The first mainline Protestant church statistics are in from COVID-afflicted 2020, and they don’t look good.
The Presbyterian Church (USA) lost 56,689 members in 2020, down from 1,302,043 in 2019 to 1,245,354 (4.4%). This is a greater percentage decline than the previous year’s membership loss (3.7%).
Strangely, the official press release from the PC(USA) Office of the General Assembly is headlined “PC(USA) 2020 statistics show no change in decline rate for membership during year of pandemic.” Perhaps the headline author failed to read the entire release.
Since deaths only increased by 6.4 percent (1,522 total) the net loss primarily appears to be rooted in individual departures from the denomination and a significant reduction in new baptisms.
Baptisms dropped from 10,401 in 2019 to 4,251 in 2020, a decline of 6,150 (59%). There will not be a basis of comparison available until other churches report their totals for the same period, but I’m surprised that the decline in baptisms was not worse: most PCUSA congregations were either meeting on a limited basis or completely shuttered to in-persons worship for nine months of the year. Those restrictions, intended to limit the spread of Coronavirus infection, also weighed heavily in transfers by certificate (down from 11,546 to 6,651 – 43%), youth Professions of Faith (down from 9,023 to 5,319 – 41%), and Professions of Faith and Reaffirmations (down from 21,408 to 9,210 – 57%).
Early in the past decade, the PC(USA) dismissed a significant number of churches to other denominations. Theologically orthodox Presbyterians looked to the exits as the “fidelity and chastity” clause was removed from clergy ordination vows in 2010 and redefinition of marriage was approved by the General Assembly and ratified in 2015 by a majority of presbyteries. The denomination reported 2,016,091 members in 2010, and 1,572,660 in 2015, down to 1,245,354 in 2020, a loss of 770,737 active members across the decade (38%).
The congregational exodus continues to wind down, with only seven churches dismissed to other denominations in 2020. Meanwhile, 103 churches were dissolved, up from 95 the previous year. Only six new congregations were organized across the entire denomination.
Age of church members nudged older: 57% of Presbyterians are now age 56 or higher, up from 56%. In racial composition, 89.35% of the PC(USA) is White.
Gone are the ostrich-head-in-the-sand appraisals of recent years: “We are not dying. We are Reforming” and “We must celebrate while knowing that there remains work to be done.”
Sober assessment is now on offer from the (PC)USA chief executive.
“A lot of this year’s numbers are reflective of what we’ve faced and are continuing to face with the coronavirus,” explained the Rev. Dr. J. Herbert Nelson, II, Stated Clerk of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). “There are certain aspects of our work such as communion classes and Bible study that generally perpetuate interest in people coming to church. The inability to have fellowship and personal interaction has had an impact. Our church buildings, the places where we met together, have been closed for the most part.”
Nelson acknowledges the pandemic but, to his credit, doesn’t excuse the year-over-year decline solely to COVID response.
“We are in the midst of rethinking what it means to do ministry in a rapidly changing landscape. Some people have been hurt by church, so there is a continuous struggle over what church should be,” Nelson stated. “This is not just a PC(USA) problem. This is a challenge for all Christian denominations.”
Statistics from the same reporting period are still awaited by the PCUSA’s mainline peer group: Episcopalians customarily release their numbers later in the year, as do United Methodists.
The Louisville, Kentucky-headquartered PC(USA) was formed in 1983 as a merger of The Presbyterian Church in the United States and the United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America. Its predecessor bodies started declining in the mid-1960s, but the decline accelerated significantly in the 2000s.
The denomination’s predecessor bodies once counted a combined 4.25 million members.
More: read about the previous year’s PC(USA) losses here. Browse IRD’s archive of PC(USA) coverage here. Access the full Comparative Summary of Statistics from the PC(USA) here.
Comment by Loren J Golden on April 26, 2021 at 8:26 pm
“There is a continuous struggle over what church should be,” Nelson said.
There really shouldn’t be. What the Church of Jesus Christ is supposed to be is faithful to His calling and mission, especially to seek and save the lost and make disciples of all nations, by faithfully proclaiming the Gospel of salvation from sin and death by the grace of God alone through faith alone in the Person and finished Work of Christ alone (Rom. 3.28, Gal. 2.16, Eph. 2.8-9), who gave His life to make atonement for all the sins (Is. 53.4-6, Rom. 5.6-11, II Cor. 5.18-21, Heb. 2.17) of everyone whom His Father would give to Him (Jn. 6.39,44,65).
