Last week a major survey of church adherence in the USA showed a decline of Protestants from a majority position. This was seized on by UK columnists, foremost of whom was Damian Thompson of the Daily Telegraph
He commented,”The strangest thing happened last week, though few people noticed it. America officially ceased to be a Protestant country. According to the Pew Forum, the percentage of Protestants has dropped to 48 per cent, down from 53 per cent in 2007. That’s a huge shift.” (The reminder of his remarks can be accessed through the GB news on this site today.)
He goes on to state that the Roman Catholic church in GB is only growing where people are of a very conservative – almost Tridentine – outlook, and that Protestants are only growing where there is intense evangelicalism.
It is a line of thought which has been expounded in Ireland and especially by some who state that any decline in mainstream churches in the USA is due to the adoption of more liberal theology and especially regarding inclusivity.
It so happens that statistics collated by The Research Office of the Episcopal Church (TEC) were made public last week also. It might surprise Mr Thompson and others to learn that thirty-three dioceses of TEC showed membership growth in 2011.
Among the findings issued by the TEC’s Office of Public Affairs:
– In 2011, membership in the Episcopal Church is 2,096,389 with 1,923,046 in the domestic (50 U.S. states) dioceses and 173,343 in the non-domestic (non U.S. states) dioceses.
– Twenty-seven domestic dioceses showed growth in membership in the past year: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Dallas, Fort Worth, Maine, Maryland, Navajo Missions, Nevada, North Carolina, Northern Michigan, Northwest Texas, Oklahoma, Pittsburgh, Quincy, South Carolina, South Dakota, Southeast Florida, Southwestern Virginia, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Washington, West Tennessee, West Missouri, Wyoming.
– In the non-domestic dioceses, growth in membership was marked in six dioceses: Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador-Litoral, Puerto Rico, Taiwan, Venezuela.
– The Average Sunday Attendance table shows a total for the Episcopal Church of 698,376, with 657,837 in the U.S. dioceses.
– The largest active congregational membership in a domestic diocese remains St. Martin’s, Houston this year marking 8,480.
In a public forum discussion on the web various insights were given by participants on why various dioceses grew. Some felt that four dioceses had bounced back after members had left to join the breakaway ACNA. There had been more growth in the more affluent south. One contributor suggested that senior citizens were inclined to relocate there. The growth in the heavily urbanized dioceses of Maryland and Washington is intriguing, as is the growth in some of the largely rural western dioceses.
An individual who had previously been a Roman Catholic gave her reasons for joining TEC. She commented, “As a disenfranchised, disillusioned Roman Catholic I had been attending the Episcopal Church locally for several years. What finally got me to make the jump was a very proactive pastor who orchestrated the necessary arrangements (and even drove me to the cathedral for the service) and a loving warm community at St. Elizabeth in Zephyrhills, FL. My church community was and ‘is’ active in my life. As a Roman Catholic I was mostly just a ghost who appeared each Sunday to take communion then disappear for a week.
“I was received on a Saturday morning…the next day after the 10am liturgy I walked into the coffee hour and was greeted with the words..(from Bette) “I smell a new Episcopalian here!””
The thought struck me – and not for the first time – at least TEC has a church-wide system of collecting statistics. Such an exercise seems to have been studiously avoided in the C of I.
In terms of financial accountability in respect of Charity Commissions can the monitoring of membership growth or decline be deferred? A simple to complete parochial return which can be filed electronically with the diocese and Church House, Dublin, is not the most difficult to devise, or in a church of this scale to collate and analyse.
Equally or indeed more importantly, such an exercise is unavoidable in terms of monitoring response to evangelistic and parochial outreach. At present there is no one in authority – bishop, priest, lay person or official – who can speak with credible supporting evidence on this area in respect of the Church of Ireland. And we still claim to be concerned about mission.
The encouraging initiatives and proposals which have been reported from a number of recent diocesan meetings, will require responsible monitoring including the recording of bona fide statistics. If, as we pray, the Holy Spirit moves this church to outreach and new growth, there is surely a spiritual responsibility to be able to witness accurately with the statistics of such movement. Evidence so produced can be an encouragement and spur to further endeavour and accountable planning under God. It is a key element in the accountability of the church’s stewardship of its resources for the work of the gospel.
Houston McKelvey