Episcopal Diocese of Northern Michigan

‘Cancelled Until Further Notice’: Episcopalians on Thin Ice in Northern Michigan

Jeffrey Walton on March 22, 2021

Many churches that were closed to in-person worship for much of the pandemic are preparing to re-open. It remains to be seen how many of their congregants will reappear and how many have vanished, never to return.

Parts of the Episcopal Church ceased services altogether – streaming or otherwise – with parishioners directed to either a diocesan-wide virtual service or to the Washington National Cathedral.

The Episcopal Diocese of Northern Michigan is one such jurisdiction. Tiny even by Episcopal standards, the grouping of 21 Upper Peninsula congregations accounted for a combined weekly attendance of only 385 persons in 2019, well before pandemic restrictions began. The diocese reports an attendance decline of more than 38% in the past decade.

Population exodus and aging have brought about this decline, accelerated by a lack of evangelism attributable to pervasive universalist theology in one of the denomination’s most revisionist dioceses. Diocesan statistics show seven baptisms in 2019, two confirmations, three received from other denominations and 13 marriages. In contrast, there were 35 burials that year – representing 9% of the entire diocesan attendance in a single year. 

Now restrictions intended to minimize the spread of COVID appear to have finished off a diocese that was already dying in 2019.

The diocese still lists a pastoral directive from March 2020 as the most recent news item on its web site directing “to cease all other Sunday, Saturday and weekday in-person gatherings.” It lists no upcoming events. The last posted diocesan newsletter was in June 2020.

Local parishes are a similar story. St. James Episcopal Church in Sault Sainte Marie blasted the words “Cancelled until further notice” across its web site until Friday, when it – finally – announced a planned return to worship on March 28. That update only came after its cancellation notice spread on Twitter.

What kind of message does it send the few remaining faithful to have “cancelled” splashed all over the web site of one of its leading parishes?

Not only is church cancelled but no alternatives are offered a year into the pandemic.

“It is important that you remember, even though church services are canceled at this time, pledge cards and pledges are still needed to keep the church operating,” reads the parish announcement page. “The church will continue to be closed to everyone.  No one is to be in the building any other time.”

The church web site states that “for religious concerns” messages can be left on an answering machine.

Translation: this church won’t serve you, but remember to keep serving us.

Based upon 2019 numbers, St. James (measured by attendance) is in the top five congregations of the diocese with an average weekly attendance of 30 and a membership of 71. The parish lists plate-and-pledge revenue of $32,209 that year.

A March electronic newsletter from the parish shows how COVID closures have deeply cut into parish finances: $2,037 is listed as the amount needed to operate weekly, and pledges for the previous week were only $480. The church lists $18,333 as the amount needed to operate year-to-date, but only $4,970 has been received.

The newsletter goes on to report:

Last Sunday’s Attendance: 0 (COVID-19)
Total Attendance to YTD:   0

I’ve seen enough. The Episcopal Diocese of Northern Michigan is no longer dying; it is dead.

UPDATE [3/23/2021]: I was interviewed this morning on local radio in Lansing, Michigan about the effective collapse of the Diocese of Northern Michigan. That 10-minute broadcast can be heard by clicking here.

  1. Comment by Diaphone64 on March 22, 2021 at 10:11 am

    That’s why churches never should have closed in the first place. Maybe one or two Sundays at the beginning, like would be done for an impending blizzard or hurricane. But after that, reopen and let people decide for themselves whether to worship in person. Millions of Christians around the world continue worshiping in person despite the very real threat of being shot or blown up every week. The American church has spectacularly failed its mission, and any church still closed or banning singing in live worship are committing grave sins.

  2. Comment by David Stewart on March 22, 2021 at 11:41 am

    The TEC/(P)ECUSA is kind of like Sears and Roebuck, meets The Fall of the House of Usher. A storied American institution that is dying a slow, painful death that could also collapse quit suddenly under the proper circumstances, if one know where to look.

    Of course, in Sears case, the decline was a combination of hubris as America’s largest retailer in the 60s and 70s, leading to bad decisions to be all things to all people (remember ownership of AllState, Dean Witter, and Discover), Then, the ineptitude of management to adequately adapt to the times, once the company determined that the former business model was not sustainable, resulted in a hedge fund manager trying to preserve to the real estate value and maximize liquidation sales value over the course of a decade and a half. Now there are not even 30 mainline Sears stores left in the nation.

    TEC/(P)ECUSA too decided at its height to be all things to all people, when it started to accommodate theological liberalism. Unfortunately, management’s decision to adapt to the times lead to further rejection of historic orthodoxy. Like Roderick Usher, management decided to enter a state of denial rather than try and correct its mistakes. Once the situation was truly dire, management further decided that rather than strike a fair deal with parishes desiring to leave, when the mass exodus began, and perhaps minimize financial losses, it decided to engage in needless, punitive, spiteful lawsuits, even as the edifice started showing cracks, if one new where to look, like the House of Usher. (If I remember correctly, the former national headquarters building had a leaky roof during the same time that it spent tens of millions fighting departing parishes and in some cases, entire dioceses.) Time will tell if the final demise of the denomination follow Sears’ trajectory of a slow, painful death, or if it will be swift and sudden like the House of Usher, and apparently the Diocese of Northern Michigan.