A recent job change has brought me to Appleton, Wisconsin. On my first Sunday here, I attended worship at the local PCA congregation, knowing that the Gospel will be faithfully proclaimed there, just as I know that it will not be proclaimed at the local PC(USA) congregation, and just as I know that the leopard cannot change his spots (Jer. 13.23). The PC(USA) is a dying venture, preaching unbelief in the supernatural claims of Scripture, undermining its moral and ethical teachings when they are at variance with the world, and calling its parishioners to the works of “social justice,” which might seem to align with the good works to which the followers of Christ are called (Eph. 2.10, Tit. 2.14, Jas. 2.18) but in fact do not. And fifty-five years of uninterrupted decline (70.76% down from 1965) is the fruit by which the PC(USA) is known (Mt. 7.15-20).
Thus, the PC(USA) would do well to heed the voice of Jesus, who says, “I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, so that you may be rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen, and salve to anoint your eyes, so that you may see.” (Rev. 3.18)
Comment by Seneca Griggs on April 26, 2021 at 9:36 pm
God is certainly purifying the church in America, not just the United Presyterians but all churches who have declared that “compassion” trumps Scripture.
Comment by Star Tripper on April 28, 2021 at 10:01 am
It is very simple really.
“I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.” John 15:5
Comment by David on April 28, 2021 at 11:16 am
“Strangely, the official press release from the PC(USA) Office of the General Assembly is headlined “PC(USA) 2020 statistics show no change in decline rate for membership during year of pandemic.””
The key is their view that the overall numbers of decline has stabilized, so let’s be optimistic The problem is how many people no longer consider themselves members in spirit, while remaining members on paper, simply because of the constraints of the pandemic.
I personally wonder how many people are like myself, who have yet to officially leave, but we have done everything short of officially being stricken from the membership rolls, including withholding of tithes and offerings and abstaining from any congregational governance. Over the past year, a lot was revealed about who these bureaucrats really are, as if one already needed to know. This ranges from the lack of compassion towards people adversely affected by pandemic lockdowns (including minority small business owners at most risk); responses to critiques of BLM and last summers protests and riots; responses to election matters (most notably in my home state of Georgia) which parrot a one party line with total disregard for the actual facts and circumstances; the wholesale adoption of C(R)T and rejection of supportable criticisms; a total ignorance that racism is endemic to all mankind, not just white people, a position which is racist in itself; and I could go on.
In regards to specifically political matters, even when J. Herbert Nelson seems to criticize the more illiberal aspects of the political left, the comments are milquetoast and seem to be geared to deflect from concurrent, more hyper-partisan, leftist comments from lower level church bureaucrats. Lastly, more moderate, local pastors do not help things, when they would rather ignore the objections, unless pressed for an in person meeting,, or are pressed by Presbytery officials to contact the person doing the complaining, when the Presbytery officials do not like a comment.
Comment by Loren J Golden on April 28, 2021 at 11:04 pm
David,
You are not going to get the Presbyterian Church (USA) to change, for is collective clergy is “wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked” (Rev. 3.17)—and willfully so. They believe in the world’s notions of social justice, which is not justice at all but is oppressive and vindictive behind a smug self-righteousness, championing as they do the Progressive dogmas of SOGI and CRT. And worse, they make the Lord Jesus to serve them as their mascot in their idolatry. “For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images representing mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.” (Rom. 1.21-23)
Just as one cannot squeeze blood out of a turnip, one cannot squeeze the Gospel preached out of most PC(USA) clergy. If your pastor is one of these, then I recommend that you find a new church. Personally, I would recommend a PCA congregation—you’re in Georgia, where the denomination is headquartered, and there are over a hundred congregations in the state. But regardless, you need to be in a church where the Bible is believed, the Gospel preached, fellowship is enjoyed, prayer is lifted up, and the sacraments are rightly administered.
Comment by Tom on April 29, 2021 at 5:30 pm
I second what Loren said. The PCA is still faithful to the gospel and the Bible. I’m in a PCA church in South Carolina and have loved it for 10+ years now. Check us out!
Comment by David Gingrich on May 1, 2021 at 8:37 am
Yes, the PCA is a great home for Presbyterians who wish to humbly follow Jesus.
