Membership in the Presbyterian Church (USA) fell further in 2023, according to statistics released today by the denomination’s Interim Unified Agency, which succeeds the former Office of the General Assembly.
Total membership declined by 45,932, or 4 percent, to 1,094,733 in the most recent reporting year. Presbyterians are older and more likely to be white than the overall U.S. population, with the denomination listing 87.85 percent as white and 33.46 percent as over the age of 70. Nationally, 61.6 percent of the U.S. population counted in the 2020 U.S. Census was white, while 17.3 percent of those counted were aged 65 and over.
The average annual PCUSA membership loss reported across the past decade is 4.5 percent. The denomination in 2023 reported 195 fewer ministers and a net 133 churches were dissolved or dismissed. The PCUSA lists a total of 8,572 churches. Total baptisms nudged up to 10,922, an increase of 607 from the prior year but still 21 percent below the pre-COVID level of 13,835 reported in 2019.
Presbyterians did have at least one rising data point, however: a 17 percent jump in the number of members who identify as “genderqueer” or “nonbinary,” increasing by 230 in 2023 to 1,547, comprising 0.17 percent of all members and noted as an increase in the Presbyterian News Service coverage. The denomination ordained its first nonbinary Minister of the Word and Sacrament in June of 2019 and began tracking the number of nonbinary or genderqueer members in 2022.
“I think it can be easy for us to see the decline in numbers and lose hope. We are certainly facing challenges, and we are trying to address those in various expressions of the denomination,” Stated Clerk The Rev. Jihyun Oh, the denomination’s top executive, told Presbyterian News Service, the denomination’s official mouthpiece, about the statistical release.
Earlier this year, Oh signalled what was ahead while announcing changes to achieve a balanced 2025–26 budget, including $5 million in cuts that will result in further staff reductions.
“We shared information with World Mission staff as well as partners around the world that we anticipate significant changes to how we engage our partners in the future, and we are in the process of examining how our organization will be structured in 2025,” Oh disclosed in November. “We anticipate that there will also be reductions in 2025, once that process is completed.”
“The gravity of the church worldwide has shifted to the global South,” Oh stated. “We are at most half the size compared to when the current structures were set up.”
Presbyterians have been in the news this year: the PCUSA Office of Public Witness, which serves as the denomination’s Capitol Hill lobby office, is among a host of liberal church groups that offered support to anti-Israel student protests at college campuses. The PCUSA office has accelerated its aggressive anti-Israel policies and charged the Middle East democracy as an “Apartheid” state.
The PCUSA’s biennial General Assembly met June 25 – July 4 in Salt Lake City, Utah. Ahead of the gathering, some General Assembly commissioners and attendees fretted about a Utah law that requires people to only use those restrooms in schools and government buildings that correspond to their biological sex. Airport restrooms were identified by General Assembly planners as an area of concern, convention center restrooms were unaffected.
Among the legislation considered and approved at the governing convention was an overture barring ordination of candidates who are not LGBTQ-affirming. That overture goes to local presbyteries, a majority of which must ratify the change before it can take effect. At least eight presbyteries concurred with the overture.
Earlier this past summer, officials from the Presbyterian Mission Agency, the Office of the General Assembly and the Administrative Services Group approved a reduced proposed budget for the three church entities that expects a continued 4.5 percent rate of membership decline. According to the Presbyterian News Service, the three governing boards also approved proposed per capita rates (a set apportionment per member that congregations pay to the PCUSA) for 2025 ($10.20) and 2026 ($10.62). Those rates have increased 44 percent across the past decade from $7.07 in 2015.
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 December 4, 2024 at 1:13 am
“The average annual PCUSA membership loss reported across the past decade is 4.5 percent.”
To be a bit more precise, the annual membership loss percentage reported between 2013 and 2023 is 4.64%.
“The denomination in 2023 reported 195 fewer ministers and a net 133 churches were dissolved or dismissed.”
This is curious, since 115 churches were dissolved, ten were dismissed to other denominations, and thirteen were organized. Doing the math, -115-10+13=-112, not -133. Either somebody in the Office of the General Assembly—excuse me, I meant the “Interim Unified Agency”—can’t do math, or another twenty-one churches disappeared from the denomination without having been either dismissed or dissolved. Regardless, 115 is the largest number of churches dissolved in the last eight years (the previous high water mark within that period was 2018, when 108 churches were dissolved). This is especially significant, in that the number of churches departing to the EPC or the ECO had slowed to a trickle by 2020 (although we might see an uptick in that category in the next few years, owing to the new legislation that makes affirming sexual immorality as not a sin to be mandatory for all pastors, elders, and deacons). After all, it isn’t healthy, thriving churches that shutter their doors.
“Presbyterians did have at least one rising data point, however: a 17 percent jump in the number of members who identify as ‘genderqueer’ or ‘nonbinary,’ increasing by 230 in 2023 to 1,547, comprising 0.17 percent of all members.”
