Who (or What) Caused the Decline in Membership in the Episcopal Church?

Let us look at the raw figures. (All statistics are drawn from tables in the red Episcopal Church Annual, years 1965 - 2003; the numbers are rounded off). In 1965 we had 3,615,000 baptized members. Every year thereafter showed a decline. By 1970, for example, that number had decreased slightly to 3,475,000. In 2001 the total baptized members had dropped to 2,317,000 a fall in 35 years of 1,300,000.

The steep decline in numbers seems to suggest, on the surface, a mass exodus: church people angry about this or that leaving the church. There is little doubt that much of church took on a more liberal hue at some time in the post-war era. But did this "cause" a massive walkout?

I will argue that what corresponds to our membership loss is not the drift to liberalism but a sharp decline in the birth rate among those descended from people from the British Isles or Northern Europe -- our essential "tribal" base. (I will not discuss the loss of African-Americans, which began with the Civil War.)

If one assumes that the usual way our church has traditionally "grown" has not been through evangelism, but through the replication of its own, then it would follow that a decline in numbers of those who "come up through the system" would account for the overall decline in numbers.

During the Depression and afterwards there was gradual but noticeable decline in the birth rate and family size in America. In 1925 there were 24.1 births per 1000; in 1961 that number had dropped to 22.1 per 1000 (even after an uptick in post war births). By 1980 the figures were 15.1 per 1000 and in 2002 the rate was 13.9 per 1000. The number of children in families also fell dramatically. In the mid 19th century there were 9 children per married household. In 1900 there were close to 5. In 1972 that number was 2.7. In 1990 it was 1.8, and in 2000 the number had dropped to .9. The rate among Episcopalians is currently among the lowest in the nation.

In a relatively static church, one not overly evangelical, the crucial element of growth has to be the raising up of our children (adult baptisms, one possible source of growth have hovered in the 6000 to 8,000 per year range since 1970).

In 1965 there were 880,000 children in our Sunday School programs. By 2001 that number had declined to 297,000. Thus in 35 years we had dropped by close to 600,000 students. In 1965 we confirmed 128,000 persons. In 2001 we confirmed 34,000 persons. At the so-called entry level we had, over the years, fewer and fewer people. One could argue that parents were withholding their children due to the church's lurch to the left, but it is more plausible that there was simply a diminishing pool of young people to begin with.

How could one show that the drop in numbers of those coming into the system "at the bottom" is in some way responsible for our decline in membership? One common sense way that the drop in numbers was responsible for our decline might be to show that the number of those entering the church -- those confirmed, received, or baptized as adults -- would fall below the burial rate. But this does not occur. In fact Confirmations and Receptions plus Adult Baptism numbers continue to this day to outstrip burials, though at a decreasing rate.

Does this invalidate the thesis? Not if we remember that as far back as 1963 figures showed that the church retained barely 50% of her Confirmands. I doubt the percentage is that high today.

If we add the adult baptisms and adult receptions to 50% of the confirmations, a different picture emerges. In 1970 the number of burials equals the number of the confirmed (less 50%)/received/adult baptisms. In 1975 the number of burials (53,000) outstrips Confirmations (69,000 x .50 = 35,000) and Adult Baptisms (6,000) plus adult receptions (8,000) by 4,000. In 1980 the discrepancy was a negative 6,000.

A similar dynamic is at work between say 1986 and 1995, but a certain drop in church membership between 1969 and 1973 does not conform to the thesis that a drop in birth rates was responsible. In 1967 we reported a baptized membership of 3,588,000. In 1968 that figure dropped by 52,000. In 1969 there was further loss of 61,000. In 1970 the loss was another 30,000. In 1971 there was another 60,000 drop, and in 1972 there was a whopping decline of 177,000. In 1973 there was a further drop of 125,000. The church began to feel the impact of the drop of the birth rate around 1975; therefore one must look for other causes of this loss in the years 1968 - 1973. And it would not be wrong to suggest that the racial turmoil of the late 1960's, reflected in a variety of fairly liberal policies undertaken by the national church and a number of dioceses, provoked a severe backlash and loss of members. While I suspect some rue these actions of the church, few today, even among conservatives, would be likely to say the church was wrong in its decisions of that era. A campaign to combat racism is not quite the same as "a sell-out to secularism." And when we turn to the periods of 1986 to 1995 and 1996 to 2001, I don't think we see anything like the "exodus of the 60's."

[Coats writes that the loss of membership is declining, and he says, "we must now be picking up people at the other end . . the most hopeful sign in an otherwise dismal record."]

What conclusion is to be drawn from this quick look at our church's numbers over the last 35 years? It would seem that the problem with the church has not been its political "drift to the left". My sense is that as many left as joined during this period. What was lacking however was any sense of evangelizing outside our own "natural" base. Because in America religious life remains largely ethnic, with each domination still rooted in a European or Latin base-stock, we continued over the years to assume our British Isles/European base (with an African-American component) would simply replicate itself . However the decline in this base, the broadening out of ethnic choices, vast demographic changes and dramatic mobility features means there is no primary stock left to replicate. This was evident a generation ago and could have signaled not simply evangelism in general but strategies to work with other expanding ethnic groups in the United States. We did not do this. By paying little or no attention to changing ethnic patterns, the declining birth rate or other demographic shifts, our myopic laziness has cost us dearly. Indeed, had we united on a more precise evangelism, we might have spared ourselves not only our decline but the incessant and vitriolic battering now going on.