Comment by Donald on May 2, 2021 at 7:39 am
One fascinating metric: The Southern Baptist Church is not listed as one of the “Legacy Denominations.” It has over 14M members…more than twice that of the leading Legacy Denomination (UMC)…more members than all seven of the so-called “Seven Sisters:
UMC = 6.5M
ELCA = 3.3M
PCUSA = 1.245M
TEC = 1.3M
AmBapt = 1.1M
UCC = 800K
Any suggestions on why the Southern Baptist denomination isn’t considered “Mainline?”
Comment by Jeffrey Walton on May 3, 2021 at 10:27 am
Donald, the SBC is usually considered the “offshoot” of what is today American Baptist Churches USA. The latter is, as you noted, a fraction the size of the SBC. But “mainline” is a historic designation, it isn’t about size. Some scholars do count recent offshoots (ANCA, NALC, ECO) as “mainline” but this isn’t widely agreed upon. There are other exceptions: the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod is older than the ELCA (and isn’t much smaller) but the latter is considered the mainline denomination. I haven’t studied that history enough to understand why the Scandinavian branch was considered mainline and the German branch was not.
Comment by Loren J Golden on May 2, 2021 at 3:26 pm
From the standpoint of historical size and cultural influence, the Southern Baptist Convention has as much right to be considered “mainline” as other denominations that formed in the mid-19th century, such as the Methodist Episcopal Church South (MECS) and the Presbyterian Church in the United States (PCUS), that formed as a result of divisions over slavery. The only significant difference being that, unlike the MECS and the PCUS, the SBC has not reconciled with the northern counterpart from which it split, namely the American Baptist Churches USA.
Practically speaking, however, the SBC has remained out-of-step with the other denominations identified with the “mainline” label. The closest they came was in the inerrancy controversy in the denomination from the late 1970s through the 1980s, until the SBC as a denomination came down firmly on the side of Biblical inerrancy, resulting in a split that in 1991 formed the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, which since then has been making up lost time in following the “mainline” Protestant denominations down the road to irrelevancy and self-annihilation through the watering down of their theological and sexual standards. (Ironically, this happened through the idolatrous pursuit of cultural relevance: Seeking to be more relevant by capitulating Scriptural truths to the world’s ways of thinking, they became incredibly irrelevant and self-destructive).
To be sure, the SBC has been declining in membership since 2005, but not at the rates at which the other so-called “mainline” Protestant denominations have. The Southern Baptists have some issues to work through to preserve the integrity of their Biblical witness, but liberalizing in order to become more “relevant” would not result in favorable results, as the “mainline” Protestant denominations have amply demonstrated.
Comment by Loren J Golden on May 2, 2021 at 3:31 pm
P.S.—You neglected to mention the Christian Church-Disciples of Christ, which has a membership of 382K.
Also, the Reformed Church in America, which is sometimes considered an eighth “sister,” has a membership of 120K.
Comment by Chuck Wynn on May 9, 2021 at 6:38 pm
“PC(USA) 2020 statistics show no change in decline rate for membership during year of pandemic.” That may very well be true (annual decline rate is on average between 3-5%) but that’s not really a cause for celebration when the denomination has not seen a single year of growth for the last half century. Imagine a mutual fund manager telling an investor that the depreciation on their investment is holding steady at 3-5%, with no sign of gain. Not exactly a compelling reason to remain with them.
The demographics indicate that the other shoe is going to drop over the next few years. 64% of the churches have less than 100 members. 57% of members are in their 50s or over, with 31% in their 70s. That means that, at minimum, 1/3 of their membership is expected to be gone over the next decade even without the current attrition rate.
I grew up in the PCUSA. I still have family members involved in it. But the denomination has been apostate for decades. Its message is no different from the secular society we live in. It has nothing to offer for those who are in the world but not of it, and the world has no need of it either. It will not exist much longer.
Comment by Jeffrey Walton on May 10, 2021 at 10:38 am
Chuck, I would argue that the shoe has already dropped, in that there is no source of new PCUSA members. At the current rate, the PCUSA will not exist in 15 years. Not every PCUSA congregation will have disappeared (probably 10-15% of PCUSA congregations are presently in good health), but the denomination won’t exist in the form that we know it. It will either merge out of existence, or it will vanish into irrelevance like the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). In order to continue on, a church needs to add people from different sources: birthrate, conversion, transfer. Those input channels simply aren’t present in most parts of the PCUSA.