rest being other sects of Christianity. So with any POD after 1860, have Orthodox Christianity become a major religion in the US that is at least on par with Catholicism. What does this require? How does this affect the us? As an extra challenge, get Orthodox Christianity to be the largest sect of Christianity in the us, and as a final challenge, get over 50% of the population to be Orthodox Christian (if possible)

You pretty much need an Anglican Conversion. Not impossible. If we get a reformer like Cyril Lukaris who is not a Calvinist to affirm Anglican communion, but the Anglicans need to drop the Filioque (not impossible, they dropped transubstantiation!).

Then, when the British go to the New World the anti-Anglican orthodox (puritans, baptists, and the like) seem even more crazy. Instead of them being viewed as another type of Protestant,they are overtly viewed as schismatics. When Irish and German immigration comes to the US, a strong Orthodox/Anglican Church is much closer to their view of religion than American Protestantism, so it may lead to their conversions.

For an extra umph, make the Tubingen theologians capitulate to jeremiah II and the Lutherans go Orthodox too. Then you pretty much guarentee that the majority of Protestants today are merely western orthodox.

 

[kingwilliam14]

They form an even more dangerous criminal element than Italian mafiosos ever did.

 

[David T]

Maybe a longer russian civil war?

Already by 1917, the US had passed a literacy test that made it harder for immigrants from eastern and southern Europe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_Act_of_1917 Already by May 1921 it had passed the Emergency Quota Act to keep out even literate east Europeans. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Quota_Act

Even assuming that the Bolsheviks will accept mass emigration (or will be too weak to prevent it) and leaving aside the other problems (like many Russian peasants being too poor even to afford tickets) any notion that the US after 1917 would accept mass immigration from Russia and Ukraine is a total misreading of the political atmosphere in the US at that time. To get an idea of the hostility toward eastern Europeans at that time, read Kenneth L. Roberts' Why Europe Leaves Home. https://books.google.com/books?id=JXU8DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA402