Eastern Orthodoxy by country
Based on the numbers of adherents, the Eastern Orthodox Church (also known as Eastern Orthodoxy) is the second largest Christian communion in the world after the Roman Catholic Church. The most common estimates of the number of Eastern Orthodox Christians worldwide is approximately 200–260 million. The numerous Protestant groups in the world, if taken all together, outnumber the Eastern Orthodox, but they differ theologically and do not form a single communion.
Christianity in the Middle East
The Arab Christians mostly descended from Arab Christian tribes, from Arabized Greeks or are recent converts to Protestantism, and number about 5 million in the region. Most Arab Christians are adherents of the Eastern Orthodox Church. Roman Catholics of the Latin Rite are small in numbers and Protestants altogether number about 400,000. Most Arab Christian Catholics are originally "non-Arab", with Melkites and Rum Christians descending from Arabized Greek-speaking Byzantine populations. They are members of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church, a Eastern Catholic Church. They number over 1 million in the Middle East. They came into existence as a result of a schism within the Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch due to the election of a Patriarch in 1724.