PCUSA nears half-life as exodus accelerates
By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, February 28, 2006
By the end of this year, if the denomination’s number-crunchers are on target, the mainline Presbyterian Church will have lost nearly a half-life since its heyday in 1965.
That was the year that the Northern and Southern streams of the mainline denomination – which merged in 1983 to form the Presbyterian Church (USA) – reported a combined membership of 4,254,597.
The PCUSA’s budget-makers are predicting that the membership loss will accelerate to 65,000 in 2005 and 85,000 in 2006. If they’re right, the membership will shrink since 1965 to 2,212,116 at the end of this year, a 48 percent loss.
PCUSA’s membership chart shapes up like a downhill ski slope.
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Both of the PCUSA’s sister denominations – the Episcopal Church (USA) and the United Church of Christ – are also experiencing steep declines. They already have experienced a rash of departures of entire congregations since the Episcopalians selected an openly homosexual bishop and the UCC sanctioned the marriage of same-gender couples.
As of Feb. 27, the UCC had lost 87 congregations in reaction to the denomination’s decision in 2005 to sanction same-gender marriages, according to Faithful and Welcoming Churches, a renewal movement in the denomination. Unlike the PCUSA, the UCC does not require its local congregations to hold their property in trust for the benefit of the denomination.
The American Anglican Council reports that 25 former Episcopal Church (USA) congregations have already disaffiliated from the denomination. Superior Court judges in California have ruled that three can keep their property, declaring they had a right, under California law, to revoke the ECUSA’s property trust clause. In addition, many other ECUSA congregations in the American Anglican Council are taking steps to affiliate with conservative provinces in the World Anglican Communion.
Where property laws are more favorable to hierarchal denominations, some leaders in the departing ECUSA congregations have simply given diocesan bishops the keys to their property and rented space in shopping malls, theaters and empty stores.
So far, the hemorrhage in the PCUSA has been more individual than congregational. The denomination’s strict enforcement of its constitutional property requirements has clearly suppressed congregational flight.
Since 2001, fewer than a dozen PCUSA congregations have voted to leave the denomination and none has been allowed to keep its property without paying an exit fee. Those fees have been averaged more than $3,000 per member.
Reluctant to buy their property again – after they already paid for it to start with – the leaders of congregations upset about the direction of the PCUSA have uneasily stayed put. But that’s had a cost, too, as pews empty, even in evangelical churches. Members simply disappear from the pews, sometimes without leaving a forwarding address about whether they’re attending another church.
PCUSA leaders have often said the empty seats are because people are simply dropping out of churches and the truancy doesn’t have anything to do with their “progressive” theological agendas.
But professional surveys that suggest otherwise and the overall demise of the mainline U.S. Protestant denominations – reflected also in their ecumenical alliances in the National Council of Churches, the World Council of Churches and the World Alliance of Reformed Churches – show their aggregated social/political strength is withering both in membership numbers and financial support.
The projections that the PCUSA’s membership will decline by 150,000 during 2005 and 2006 reflected the expectation of an accelerated rate of decline. If they hold true, the decline in 2005 will be 2.75 percent. That would be the highest loss percentage since reunion in 1983.
In 2006, the loss percentage is estimated at 3.7 percent. That would be the highest single-year loss percentage in the history of the PCUSA and its predecessor denominations.
How long can the PCUSA last at a departure average of 49,815 Presbyterians per year since 1965? Someone would have to turn off the lights in 2047.