PCUSA tallies another big loss – 31,549 in ’01
The Layman Online, December 18, 2002
It’s official. Another 31,549 Presbyterians left the pews of the Presbyterian Church (USA) during 2001.
That’s the loss tallied in the denomination’s recently published annual report called “Comparative Statistics 2001.” It was the 36th consecutive year, beginning in 1966, that the denomination has lost members. Those losses add up to 1,760,816 – an average of 48,912 per year.
If losses continue at that rate, the Presbyterian Church (USA) will be no more than a memory around the middle of the 21st century.
The denominations that make up the PCUSA had grown every year since the Presbyterian Church was established in Philadelphia in 1706, reaching a high of 4,254,597 members in 1965.
It took America’s Presbyterian Church 259 years to amass that many members and 36 years to lose 41.4 percent of them.
“Comparative Statistics” does not include exit poll material and there’s never been a fully scientific study done to explain why the Presbyterian Church continues to rapidly disappear while other denominations have grown. (At one point, Baptists and Presbyterians were roughly the same size; today, there are 20 million Southern Baptists.)
The closest thing to editorial comment in “Comparative Statistics” is a column by Freda Gardner, moderator of the 211th General Assembly, who says the losses “must be closely examined. Are they portents of doom or evidence of the mysterious ways in which God works among those God created, redeemed and loves?”
Her question suggests there may be a positive side to the attrition – which is high even for mainline, liberal denominations. Some defenders of the denomination’s decline have suggested that the thinning ranks are producing a higher quality Presbyterian.
Forty-six of the denomination’s 173 presbyteries posted losses that were at least twice as high as the denomination’s 1.25 percent loss from 2000 to 2001.
Presbyteries with loss percentages
more than double PCUSA’s
1.25 percent decline from 2001-02Nevada -11.15 Stockton -10.25 Sierra Blanca -8.34 Flint River -6.77 Southern Louisiana -5.71 Inland Northwest -5.14 Utah-4.92 Dakota -4.59 Western Colorado -4.30 Lake Huron -4.17 Yukon -4.16 Albany -4.74 Pines -4.30 Kendall -3.93 Mississippi -3.91 Lackawanna -3.73 Missouri River Valley -3.72 Arkansas -3.71 Wabash Valley -3.69 Southeastern Illinois -3.67 Miami -3.53 Lake Erie -3.50 Utica -3.49 San Fernando -3.48 Western Kentucky -3.47 Pittsburgh -3.35 Western New York -3.33 West Virginia -3.31 Maume Valley -3.30 Glacier -3.13 Central Washington -3.12 Eastern Oregon -3.10 Cherokee -3.07 Washington -2.92 Minnesota Valleys -2.90 Prospect Hill -2.87 Lehigh -2.85 Tres Rios -2.79 Geneva -2.73 Southern Kansas -2.64 Cincinnati -2.58 Boston -2.57 Des Moines -2.56 Kiskiminetas -2.56 Northern New England -2.53 West Jersey-2.51