PCUSA losses speed up
decline toward extinction
By John H. Adams, The Layman, June 24, 2009
Correction retracted
The original version of this article included comments attributed to the Rev. Eric Hoey, the General Assembly’s director of Evangelism and Church Growth. The Layman quoted those comments from an article posted on the Web site of the Office of the General Assembly. Later a Layman Online reader notified The Layman that Hoey’s comment was not in the referenced article. The Layman issued a correction and apology for having attributed an undocumented comment to Hoey. Subsequent research has revealed that Hoey did make the comment and that it was deleted from the OGA Web site without public notice. The Layman therefore retracts its correction and stands by the original story posted June 24.
During 2008, the Presbyterian Church (USA) accelerated its race toward extinction, posting record-breaking membership losses. Although Gradye Parsons, the General Assembly’s stated clerk, and two members of the General Assembly are trying to make matters appear better than they are, the denomination’s own statistics tell another story:
- Total PCUSA losses in 2008 were 172,869. The denomination gained 103,488 for a net loss of 69,381 members. This was the highest one-year dropout total since the reunion of the Southern and Northern mainline Presbyterian bodies in the United States in 1983.
- The percentage loss – 3.2 percent – was the second highest since 1960. The highest was in 1973 when the South’s Presbyterian Church U.S. and the North’s United Presbyterian Church (USA) lost 3.6 percent of their members. That was the birth year of the Presbyterian Church in America, which included 60 Mississippi congregations leaving the Southern denomination, and ongoing controversies about reunion possibilities and funding controversial causes.
- Precisely, congregations reported having 2,140,165 members at the end of 2008. That’s 49.7 percent of the 1965 membership, believed to be the peak for mainline Presbyterians. In effect, the PCUSA has lost its half-life.
- The denomination’s net membership loss has averaged 53,029 for the past five years. If that pace is maintained for the next 40 years and six months, the pews will be empty and the PCUSA will become a historical footnote.
- The losses aggravate an already serious financial crisis in per-capita support for the denomination’s operations and overall giving for PCUSA missions.
Confusing assessment
Parsons gave a confusing assessment of the damage, lamenting the loss of whole congregations to other denominations. Presbyteries dismissed 25 congregations in 2008, most to the Evangelical Presbyterian Church. That number in itself may be misleading since some congregations are not asking permission from their presbytery to be dismissed. They are simply walking away, leaving behind an almost empty shell that the denomination continues to count as one of its member churches.
“We are all diminished by the loss of these congregations,” Parsons said, who did not mention the EPC. “The PCUSA needs to include people and congregations of every theological voice so that we can be faithful to where God is leading us in this world.”
That’s the rub. Many evangelicals who have left the denomination contend the wooing of “every theological voice” isn’t compatible with Reformed teaching. Several churches have cited the denomination’s pluralism as the primary reason for their departure.
No change in loss rate?
The Rev. Eric Hoey, the General Assembly Council’s director of Evangelism and Church Growth, applied some unfamiliar math in his assessment. He said the membership decline in 2008 “is roughly at the same rate of decline as in past years. In light of all the churches that left our denomination last year, the decline in membership should have been the largest number we have seen. To hold steady in this statistical trend demonstrates that we are growing in a slow, but steady pace.”
Hoey’s comments above were in his original post on the Web site of the Office of the General Assembly, but were later omitted. They can be found in the Presbyterian News Service article (number 09525) posted June 22, 2009 or can be seen in a pdf file The Layman made of that article.
In fact, the total loss was the largest loss in 25 years, but even more pressing for denominational planners is the rate of loss. Since 2001, it has averaged 1.75 percent a year, which is 46 percent above the 1.19 loss rate from 1983 through 2000.
The Rev. Rhashell Hunter, the General Assembly Council’s director of Racial Ethnic and Women’s Ministries, also suggested there are positives figures beyond what the stark numbers of decline reveal. She said the racial-ethnic members have increased in 10 years from 4.7 percent to 7.5 percent, and that the number of racial-ethnic congregations has grown from 972 to 1,358. Hunter’s percentage enjoys a substantial boost from the fact that the total number of PCUSA congregations has declined.
Growing in ‘diversity’
“It is clear that we aren’t where we want to be, but we aren’t where we used to be, either,” she said. “So, we are growing Christ’s church deep and wide in diversity. … It is incumbent upon us to lift up the values of diversity and inclusivity and to welcome the stranger, invite diverse peoples to church, and share the good news, that we might become the beloved community of Christ.”
No one is predicting numbers for 2009, but the 2010 General Assembly will get the tally for the year. Meanwhile, dozens of congregations wait in the wings hoping their presbyteries will allow them to leave the PCUSA and affiliate with another Reformed denomination. And a General Assembly investigating committee is searching for evidence to support accusations that the EPC is actively wooing PCUSA churches, a charge that the EPC denies.
Who are the drifters
Parsons is quick to point out that PCUSA’s losses to other churches did not make up the bulk of the 172,869 membership loss. Most of those are what Parsons calls “drifters”– people who might have been raised Presbyterian but drifted away from church altogether. The PCUSA does not conduct exit polls to determine why individuals leave. It assumes that anyone who departs without seeking a letter of transfer has dropped out of church altogether. Parsons cites as his source for the high drifter rate a sociological study by the Pew Foundation.
The sociological explanation, that religion is simply becoming less important and that there’s not much the church can do to keep people from dropping out, is a common theme of mainline denominations. : That assumption is not supported by the statistics in Parsons’ data base. Those persons who leave without telling the PCUSA where they are going may not be leaving religion altogether, as Parsons and the Pew study that he cites assumes. It is equally possible that many are moving to other churches that are more compatible with their convictions.
Studies by Christian pollster George Barna and a major study of church membership, The Churching of America, 1776-2005, by Roger Finke and Rodney Stark, disagree with the denominations’ apologists for inevitable losses. They say churches that remain faithful to their Biblical and theological traditions do, in fact, grow.
On the first page of their book, Finke and Stark wrote, “… to the degree that denominations reject traditional doctrines and ceased to make serious demands on their followers, they ceased to prosper.”