On a typical Sunday, [Canon to the Ordinary Paul] Cooney said, church attendance at parishes in the diocese ranges from 14 to 1,039. In half of the diocese’s parishes, fewer than 115 people attend Sunday services. And in the average parish, Church School draws just 27 children.
Data from parochial reports show that over the last 20 years, the diocese’s membership has remained stable in the low 40,000s. But during that same period, the number of pledging households has decreased by about 20 percent.
Over the last 20 years, “we’ve become modestly smaller,” Cooney said.
Despite a lack of consistency in the way membership data has been recorded, the reports indicate a gradual but marked decline in the last 40 years: Since 1967, the number of active communicants in the diocese’s parishes has dropped by approximately 26 percent.
“More analysis remains to be done,” Cooney wrote in a recent memo to the council. “However, it comes as no surprise from reviewing the data thus far that we face the challenging situation of fragile and in some cases declining membership. Of particular concern is the typically small number of children in our congregations.”
“Of particular concern is the typically small number of children in our congregations.”
Obviously too smart to breed. Leave that to Mormons and evangelicals.
Put another way, the Canon to the Ordinary is right that there should be great concern and worry about the graying of the congregations in that very liberal diocese. For DECADES now, the average age of Episcopalians has been rising steadily. I don’t know that reliable data is available for the current national average, but the last I knew the typical member of TEC was about 60 years old.
Many of our leaders, in their complacency, vainly imagine that this unhealthy trend can just continue indefinitely, but it can’t. At some point, the gentle downward slope in membership numbers comes to the edge of a cliff, and then the numbers just plummet. That is, what happens to TEC, or the Diocese of Washington DC, when the average age hits 70 or 75?
There’s also another issue that’s worth noting. There is something inherently contradictory between being a gay-friendly church and being a family-friendly church. Many parents will rightly not want their children to be exposed to such a family-hostile enviorment as a “gay is OK” church. And that is a very plausible reason that helps to explain why there are so few children in the churches of this diocese. And why there is every reason to think that the numbers of children will continue to shrink in the future.
Not to mention the fact that gay couples can’t have children.
David Handy+
David makes a great point in #2, that “there is something inherently contradictory between being a gay-friendly church and being a family-friendly church.” It’s been playing out for years in my own downtown DC parish: My wife was asked by a prominent pervert if she would be availing herself of the nursery when our first daughter was born, and now the curate’s wife has been harassed about their young daughter being in church during Solemn Mass. I know of others who have faced the same, some of whom have moved to other parishes, some of whom have left the Episcopal Church altogether.
Goes to show that perverts generally have no interest in being Christian, just being in control, making a shambles of their claims of just wanting to be tolerated.
I believe the decline is because Christian Churchs exist to serve God and proclaim the good news. In the Episcopal Church you cannot get a consensus AMOUNG THE CLERGY if Christ rose from the dead, the purpose of the crucifiction (cosmic child abuse or atonement). When Christ isn’t lifted up we are a service club with neat ceremonies. If Christ is lifted, God exalted people change!
#2 New Reformation Advocate says:
That is a rather bizarre non-sequitur. What exactly do you imagine goes on in these churches?
My parish is stuanchly “gay is OK,” to use your term, and it’s also swarming with kids and young families. Somehow they’re all apparently missing out on that family-hostile vibe you say we have to be sending out.
re 2: The “average age” number is the subject of a lot of mythology, but sixty as an average is certainly wrong. It’s probably closer to around 50, and not changing much. In fact, let’s see….
I got a 2000 US population pyramid from here and applied it to some of the numbers given. The average age of adults (age>19) is about 46. For our putative parish of 115 ASA we should expect Sunday School attendance of about 32, which is quite a bit off. This comes with some significant caveats, however. First, this assumes that college students go to church! Second, this data is about a decade old, and the population distribution has shifted significantly to the older; it also may not be that representative of the DC area population. It’s also subject to some reporting “errors”; for example, if the nursery population were not counted as Sunday School attendance, that alone would be enough to account for most of the discrepancy.
1965 is a particularly bad year for comparisons, because the baby boom had just ended. Parishes of all sorts were crammed with kids, and the suburban parishes of DC, filled from many newly built houses occupied by young parents, were particularly so. Forty years later, those suburbs are laden with empty-nesters.
Back when the 2006 Red Book numbers came out, I did some number-crunching which produced some rather surprising conclusions. It appears that a substantial fraction of the national shrinkage is coming from departing parishes; it also appears that lack of children isn’t the problem, or at least that it wasn’t so two years ago. Baptisms outstripped marriages by a factor of 2.39, suggesting that procreation is exceeding the replacement rate. And with 1.22 baptisms per burial (not even counting adult baptisms) it’s a sure thing that attrition is not the source of losses. Instead, active departures seem to be where the people are going.
As far as that 115 median ASA, it would all depend on how big the buildings are, wouldn’t it? I mean, the cathedral seats 4000 people at a service without working hard, but it is the biggest church on the east coast after St. John the Unfinished. There are a lot of little churches in the diocese, and a lot of the diocese is rural. The stats reporter on dfms.org isn’t working at the moment, but I can tell you that 115 would swamp the second-closest parish on a Sunday, and would fill the closest comfortably.
Chane’s