    And I take no glee it penning either of those words.

  3. Comment by David on March 22, 2021 at 12:15 pm

    This seems to be yet another schadenfreude article directed that the Episcopal Church. While it does mention the population decline of the area, it tacks theological reasons onto it that likely have little relevance.

    https://www.bridgemi.com/quality-life/upper-peninsula-population-plummets-one-familys-struggle-shows-why#:~:text=The%20Upper%20Peninsula%20is%20losing,every%20four%20residents%20since%202000.

    With the young departing for areas with more economic opportunities, it is not surprising that the population is aging. I have a slight feeling no doctrinal position would have prevented the 35 burials. The continued denial of the seriousness of Covid-19 after all this time is disheartening.

  4. Comment by Loren J Golden on March 22, 2021 at 3:15 pm

    There is a nursery rhyme that my six-year-old daughter is fond of reciting:
     
    “Here is the church,
         here is the steeple.
    Open the doors, and…
         where are the people?”
     
    Of course, there is another verse that she is also fond of reciting, but this one seems more apropos to the situation in the Episcopal Diocese of Northern Michigan.  It would seem that the Episcopal Church will soon have 21 new handsome properties to sell, to earn money that will help ease the national decline.

  5. Comment by Steve on March 22, 2021 at 4:59 pm

    Mainliners may try to comfort themselves by claiming that every denomination is in decline, but it’s simply not true. While conservative churches aren’t growing as quickly as they once were, mainline churches are on a path toward extinction. The mainline churches are finding that as they move further away from Biblical Christianity, the closer they get to their inevitable demise.

    https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/factchecker-are-all-christian-denominations-in-decline/#:~:text=Just%20about%20every%20denomination%20in%20the%20American%20church%E2%80%94,share%20Evans%20perception%20of%20the%20decline%20of%20denominations.

  6. Comment by Nick Thomas on March 22, 2021 at 5:59 pm

    I happen to live about 15 miles outside the Diocese of Northern Michigan. I would have to drive 4 hours to find a theologically conservative Episcopal parish. There’s an ACNA parish about 25 miles outside the diocese, but it’s low-church and not different than your average conservative United Methodist or Lutheran Missouri Synod church. TEC’s Northern Michigan diocese, which is entirely comprised of the Upper Peninsula, has basically been dead for 40 years. They haven’t had more than a couple paid clergy since the 1970s or 1980s. They pioneered a program that allowed lay ordination in rural parishes. Part of it was theological. At the time, the laity in the diocese were very anti-clerical liberal Protestants. Basically, congregationalists. Today, what’s left are basically Unitarian Universalists. In fact, the Episcopal parish in Houghton, Michigan, shares part of its building with the Unitarians.

  7. Comment by David on March 22, 2021 at 6:07 pm

    Does the average person in the pew bother with denominational doctrines or even care? I suspect most like their local church and that is enough for them. Churches that have not sifted to popular music services have suffered from the movement away from classical music in society. The Anglican style cathedral service likely attracts fewer today in the US and especially in the UK. There was a time when major Episcopal churches in NYC would place advertisements in the NYT before Christmas and Holy Week listing the anthems to be sung as a way of attracting people. This disappeared some time ago.

  8. Comment by Nick Thomas on March 22, 2021 at 6:20 pm

    @David: Actually, that’s empirically false. All the research and surveys report younger people (let’s just say under 45) want traditional church if only because that’s something they have never experienced. It’s their grandparents or parents who want modern worship styles and music because they think that’s what will bring their grandkids or kids back to church. In the UK, evensong is the most popular Anglican service. At least pre-China plague, cathedral evensong services were extremely popular. Of course, one can argue whether they went for worship or to hear a free concert but nonetheless it’s much, much more popular than you realize, David.

  9. Comment by T Ford on March 22, 2021 at 8:08 pm

    One of the real missed opportunities by TEC during the pandemic was not promoting the daily office among the laity. The Daily Office is fairly easy to use method of reading Scripture and the psalms within the structure of a prayer service. Surprisingly, I haven’t found anything comparable among Catholic or Orthodox resources.

  10. Comment by TexasLeigh on March 23, 2021 at 1:37 pm

    T Ford—The Catholic Church has the daily missal (Mass scripture readings of the day) and the Liturgy of the Hours (scripture readings and prayers for throughout the day). Both are available in hard copy, on-line at various websites, and on various apps (such as iBreviary and Laudate). Hope this info is helpful!

  11. Comment by Jimmy D. on June 14, 2021 at 9:26 am

    Ah yes, the episcopal “church.”

    How did that only noteworthy Carlson quote go?

    “Once renowned for its liturgy, now a stop on architectural and garden tours. Only tourists go there anymore.”

    It turns out throwing their holy book into the garbage to stay ‘hip’ with the kids or whatever their insane goal originally was, is in fact completely counterproductive to being a viable religion. Who knew?

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