Several people told me I needed to check out columnist George Will’s recent column on the fading away of the Episcopal Church, once “America’s upper crust at prayer,” as he termed it.
His depressing statistics actually were out of date.
The denomination sunk to 2.1 million active, baptized members in 2006, down from 2.4 million. Average Sunday attendance is 765,326, one-third of the membership. Sixty-three percent of its congregations have fewer than 100 people attend Sunday morning services.
By the end of 2006, there were 7,095 parishes and missions, down 60 congregations from the previous year. During that same period, membership dropped 2 percent, which works out to 50,804 people leaving the church — 1,000 a week.
In contrast, the Assemblies of God, a pentecostal denomination, are adding about 50,000 members a year. Church liberals may sneer at conservative theological tenets, but the grass roots are going for the kind of place that nourished Republican vice-presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin.
Ever since the Episcopal Church consecrated openly gay New Hampshire Bishop V. Gene Robinson in 2003, its numbers have been in a free fall as thousands of conservatives have fled.
Earlier this month, the Episcopal Diocese of Washington released other depressing membership figures. In an Oct. 9 article in the diocesan newspaper headlined “State of Diocese Shows Decline over 40 Years: No Reversal in Sight,” Lucy Chumbley details a downward spiral of money and members in one of the nation’s most prominent — and liberal — dioceses.
Over 40 years, the number of active communicants has dropped 26 percent. Other places are worse. The Episcopal Diocese of Michigan, which has the same number of churches, has lost 22 percent of its members since 2000.
In Washington on a typical Sunday, parish attendance ranges from 14 to 1,039. In half of the diocese’s parishes, fewer than 115 people attend and in the average parish, Sunday School draws just 27 children.
Although church membership has stayed in the low 40,000s for 20 years, the number of pledging households has dropped 20 percent.
Where, then, is the money coming from to fund the diocesan budget? From the $27 million Soper Memorial Trust, from which the diocese extracts more than $1 million each year. If this wasting away continues for another quarter century — well, do the math.
Diocesan Canon Paul Cooney told Ms. Chumbley that small churches make up half of the diocese’s 88 parishes and said “many are having to struggle just to keep the lights on.”
That squares with my personal observations. I have visited four Episcopal churches in the diocese since August. Two had plenty of people in the pews and seemed financially healthy. The other two had fewer than 60 people at the service and offered little or no child care (a staple for church growth).
Many American denominations, including some conservative ones, are in a slump. Last year, the Southern Baptists admitted that their average Sunday attendance is 6.1 million, way below their official count of more than 16 million members.
But the Episcopalians, who have lost two dioceses since 2006 and may lose two more, are leading the pack.
Julia Duin’s Stairway to Heaven column runs Thursdays and Sundays. Contact her at jduin@washington times.com.
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