According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s figures, Idaho has grown in population from 1,293,953 in 2000 to 1,545,801 in 2009. This represents a population growth of approximately 19.46%.
According to Episcopal Church statistics, the Diocese of Idaho went from Average Sunday Attendance (or ASA) of 2,061 in 1998 to 1,732 in 2008. This represents an ASA decline of about 16% over this ten year period.
In order to generate a pictorial chart of diocesan statistics, please go [url=http://www.episcopalchurch.org/growth_60791_ENG_HTM.htm?menupage=50929]here[/url] and enter “Idaho” in the second line down under “Diocese” and then click on “View Diocese Chart” under the third line to the left.
The TEC has far to many dioceses each having a total ASA less than that for a good sized parish. I have to think that one reason for maintaining such a top heavy organization is to keep control of the HOB and/or Delegates as well as stack the Anglican Communion’s boards and committees and so on with individuals who are sympathetic to the GLBT agenda. When you look at contiguous areas, such as the Dioceses of Fond du Lac, Northern Michigan, and Eau Claire, it is difficult to understand why they separately need the overhead that comes with a diocesan organization. Whilst a single Ordinary would be stretched to do annual visits limited to Sundays, there are more than enough retired bishops around that not only could but would be more than willing to assist.
Idaho was in fact something of a success story up until the fateful year of 2002. ASA grew every year from 1993-2001 except 1999, with 2001 showing a net increase of 16% over 1992. Thereafter every year showed a loss except 2005, so that from the peak in 2001 there was a loss of 19%.
C. Wingate: 2004 was not a “Christmas effect” year while 2005 was. Thus, the 2005 ASA numbers were artificially elevated thereby hiding a probable decline if the Christmas effect was removed.
Individual dioceses will have to be dragged to the table to discuss merging. As a result, bloated budgets for bishop and staff will drag the denomination down even further and faster. Western Kansas might be an exception to the rule but will have to merge with Kansas – ugh.
Thanks to all commenters so far. Still hoping that Statmann will chime in with more data for us. I suspect that with Idaho being as rural as it is, there are lots of little churches with a tiny ASA and a Plate and Pledge below the viability threshold of $150K.
But in the meantime, even the data we have is really damning and sobering. The state population grew over the decade by 19%, while the ASA of this miniature diocese shrank by about 16%, making for a differential in real terms of a whopping 35% loss. That’s over 1/3 in only a decade.
If TEC were a publicly traded business, the executive heads would’ve been rolling long ago…
David Handy+
John (#1),
You’re right that whether it’s intentional or not, the fact that TEC has loads of teeny, tiny dioceses gives it an unfair advantage in some international Anglican forums, such as the Lambeth Conference. For instance, Uganda is the second largest province in the AC, with almost 10 million active members; yet it has only some 34 bishops. Meanwhile TEC has only about 2 million members (many inactive), yet it swells its HoB with an unnecessary 100 domestic dioceses. The disparity is incredible. Of course, I’m sure Uganda would have a lot more bishops if they could afford it. Nigeria is in better shape that way.
And robroy (#3),
I’m glad you pointed out, my friend, as you often do, that the Christmas year effect sometimes slightly distorts the ASA figures. And I have to agree with you that trimming the excess number of dioceses and their bloated staffs is long overdue, but will hurt some conservative dioceses like W. KS as well as extremely liberal ones like N. MICH.
David Handy+
The Diocese of idaho had a rather typical 2002 through 2008 TEC experiencee with Members down 11.3 percent, ASA down 14.8 percent, and Plate & Pledge (adjusted for inflation) down 5.8 perceent. using these data I ranked the diocese at 41 of 95 considered. But the future appears to be even less promising. For Aging, there were 23 Infant Baptisms and 29 Burials in 2008. For Money, only 6 of its 29 churches had Plate & Pledge of $150K or more in 2008 which means that each “rich” church had about 4 “poor” churches to help. And for church size, 72 percent (21 of 29) had ASA of 70 or less in 2008 with 10 of these 21 having ASA of 20 or less. (One could comment on the 6 churches in Idaho in the Diocese of Spokane but that would just be more of the same bad news.) It is difficult to see a simple solution such as combining Western Kansas with Kansas. Statmann
One should note that Idaho is small enough to where the natural year-to-year variation in births and deaths shows up in the data. In 2007, for example, Idaho was better than average in baptisms (total or infant) and Sunday school size, and about average in burials. But that meant that Idaho had four times as many baptisms in 2007 and 2.8 times as many burials as in 2008. One can see the same kind of jumps, if less extreme, in 2006. That volatility is typical of small dioceses and makes these kinds of comparisons untrustworthy.
