Miscellany #5
Episcopal Church Parochial Statistics, Experimental Predestinarianism, and Zanchi
The state of the Episcopal Church is bad
The 2022 parochial report data from the Episcopal Church was released earlier this month. Alas: it makes for grim reading. Our average Sunday attendance did increase after the covid trough of 2021 (and the 2022 data might still be affected by the late 2021/early 2022 omicron surge driving down attendance). But even with that increase, our average Sunday attendance has declined over 40% in the last decade. Incidentally, this is about the length of time that I have been regularly worshipping in Episcopal parishes, and I’ve seen the decline with my own eyes – some of the parishes that were vibrant and full when I was first exploring Anglicanism are now struggling to keep their doors open. And if you look under the hood, there are even more concerning signs. Over 60% of TEC congregations have an ASA of 50 or less, and 35% are under 25. At this attendance level, without an endowment, congregations on average will struggle to support a full-time priest. And we know that congregations without a full-time priest are unlikely to grow or even hold steady in attendance and usually decline. So, bluntly, the vast majority of those congregations are likely to close. But decline is not limited to smaller congregations. A full 84% of our congregations have lost 10% or more of their average Sunday attendance over the past five years. One could go on. Nearly half of our members are 65+, and while these members may well have decades left of growing in the knowledge and love of God before they go to be with Jesus, for denominational health as a whole this isn’t great. Our rates of children and adult baptisms have both roughly halved over the last decade. Things are bad, they will get worse, and our governance structures seem wholly incapable of meeting the challenges ahead. They not infrequently struggle to even honestly name the challenges.
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