The Post-COVID Plateau Of The Episcopal Church
(ANALYSIS) Here’s what I love about my “job” now — people actually go out of their way to send me updated denominational statistics. I used to have to hunt for them across all kinds of websites and online resources.
Let me just make this point one more time: I wish there were an online repository that kept these statistics in a clear and organized way. Then all these denominations could just upload their data to that central place. This sounds like a great project to be grant-funded. But I digress.
What we’re here for today is a deep dive into The Episcopal Church (TEC). It’s a denomination I’ve been tracking for a long time because they’re so good at publishing their numbers. On October 24, they uploaded their 2024 Parochial Report, which came in a PDF file that’s more for public consumption than for data nerds like me. But with a lot of brute force, I’ve managed to pull it into a spreadsheet that can help paint a clearer picture of TEC in 2024.
First things first — they don’t have any membership data in this update.
Their rationale is: “The committee experimented with new ways to ask about and count total churchwide membership, and the data collected revealed confusion in how churches understood and reported this topline number. The presiding officers are collaborating to devise a process that provides clearer data on total membership in future years.” So, I can’t really give you the “headline” number.
But take heart, dear readers. There’s still plenty of analysis to dive into — including several province-level maps that I’m super proud of. However, before we move on to the geospatial stuff, let’s start by looking at trends in in-person worship attendance over the last 15 years.
You can read the rest of this post on Substack.
Ryan Burge is an assistant professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University, a pastor in the American Baptist Church and the co-founder and frequent contributor to Religion in Public, a forum for scholars of religion and politics to make their work accessible to a more general audience. His research focuses on the intersection of religiosity and political behavior, especially in the U.S. Follow him on X at @ryanburge.