This is hardly surprising, given the character of the PC(USA). What is surprising, however, is that the number of men in the denomination rose by 17,401, or 5.00%. This figure, however, was eclipsed by the reduced number of women, which fell by 21,367, or 3.83% (the ratio of men to women in the PC(USA) is about 2:3).
“I think it can be easy for us to see the decline in numbers and lose hope. We are certainly facing challenges, and we are trying to address those in various expressions of the denomination.” “Lose hope” in what? In an obviously failing institution? The PC(USA) and its predecessors have had a net loss every year since 1965—that is 58 years of unmitigated decline—and the PC(USA)’s active membership at the end of 2023 was only 25.7% of the combined active membership of the UPCUSA and the PCUS in 1965. The PC(USA)’s ill-conceived policy of worldly accommodation under a perverted sense of justice—wherein sexual immorality is considered a morally neutral condition of personhood, and not a sin against God—is obviously not contributing to a stabilization of membership, let alone membership growth. The PC(USA) has devolved into an object lesson in how NOT to do church.
Whatever the PC(USA) is putting its hope in, it is not putting its hope in the Gospel message that Jesus Christ came to die to pay the penalty for the sin of humankind, and then rise from the dead as the certain promise that whosoever puts his or her faith in Him alone for their salvation will be saved from sin and death and have the rock-solid promise of God that at His return, they too will rise from the dead, just as He did.
Neither is the PC(USA) confessing Jesus Christ as Lord, to the glory of God the Father. The Lord through the Prophet Jeremiah called the men of Judah to account, for having built altars to pagan idols and offering their sons and daughters as burnt offerings thereunto in His sanctuary, “which I did not command,” He said, “nor did it come into my mind” (Jer. 7.30-31, 19.4-5, 32.34-35). Likewise, the pastors in the PC(USA) build altars to their idols, which they call by the name of Jesus—taking His Name in vain (Ex. 20.7, Dt. 5.11)—and in His Name are making heretical claims, such as sexual immorality not being sin (and that those who believe the Bible’s claims that it is ought not be ordained as officers in His Church), and unborn human beings not being persons made in His image and therefore subject to being sacrificed if their mothers choose to abort them, with no moral implication whatsoever. “They have turned to me their back and not their face. And though I have taught them persistently, they have not listened to receive instruction.” (Jer. 32.33)
The PC(USA) is on a path to self-destruction. It need not be so, for the Lord takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but would rather that the wicked should turn from his evil way and live (Ezek. 18.23,31-32). Yet, the Lord “has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills.” (Rom. 9.18) It would seem that after more than a century of tolerating false teachers in her pulpits who preach accommodation to the world rather than the mortification of sin, who undermine the authority of the Word of God in order to “teach as doctrines the commandments of men” (Mt. 15.9, Mk. 7.7), that the Lord has hardened the PC(USA)’s collective heart, as He did the hearts of Pharaoh (Ex. 4.21, 7.13,22, 8.19, 9.7,12,35, 10.1,20,27, 14.8, Rom. 9.17), Hophni and Phinehas (I Sam. 2.25,27-36), Amaziah (II Chron. 25.14-16; see also Prov. 21.1), and even first century Israel (Rom. 11.25), intending to judge them for their apostasy.
Now, lest someone should claim that I am engaging in some perverse schadenfreude, just as Paul wished that he were “accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of (his) brothers, (his) kinsmen according to the flesh (i.e., the Israelites)” (Rom. 9.3), I could wish that I were accursed and cut off from Christ, if by doing so, the PC(USA) could be redeemed, turned from her self-destructive course, and made to glorify God once again in its worship and work, all to the praise of His glory alone. For God is not glorified if any part of His Church is destroyed, howsoever corrupt that part has become, even if that part’s destruction is the judgment of God Himself.
Comment by Fred on December 4, 2024 at 4:12 am
How to make sense of:
46,000 membership decline;
20,000 fewer women members;
17,000 more men members
as cited in the first linked Presbyterian News Service article?
Comment by Fred on December 4, 2024 at 4:24 am
How to make sense of:
“Sixty-five percent of churches submitted statistical data for this report, representing 73% of total PC(USA) membership.”
as quoted in the first linked Presbyterian News Service article?
If 35% of churches didn’t submit statistical data, then nobody really knows how many members those churches gained or lost, or what percent of the total PC(USA) membership they represent. It doesn’t make sense to assume those churches didn’t gain or lose any members since their most recent report, when the 65% of churches that did submit statistical data showed losses on average.
Comment by Wilson R. on December 5, 2024 at 11:12 am
There’s a correlation-vs.-causation logical fallacy at work in all of these threads about the decline in mainstream church membership and the increasing acceptance of LGBTQ people in the life and ministry of these churches. The unchallenged assumption seems to be that people are leaving because they believe these churches have abandoned the Gospel in favor of gay and trans people.
