Some of the things that stood out to me:
A majority (62%) of Episcopal parishes and missions report that more than half of their members are age 50+.
Episcopalians tend to be older than the general population. Overall, 27% of Episcopal members are age 65+, as compared to only 13% of the U.S. population in 2008. The Episcopal Church has proportionately fewer children, youth and younger adults.
I wonder if this difference is because Episcopalians tend to be better-educated than others.
😉
Actually, the number of better-educated Americans has been growing. Essentially, TEC has been finding it harder and harder to attract thinking people, i.e., has been losing market share.
I always find that growing churches have three things going on. 1) Preaching that is worth getting up and driving in on Sunday morning. 2) A great childrens ministry. The kids bring their parents along. 3) They aren’t afraid to let people know where they are using modern communications.
I do sometimes find Episcopal churches on my travels around the nation that get this, but it is rare.
‘The Episcopal Church has proportionately fewer children, youth and younger adults.”
Count me as one under 50 who left with my family BECAUSE of my child. TEC is actively losing the younger members – parents want their children to learn God’s Truth and that has become less and less possible in many dioceses.
An analysis of this report would be difficult. So many things about it aren’t logical.
52% of Episcopalians live in communities of less than 50,000 population. You would think that would be a protection for TEC as small-town folk tend to be more conservative. Maybe, in this case, they’re more apathetic and no match for liberally-trained priests? Being 60% female doesn’t help either; more men should be participating, but men might be more assertive in the couch potato role when they don’t see the value of something. However, apathy doesn’t square with the amount of conflict reported, or maybe the number of people leaving over conflicts makes more room for the apathetic?
Less than 7% of congregations make use of movies/drums/incense in their services, although they do have a buddhist bishop, liturgical dancers, and muslim/wiccan/etc priests, so there should be plenty of dramatic appeal for the youngsters; but they seem to be staying away… possibly out of respect for their elders? 11% of parishes have NO children at all? But, then, their parents aren’t having as many children these days, unlike those uncouth packed Churches, so there are fewer to respect their elders. And nearly everybody is white… they’re not having much success with that kind of inclusivism. Should they be spending more time on “contacting inactive persons in the congregation (least overall); dealing with conflict; organizing and leading small groups; and evangelism and recruitment”?
Ex-Escopalian Dave
Viva Texas
John, your comments generally hold true for Protestant churchs, both independent and mainline. It may be less true for RC parishes. There the quality of preaching is not high, but great emphasis is placed on the sacramental life of the church. I realize that overall the RC church has experienced a slight decline, but nothing like the mainline denominations.
I suspect the “take home” messages that 815 will get from this study will be:
(1) “Conservative Episcopal congregations were much
more likely to have experienced serious conflict during
the last five years over the ordination of gay clergy
than moderate or liberal congregations.”
(2) “Congregations that are considerably more liberal were
most likely to grow, followed by congregations that
are considerably more conservative.”
#4, Same here. But given recent developments it might now be easier to lure my brother the Buddhist and fellow cradle ex-Episcopalian and his daughter back inside a TEC church.
Yes, #7 telling that those were the last two paragraphs of the report, isn’t it. You took the words out of my mouth!
After the Robinson affair, several families with children departed my well-known orthodox parish in Northern Virginia (still in ECUSA at the time) specifically to protect their children from the ECUSAn influence. These were generally parents in their 30s and 40s and they found a new home in the local community church for the reasons that John316 outlined in #3 above.
So TEC is just going to “die” out.
#4, ditto here, although my kids are now older and I’m over 50.
No. 10 – Just what feature of “ecusan influence” do you think those 30 and 40 years olds were so concerned to protect their children from?
Rob k, I’m not GrandpaDino, but may I give an answer?
In faith, Dave
Viva Texas
#13 rob k – may I answer as one who did leave, as I mentioned in #4, because of concern for my child? In a revisionist diocese, even though my parish was very traditional, I was concerned that there could be very little interaction between my parish and any diocesan events because we were never sure what theology might be espoused. My parish did not encourage participation in diocesan events and the diocese didn’t come looking for us to participate, either. That becomes very isolating and difficult to explain to young children. It wasn’t just that the theology might be suspect (no diocese is perfect) but that the overwhelming sense in the diocese was that anyone holding to a “traditional” “orthodox,” whatever you want to call it, understanding of Christianity was not welcome, was seen as outside the mainstream of TEC. Diocesan conventions were mere approval chambers of whatever resolutions the bishop supported with no discussion, because discussion was frowned upon. After all, we’re all supposed to “get along,” aren’t we? There was no standing up for the faith, very little evangelism, extremely weak to non-existent theology, and a litigious bishop who supported everything +KJS proposed. Trying to bring a child up in this type of religious environment (never mind trying to bring a child up in our overall culture) makes you realize that you need a church community worshiping together in Christ – not a political and social organization with a religious veneer.
