Source: The New York Times

http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F40E16FB3D550C758CDDA00894DE404482

On September 6, 2006 The New York Times reported, "In his day job, Kersey H. Antia is a psychologist who specializes in panic disorders. In his private life, Mr. Antia dons a long white robe, slips a veil over his face and goes to work as a Zoroastrian priest, performing rituals passed down through a patrilineal chain of priests stretching back to ancient Persia. After a service for the dead in which priests fed sticks of sandalwood and pinches of frankincense into a blazing urn, Mr. Antia surveyed the Zoroastrian faithful of the Midwest -- about 80 people in saris, suits and blue jeans. 'We were once at least 40, 50 million -- can you imagine?' said Mr. Antia, senior priest at the fire temple here in suburban Chicago. 'At one point we had reached the pinnacle of glory of the Persian Empire and had a beautiful religious philosophy that governed the Persian kings. Where are we now? Completely wiped out,' he said. 'It pains me to say, in 100 years we won't have many Zoroastrians.' There is a palpable panic among Zoroastrians today -- not only in the United States, but also around the world -- that they are fighting the extinction of their faith, a monotheistic religion that most scholars say is at least 3,000 years old. Zoroastrianism predates Christianity and Islam, and many historians say it influenced those faiths and cross-fertilized Judaism as well, with its doctrines of one God, a dualistic universe of good and evil and a final day of judgment. While Zoroastrians once dominated an area stretching from what is now Rome and Greece to India and Russia, their global population has dwindled to 190,000 at most, and perhaps as few as 124,000, according to a survey in 2004 by Fezana Journal, published quarterly by the Federation of Zoroastrian Associations of North America. The number is imprecise because of wildly diverging counts in Iran, once known as Persia -- the incubator of the faith. 'Survival has become a community obsession,' said Dina McIntyre, an Indian-American lawyer in Chesapeake, Va., who has written and lectured widely on her religion. The Zoroastrians' mobility and adaptability has contributed to their demographic crisis. They assimilate and intermarry, virtually disappearing into their adopted cultures. And since the faith encourages opportunities for women, many Zoroastrian women are working professionals who, like many other professional women, have few children or none."