Episcopal Church Faces Stark Demographic Reality As Membership Declines
(ANALYSIS) Episcopal Church leaders have long heard warning sirens in their annual reports, with brutal statistics supporting this reality: They have lost half of their members since the 1960s.
If trends continue, the mainline Anglican flock in America will lose another half of its membership by 2040, with some demographers predicting institutional demise by 2050. But that's better than the Anglican Church of Canada, which could be gone by 2040.
After years of producing reports about religion in America, political scientist Ryan Burge knows a viral headline when he sees one. One of his recent Graphs about Religion Substack posts asked: "When Are Half Your Members Going to be Dead?”
“Episcopalians are old,” wrote Burge. “In fact, two-thirds of their adult members have celebrated their 60th birthday. In contrast, just 6% are under the age of 30. Put simply: For every young adult Episcopalian in the pews this Sunday, there will be about 10 retirees. Oof.”
Episcopalians hold five funerals for every wedding, he noted, in a Jan. 23 address for the Episcopal Diocese of Central Florida.
“My job is to tell the truth," said Burge of the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis. For the Episcopal Church, “the ‘check engine’ light is flashing.”
Episcopalians are not alone, he stressed. In the 1950s, according to historians, "mainline" Protestants — Episcopalians, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Methodists and others — were 52% of the U.S. population. That fell to 30% by 1970 and, today, has hit 8.7%.
“Guess what? Old people die, and they're really religious. And you know who they're going to be replaced by? Young people, who are not very religious,” said Burge, noting that about 43% of Generation Z claims no religious affiliation.
Drawing laughter, he added: “Hey, here's some good news. Attendance is up, a little bit.” And donations are steady. However, “If you die with the most money, you're still dead.”
Burge's name surfaced during the Episcopal Parish Network's annual meeting, held in Charlotte, North Carolina. Asked about reports of doom, Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe noted that “people make their living telling us that. ...
“It's true that our numbers are in decline overall,” he told 850 clergy, donors and parish leaders. But focusing on these trends "as a final word ... is a lie straight from the pit of hell. That is not the teaching of Jesus, which reminds us that this church will remain no matter what. ...
“The body of Christ will remain in the world,” added Rowe. "I believe this is an opportunity for us to recalibrate, to rethink, to step back for a moment, to think about how we can ... make an impact on the world. What I see with the decline, and the numbers, and all of that is just a way for us to find our next intervention, our next spiritual step forward.”
Rowe covered lots of cultural, political and theological ground in a March 4 dialogue with Jonathan Rauch, a contributing writer for the Atlantic and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
Looking to the future, Rauch -- “a gay, atheist Jew” -- described lessons learned during campaigns promoting "same-sex marriage and gay equality." It never worked to say, "You're a hater, you're a bigot if you don't agree with me.” What worked was a moral message affirming "two people bonded in love to each other for the rest of their lives, serving each other and serving their community and, for many of them, serving their God.”
Rauch stressed that mainline Protestant churches were once the “cultural lynchpins of our communities. ... They were sociologically bedrock institutions, but they were also helping give us the ideas that stabilized our democracy." Today, added Rauch, "the critical problem in American political, cultural and spiritual life ... lies among white evangelicals and their politicalization and their fear-based theology.”
In response, Rowe concluded: “What we're trying to do though is talk about a God that is very different, a God that includes, a God that loves and leads with that, a God who creates space for all people, a God who ... understands that we've all been created in God's image, and we're all worthy of love and that we're all beloved of God, even Jewish atheists -- everyone. That is a countercultural message now.”
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Terry Mattingly is Senior Fellow on Communications and Culture at Saint Constantine College in Houston. He lives in Elizabethton, Tennessee, and writes Rational Sheep, a Substack newsletter on faith and mass media.