While this is certainly PART of the picture, it also seems woefully incomplete.
The United Methodist Church had been steadily losing members for decades, long before there was any organized or significant push to sanction same-sex weddings and pastors. The Southern Baptist Convention likewise has lost millions of members even though it has maintained its strict opposition to LGBTQ participation (and even leadership by women).
What is being overlooked here?
For starters, the overall culture is more secular. There is no longer a social stigma, as there was when I was growing up in the ’50s and ’60s, to not having a church affiliation. In the ’60s, most businesses (including restaurants) were closed on Sundays. Now, the Christian sabbath is mostly business as usual. Yet I never hear religious conservatives complain about (or even muse about) the effects of our culture treating Sunday like any other day.
Second, younger people are abandoning mainstream denominations for less formal, nondenominational churches, and I think it’s largely because of the culture (music, worship style, setting) they find there. They like the vibe, and they don’t like the vibe of traditional churches, even when the mainstream churches try to attract them with praise services and other cultural trappings.
Third—and what should be most concerning—millions of young people have turned into “nones,” not because they uninterested in the way of Jesus but because what they see from evangelical Christianity looks so foreign to the way of Jesus. And some of you might be surprised at just how many of these younger people cite the hostility to LGBTQ people as one of the things they see as foreign to the way of Jesus. You may staunchly disagree with them, of course, but their views ought to be factored into any thoughtful analysis of why mainstream churches are losing members.
Comment by Fred on December 6, 2024 at 2:25 am
regarding the claim in the comment above quoting the first linked Presbyterian News Service article: “17,000 more men members”, this claim is incorrect. It is the result of transposing two digits in the number of men members in 2022: 348,231 should be 384,231. The number of men actually declined as expected in 2023.
Comment by Joe on December 6, 2024 at 7:04 pm
Preach Jesus! Nothing else is needed nor required.
Comment by Mary Louise Longworth on December 7, 2024 at 1:01 am
More surprising is how long the PCUSA has endured as a church denomination.
The bible is so clear about sexual purity, morality and how this is to be upheld.
I Thessalonians 4:3 leaves no doubt.
‘For this is the will of God, your sanctification; that is, that you abstain from sexual immorality.’
God will not bless immoral behavior. There is no eternal life with God awaiting those who pursue living a sexually immoral life.
Comment by Loren J Golden on December 7, 2024 at 2:41 am
Fred,
The claim that the second and third digits of the figure for the number of men in PC(USA) churches in 2022 in the Comparative Summaries of Statistics (not the PNS article, in which this figure was not reported) were transposed is a supposition, not a fact.
The sum of the gender membership numbers in 2022 & 2023 amounted to 79.56% & 82.56% of the total active membership for those years, respectively (hence, the rounding to 80% & 83% in the Comparative Summaries). Supposing the additional 3% reported in 2023 were from churches with stable memberships (i.e., that neither gained nor lost members between the end of 2022 and the end of 2023) but had not reported their gender membership numbers in 2022, these churches would have a male to female ratio of nearly 2:1, which would strongly buck the national trend of 2:3 (as I reported in my previous comment), and which is extremely unlikely. Also possible is that fewer churches with higher concentrations of female membership that had reported in 2022 did not report in 2023, while more churches with membership balances closer to the national average (than the average PC(USA) church) that had not reported in 2023 did report in 2022, but this also seems unlikely. The greatest likelihood, however, is that there are issues of reporting errors that are deeper than a simple numerical transposition.
Prior to 2022, the Comparative Summaries listed the number of active female members, but not the number of active male members (which can be easily deduced by simple subtraction), and the percentage of female members from 2018 to 2021 varied only from 58.60% to 58.75% and averaged at 58.66%. Extrapolating this figure for 2022 & 2023 puts the female membership at 669,083 & 642,140, respectively, and the corresponding male membership at 471,582 & 452,593. These figures, which indicate a net loss of men of approximately 19,000, rather than the reported figures, which calculate a net gain of men of 17,401, I believe to be more reliable.
Comment by Loren J Golden on December 7, 2024 at 3:40 am
Wilson,
The underlying issue in the PC(USA) and the other so-called “mainline” Protestant churches, such as the UMC, the ELCA, and the Episcopal Church, is that their pastors neither believe nor preach the Gospel. That, not the growing acceptance of sexual immorality as a morally neutral defining feature of personhood (rather than the sin that Scripture says it is), is why these denominations are losing members year after year. After all, if a church’s message does not have, at its heart, the impetus of, “we are all sinners and justly deserve God’s sentence of death for our sins, but the Lord Jesus, the eternal Son of God made flesh, died on Calvary’s cross to pay the penalty on behalf of men and women like you and me, but His Father requires faith in Him and in His redeeming work on the cross in order to be saved from that penalty,” that church is not giving anyone a compelling reason to be a Christian, let alone a member of that church. Why, then, join it? Pastors who do not believe the Gospel do not have true faith in Jesus Christ, which is necessary unto salvation, and they cannot give to others what they patently do not have. That is why the PC(USA) and these other denominations are languishing.
