Recent years have been difficult ones for the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).
One of the original “seven sisters” of mainline Protestant Christianity, the Indianapolis-based denomination has seen repeated declines in membership, attendance, and total number of congregations exacerbated by COVID. Their ability to minister as a denomination of nationwide reach is rapidly fading.
Like other mainline Protestant churches, the denomination reached its pinnacle approaching two million members in the mid-1960s. By 1993, that number had halved, and was again halved by the early 2010s.
By 2019, the DoC was down to 350,618 members and average attendance of 126,217, according to the denominational yearbook, smaller than the mid-sized Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), which reports 390,319 members.
COVID restrictions accelerated decline. In 2021 the DoC reported 281,348 members and attendance of 97,402. In 2022, membership again dropped to 277,864 and attendance of 89,894. This final number is the most troubling: many denominations reported some attendance rebound in 2022 after 2020-21 closures, although the gain varies widely. From 2019-2022, there was a 21 percent drop in membership, a cataclysmic rate of decline. These most recent statistics are from ALEX, a subscription-based database for the DoC.
Congregations have also declined (see chart below) from more than 8,000 to now number 3,624. Ministers have hovered around 7,000 since the early 1970s.
North American Context
Mainline Protestants have all experienced uninterrupted decline, as have two large conservative bodies, the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod beginning in the late 1990s, and the Southern Baptist Convention beginning in the mid-2000s.
There are exceptions: the Assemblies of God, Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) and a handful of smaller denominations including the Wesleyan Church report growth. Additionally, some “mainline-adjacent” conservative offshoots like the Global Methodist Church and Anglican Church in North America are adding to their numbers.
That said, these are denominational outliers in North America. Multiple religious landscape studies show increasing numbers of both “nones” and non-denominational Christians.
Not all denominations will survive this time period. The DoC is in a spiral and will likely halve its membership again by the close of the decade.
Readers of this blog are already familiar with declines in the United Methodist, Episcopal, and Presbyterian (USA) churches. Hard-hit by COVID restrictions, these three belatedly reopened to discover that a good number of their congregants had either dropped regular church attendance or had migrated to churches that more quickly resumed public worship. Each experienced a gradual level of uninterrupted decline across decades, but each continues to have a nationwide presence and a large, if diminished, membership.
That can no longer be said of the DoC. Heavily concentrated in the midwest, more than a third of the denomination’s members can be found in Kentucky, Indiana and Missouri, the early 19th century new frontier where Barton W. Stone, Thomas Campbell and his son, Alexander, ministered.
The Road Ahead
An important caveat to this report: nearly every denomination has pockets of vibrant ministry, and I do not expect that every Disciples congregation will be gone in the next decade. Far from it! But the Disciples struggle without a distinctive “brand” (partly due to the ecumenical nature of the movement that emphasized Christian unity).
Renewal organizations, including Disciple Heritage Fellowship, exist to support churches with a common heritage in the Stone-Campbell movement.
It is now common for me to run across other churches meeting in spaces that were once DoC church buildings, even in parts of the United States that experience population growth.
Disciples have firmly moved in a theologically revisionist direction on matters of human sexuality, gender expression, and radical individual moral autonomy. The 2023 General Assembly meeting in Louisville, Kentucky July 29-August 1, 2023 emphasized the “kin-dom of God” rather than God’s Kingdom.
Close to IRD’s offices in downtown Washington, the beautiful National City Christian Church was constructed in the 1930s as the denomination’s national church. Built to accommodate more than a thousand worshippers, the John Russell Pope-designed neoclassical structure is festooned with various iterations of pride/progress flags and Black Lives Matter signage. What it lacks is members, with online participants seeming to be the majority of those counted as attending services. Total membership dropped from 664 in 2019 to 275 in 2021.
Chart data on clergy, members, and churches are taken from the National Council of Churches’ Historic Archive CD and print editions of the Council’s Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches. For more information visit the Association of Religion Data Archives.
Comment by David on September 14, 2023 at 7:49 am
Let us not forget that over a million Americans died of Covid. These tended to be older adults, the age group most likely to attend church.
There are other factors affecting churches. By the 1970s, there was White flight from cities. These areas had sometimes become dangerous and not places to which one would want to drive from the suburbs. Persons who left urban churches did not always affiliate with suburban congregations.
Comment by Jeffrey Allen on September 14, 2023 at 9:46 am
This is sad news. I was baptized in a DOC Church in Varnville SC. This church is now gone.