The real issue about talking about small parishes in Idaho, as it was in Montana, is that larger numbers means more small parishes, not the same number of larger parishes. The potential is there to make the parishes in cities quite a bit bigger, but prospects in the small towns is keeping them going, as it has been for the past century. In the years of growth in the diocese, it would be a very safe bet that the P&P numbers across the diocese were not distributed favorably towards any but the same few parishes.
NRA, it’s true that in retrospect the number of dioceses in the USA is excessive. On the other hand, Uganda is the size of Wyoming; even given the difficulty of travel one would tend to expect a certain disparity in the number of bishops. A quick sampling of the Church of Uganda (such as can be made) suggests that in terms of number of parishes the Ugandan dioceses are not radically out of line with the American dioceses, other than the American shrimps. But when you start saying, well, combine North Dakota with Montana (total 62 parishes, that’s about right), the geography starts to get ridiculous. What, does every bishop west of the Mississippi get a private plane? Even without the natural, conservative resistance to eliminating dioceses, I don’t see us with less than 70-80 dioceses without simply abandoning most rural parishes.
While we’re at it, some RC numbers, taken from here:
Idaho is a single diocese (Boise City). Catholics as a percentage of the population has rise slightly from 9.8% in 1999 to 10.4% in 2006 (most recent data). There are 51 parishes, with seven cities/towns having more than one parish (I think– the presentation on the diocesan website is confusing). As with Montana lots of these “parishes’ are actually missions served from other parishes (e.g. Lava Hot Springs served from the parish in Soda Springs). There are 75 diocesan priests and 90 priests total, with some 1600 members per priest. Of course, the members per parish number is nearly double that, but very few of these parishes have 3000 members. I would imagine that probably 30 of them have less than 200.
A graph of ASA and population is available [url=http://mysite.verizon.net/vze3fnty/id12.html]here[/url]. The figure (mostly) adjusts for the cross-state boundaries of the diocese of Idaho. (The northern parts are properly excluded, but part of Teton County Wyoming should be included and is not. I can’t deal well with partial counties.) The difference in growth between the state and diocese is inconsequential; the population growth for the diocese was 18.64%, rather than 19.46% for the state. (Who knew that northern Idaho was growing faster than southern Idaho?)
That detail aside, note that ASA was high in 2005 and 2006. In 2006, Christmas was on a Monday, so did the Christmas effect apply? I noticed the 1999 dip. It might be an anti-Christmas effect–Dec 25 was Saturday.
The population growth was 8th fastest from 1992 to 2008, at 44.5%. The percent change in percent of population is 80th over that time period.
RE: “Catholics as a percentage of the population has rise slightly from 9.8% in 1999 to 10.4% in 2006 (most recent data).”
Good for the RCs!
It appears that the Episcopalians have declined as percentage of the population to 1/10 of 1% in Idaho.
Except in Blaine County, where some 3.7% of the residents claim to be Episcopalians. Mind you, that’s two congregations, and about two thirds of the residents of the county claim no religious affiliation. Catholics and Mormons, the two larger groups, come in at about 10% and 9% respectively.
Brent, if you look at my second chart you can see the Christmas effect clearly: there is a bump in the annual rate every five years (1995, 2000, 2005).
RE: “Except in Blaine County, where some 3.7% of the residents claim to be Episcopalians.”
Wow — so that means in all the other counties Episcopalians as a percentage of the population are even less than 1/10 of 1%.
Incredible.
The 3.7% in Blaine County pulls the rest of the state all the way up to 1/10 of 1% of the population as compared to what really is quite impressive gain in the RCs.
Dear Brent, I consider Christmas effect years are when Christmas Eve falls on Saturday or Sunday. Christmas day services are usually sparsely attended. Thus, my Christmas effect years are: 2006, 2005, 2000, 1995, 1994,…
Going from a CE year to a non-CE year, the drop in ASA will be amplified. Going from a non-CE year to a CE year, the drop in ASA will be blunted. Looking at your graph, you see 2005 and 2006 are up. But if you simply ignore these data points and look at 2004 to 2007, it is down. So the upness of these two years is simply Christmas effect.
For the geeks: I remember someone asking how much the Christmas effect is. Supposedly, Kirk Hadaway has a calculation that he computes it. However, a better solution would be to simply interpolate between 2004 and 2007 and see how much the actual numbers are over the interpolated values. Do this for a number of dioceses and average.
re 15: You can quite plainly see the the Christmas effect in this chart of ASA change per annum. Nationally it seems to be good for about a 1-2% bump in ASA growth.