[Bumped from Saturday]
Jeff Walton, Anglican program director at the Institute on Religion & Democracy, told The Christian Post that these losses may even be larger than what is recorded.
According to Walton, TEC’s numbers are not factoring in the losses it technically sustained when the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina voted to leave the denomination last year.
“The reported nearly 29,000 member drop does not include an estimated 22,000 that departed with the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina in November of 2012. So the real decline is about 51,000 persons,” said Walton. “The Episcopal Church is continuing a gradual, predictable decline in both members and attendance.”
The article cites an Episcopalian high membership point of 1966, and its decline since then. As shocking as that 1/3 decline sounds, it should also be compared to the population growth in the USA. In 1966 the US population was 196,560,338. Today it is nearly 313,000,000, a 38% increase. If ECUSA had kept up with population growth since 1966 it would be over 4 millions members. That should be the real comparative decline!