If the DOC merged with the UCC it would give them a national presence
Comment by Corvus Corax on September 14, 2023 at 12:38 pm
Religious affiliation is in steep decline across the board, a handful of small denominations notwithstanding. Within that decline, there is really only one primary division, which is between those who want a syncretic progressivism with Christian characteristics and those who desire a redoubt for “traditional values.” Protestant churches are most visibly roiled because of their strong cultural biases toward freedom of conscience and schism.
These small and shrinking protestant denominations lack meaningful differentiation because the theological issues that gave rise to them are no longer vital for modern people. They are like a flavor of ice cream or a pair of blue jeans that have gone out of style. You may even prefer one over another for nostalgic reasons, but nobody is afraid their soul is in peril because they are not following the specific doctrines of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). Hence there is no particular reason for this denomination to exist, other than the fact that it already (barely) does, nor is there any urgency to catechize converts and children into its unique traditions.
Comment by Pem Schaeffer on September 18, 2023 at 10:22 pm
Virtue signaling has replaced virtuous living.
“Look at us” “We’ll believe and affirm anything you ask us to!”
Yeah, that will work.
Comment by Diane on September 19, 2023 at 1:35 am
I was born and raised DOC, went to DOC college. “Christian unity”, I eventually realized, was about everyone welcome at the communion table. Not everyone’s welcome in the pews or pulpit, though…though that’s changing for the better. It is truly, in many places, an ice-cream social/potliuck dinner kind of church, with food and clothing drives, school backpacks, the usual you’d find anywhere. I was never challenged by the sermons…they’re so afraid of division, that one constantly hears peace, love, joy, reconciliation, etc. little substance. I switched to the UCC in my sixties – I think of them like cousins to DOC. My paternal side goes back to Mayflower Separatists, so there’s a sense of history and link to ancestors in that tradition.
An example of what frustrates me about many DOC churches is the Sunday after George Floyd’s murder and some violence (but mostly peaceful) gatherings. I watched the online DOC service in the large downtown DOC church here and not one word – not one word! – was mentioned about Floyd’s murder, chaos, race, racial reconciliation, etc. Our nation was hurting and I think people were looking to faith communities for direction. There were powerful sermons delivered in our UMC churches here (I watched them too). But Disciples are so afraid of “dis-unity” that they avoid anything difficult or controversial that makes people think, discern, respond and even disagree. Their mantra is “we agree to disagree”, which means don’t rock the boat. They’re still waiting for the old folks to die off to renew themselves, but it’s too late. Interestingly, churches that lose pastors to retirement are finding clergy as interims or full time pastorate are in short supply. The cost of housing has gone up and clergy that are moderate to progressive in theology aren’t particularly inspired to relocate to very conservative communities or states where teachers and doctors are in short supply, books are being banned and classroom speech is censored by law. Who wants to raise kids in that climate? The interesting thing about the DOC here is they’ve got a large lgbtq membership with many as leaders. But the church isn’t open and affirming, they’ve never discussed gender or sexuality in theological terms – because doing any or all of these threatens unity. They define it as “politics” – whether race, sexuality, gender, immigrant issues. Alexander Campbell never confessed slavery as sinful and generally believed topics of abolition and slavery were “politics” and best avoided in the church to maintain unity (of the status quo). It’s in Disciples’ DNA not to take a stance on most anything the least bit controversial…they end up seeming to be middle of the road, not much else. Peace, love, whatever. Sorry to be so down on DOC…they have lots of fine, loving, embracing people. I always felt somewhat brain dead there. Once asked my minister to announce a lecture coming up at the DOC college – theological, religious studies lecture from visiting author/speaker. The minister refused, saying I was the only person in the congregation interested. Like saying, no one else likes to be intellectually, spiritually challenged.
Comment by Keith on September 19, 2023 at 9:14 am
Diane , George Floyd was not murdered , it was clearly stated in the coroners report he died of a drug overdose.
Comment by Diane on September 19, 2023 at 11:01 pm
Keith,
From AP News –
“…the image being shared online simply shows the second page of the autopsy report released three years ago by Hennepin County. It does not prove anything new about Floyd’s death, and ignores that the prior page concludes that it was a homicide due to “cardiopulmonary arrest” from “law enforcement subdual, restraint, and neck compression.”
Comment by Richard F Hicks on September 20, 2023 at 11:41 am
Mr Floyd did not follow the legal orders of the police.
Comment by Diane on September 27, 2023 at 1:06 am
Your point?