The SBC, on the other hand, has a different issue. There have been many recent exposures of pastors and other leaders in the SBC that have engaged in sexual abuse—which is a sin no less heinous than the sins of homosexuality and transgenderism that the “mainline” churches accommodate—and there has been a culture of covering up these abuses, disbelieving those who had been seriously hurt by these abusers, for the pragmatic end of protecting the reputation of men who had been successful in proclaiming the Word of God with their lips from the pulpit, while their hearts were far from Him in their reprehensible conduct. This culture of cover-up, especially, has devastated the SBC laity’s trust in their pastors and leaders.
But let us be very clear that Biblical fidelity is not at fault for large numbers of people leaving the Evangelical church. Consider the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), of which I am a member. The PCA, like the SBC, only ordains men to the offices of pastor and lay elder (teaching and ruling elder, respectively, in Presbyterian parlance) and teaches that homosexuality and transgenderism (among other forms of sexual immorality) are sins of which God commands us to repent and mortify. And yet, the PCA has continued to enjoy modest numerical growth over the past decade. The number of communicant members in the PCA (that is, those adults and youth who have made a public profession of faith and have been admitted to the Lord’s Table, excluding teaching elders) has grown from 292,450 at the end of 2017 to 305,045 at the end of 2023, and the total membership during that same time (which also includes non-communicant members [that is, adult members’ children who have not yet made a profession of faith and have thus not yet been admitted to the Lord’s Table] and teaching elders) has grown from 374,736 to 393,528.
Moreover, the vast majority of those polled who have left Evangelical churches and are categorized as “nones” is not that “they see…(an) evangelical Christianity (that) looks so foreign to the way of Jesus,” as you allege, but because they have moved geographically for employment and have gotten so involved with life in their new city that they have not made finding a new church home a priority but would be open to doing so, if they were invited. If there is a failure here of the Evangelical church, it is not because Evangelicals are largely living a life so at odds with the teachings of their Lord and Savior as to be repugnant to those who have left, but a failure of Evangelicals to evangelize (i.e., welcome, befriend, and share the Gospel with) their neighbors.
Comment by Palamas on December 7, 2024 at 9:28 am
The leadership of the PCUSA is no longer Christian. It is losing members, and has been losing members for years, as its members either die, or decide that they can no longer abide the unChristian nature of their congregational, presbyterial, and national leadership.
Comment by Fred on December 7, 2024 at 7:44 pm
Loren,
You claim that the digit transposition, 348231 vs 384231, is a supposition rather than a fact. But actually it is a fact. The PNS article has since been corrected to remove the bogus claim (based on the transposed value) that the number of men increased in 2023: “The total number of women members in PC(USA) congregations decreased in 2023 by about 20,000, but the number of men increased by about 17,000.” The church-trends database shows the correct 384231 on line 4.
https://church-trends.pcusa.org/overall/pcusa/overview/
The statistical summaries for 2022 and 2023 still show the transposed value.
Comment by Fred on December 7, 2024 at 7:48 pm
Loren,
The original PNS article with the bogus claim is archived here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20241204185148/https://www.presbyterianmission.org/story/while-overall-pcusa-membership-continues-to-decline-new-worshiping-communities-maintain-their-growth/
Comment by Walt Pryor on December 8, 2024 at 1:33 pm
We should be praying for those who have been deceived. Many of the great men of the Bible suffered the sin of lust. Every pagan religion is based on lust. Lust is Satan’s most effective tool to separate men and women from God.
Jesus said; “If you love me you will obey me.” That is what love is, obedience.
Comment by Tim Wohlford on December 8, 2024 at 8:18 pm
I was PCUSA from 1991 until 2022. I was moving out of town (and hence my membership in the church would end) but I made a point of withdrawing when one of the PCUSA staffers printed an article supporting gender affirming care for kids.
Living in Louisville, I got to know PCUSA staffers, and many are good level-headed Christian folks. However, the thing is constantly led by incompetent (or even corrupt) idealogues who spend money foolishly only to have to cut progressively more staff. Many of the staffers see no space between the uber-left DNC and the Kingdom of God — they are one and the same in their view.
I returned to my Wesleyan roots and now attend a GMC congregation….
Comment by Cal on December 31, 2024 at 3:20 pm
If you’re a normal person in this denomination, for a while you can suspend disbelief and focus on outward aesthetics, your family history in the denom, etc … but at some point you just get overwhelmed with the vibe that _these people are just so weird_ , and you just get right out of there.