Inductivist

While I have a lot of respect for both Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, they are not sociologically conservative--at least not as I measure it. I figure a denomination is conservative in this sense if its most involved members are its most conservative. You can gauge the soul of a church by its most active people. If I calculate the correlation between attendance and one's level of political conservatism for a sample of white Southern Baptists (GSS data), I get a decent .28--more religious people tend to be more conservative. By contrast, the correlation for white Catholics is a trivial .11, and Orthodox members are even worse: .07.  I know many liberals in both denominations who can be found in the pews every Sunday. It seems like the conservative parishioners are more outspoken (refreshing for someone who spends Monday-Friday listening to loudmouth, university-emboldened liberals). But if you want a church filled with conservatives, you will probably have to go elsewhere.     

Men in this corner of the blogosphere complain that Christianity is too feminine. I liked this article by Frederica Mathews-Green. She surveyed one hundred Eastern Orthodox men, most of whom converted as adults, why their church is appealing to guys. I can summarize their answers with a list of adjectives:

Challenging
Active
Unyielding
Physical
Demanding
Rigorous
Ascetic
Martial
Heroic  
Duty-oriented
Male-led
No-nonsense
Unsentimental
Traditional
Enduring
Ancient
Visual
Bearded

Okay, but is the Orthodox sex ratio actually tilted toward men?  Here are the percentages of members who are male by religion (I limited the analyis to people born in America to eliminate a male surplus of immigrants):

Percent male (sample size = 43,632)

Muslim 68.2
Buddhist 60.3
Eastern Orthodox 47.4
Southern Baptist 47.3
Jewish 45.6
Roman Catholic 43.5
Lutheran--Missouri Synod 42.8
Methodist 42.8
American Lutheran 42.3
United Methodist 40.6
Episcopal 37.9
Interdenominational 32.3

It looks like there is a tendency for more traditional religions to appeal to men.

Bruce Charlton writes that Russians might have "turned a corner and reversed their decades-long civilizational decline." He points to Russia's return to Orthodoxy as an explanation. But is it true that Russians are becoming more religious?

The World Values Survey has asked Russians since 1990 about the frequency of their church attendance. I limited my analysis to Russians with university educations since the actions of leaders are most important. I calculated the percent of people who go to church at least for major holidays:

Percent attending on major holidays or more frequently

1990 13.8
1995 23.6
1999 24.4
2006 37.1

That's a pretty big increase. And let us not forget that Russians stand for the entire service (pews are available only for the sick and elderly) which runs about 2 1/2 hours. That's dedication.