I’ll go ahead and add mine.
Me, I was so dumb! I knew TEC had ordained a homosexual bishop and was justifying that by saying scripture needed to be revised. I was even engaged in a lengthy email discussion with my then-pastor about all that, but it just never occurred to me that they would give corrupt teachings to children. I had no inkling until one of my grandkids asked me why I was getting so down on TEC. I explained they were condoning homosexuality and scripture says that’s wrong. My grandson shot back, “Well SCRIPTURE’S wrong, and homosexuality isn’t wrong at all”. That was the first I knew. We never returned; I bailed immediately and took the grandkids with me. We were betrayed!!
In faith, Dave
Viva Texas
The church is 82% white and 62% middle-aged or older, but here’s the latest PR piece from 815:
http://www.iamepiscopalian.org
Only 5% of congregations regularly include incense as part of their worship?
When these people get to Heaven, how are they going to recognize what it smells like?
#17, thanks for the link. I see truthiness has now left theology and gone into advertising! Big differencio!
#17, Ralinda, I saw the press release about the launch of that site yesterday on my RSS feeds. I only read the first two paragraphs.
Here’s what I read and then what I thought and e-mailed to Kendall on a few others.
[blockquote]IamEpiscopalian.org
By Jim Naughton
As Ash Wednesday begins the Lenten season,
IamEpiscopalian.org shares faith stories, personal thoughts
[February 25, 2009] – Sisters laughingly talk about growing up, growing away and growing back to The Episcopal Church. A prison chaplain calls The Episcopal Church a thinking church. One person shares that he joined The Episcopal Church decades ago because the girls were cute.
These are just a few of the 30+ Episcopalians who share their faith stories of celebration at IamEpiscopalian.org, debuting today, February 25, Ash Wednesday at noon Eastern time (11 am Central, 10 am Mountain, 9 am Pacific, 8 am Alaskan, 7 am Hawaiian).[/blockquote]
How does TEC celebrate Ash Wednesday?
By glorifying itself.
I would very much like to know the average age of an Episcopalian. This data is poorly organized and doesn’t answer that question.
From what I understand is that the average age is basically growing by 1 every year, i.e., it’s the same pool but just getting smaller so the average age stays the same. It would be very interesting to plot the average age over the past 10 years. One could then get an idea of how much new blood is coming in.
Life expectancy of a 65 year old is about 18 years.
re 21: Hadaway and I had an exchange of e-mails about this back in 2005 back when I was trying to track down the ‘”average age” of Episcopalians is 57.9 and rising a year every year’ urban legend. His back-of-the-envelope at the time was that the average age was about 50. Using some really dubious arithmetic I get an average age of 47, and since my method comes up with the correct median US age (37) that’s probably not too far off.
BTW, if nobody new became an Episcopalian, the average age would still not rise a year every year. Old people do die, after all.
Hey RobK,
My thirty-something brother and his 30-something wife left the parish that they loved and that their children were baptized in and that they themselves were confirmed in.
As my brother told me on the phone: “I’m trying to teach my children a certain sexual and relational ethos that is counter cultural — and unfortunately the national version of my church is supporting the culture. Sooner or later, my kids are going to get older — and recognize that the church I support does not teach the ethos which I am attempting to give them. If my parish had been able to communicate a very strong and clear counter-815 message, I could perhaps have instructed my kids that the church we attend does not support the foolish denomination in which we are residing. But my parish was not able to proclaim a strong counter-815 message. And so we needed to leave.”
That was it.
Now, understandably, for people who believe that 815 is proclaiming wonderful and Christian messages, that’s not an issue. But for conservatives . . . including Gen-Xers and younger . . . it is.
Furthermore, I would estimate that of the people who have left my own parish about half have been young marrieds with children. Very disproportionate response — but understandable, because they need to protect their children from the rank heresy and corruption that 815 spews forth.
Part of the issue too is that we don’t know how “wrong” the various distributions are. Back in the later 1800s the church took a “we need to be everywhere” approach to mission in the western (and even central) US. That leads to one of the most pervasive trends in the numbers: the old/small/small-town parish coupling. It wouldn’t surprise me to find out that the people in these semirural parishes are old because the people in the towns they are in are also old. But it wasn’t wrong to put parishes in these places; the point after all is to serve parishioners, not to build institutions. If there is a problem in this, it is that we haven’t kept up recently with new development, and are thus undersupplying new suburbs etc. (a point made in the paper).
For me, the most striking number is that 47% reported serious conflict over That Issue.
Regarding my post #17, my numbers are wrong. TEC isn’t that white or that old. But it isn’t as young, ethnic, or multiracial as the PR puff site suggests.
To Branford, Dave Pierce, and Sarah – Thanks for your replies to my question.