Stand Firm

Won’t hurt Sewanee’s admissions a bit.
New preferrential recruiting of Muslisms, Hindus, pagan feminists, and pansexual boys will take up the slack.
Free ride tuition plans for diversity.

The numbers are worse than reported in that some dioceses have not adjusted their numbers for churches that have left. LA diocese being of of them. To what extent in terms of percentage, I don’t know yet. ASA would drop below 700,000 for sure.
The 2009 will show a big drop as they take into account the dioceses that have left ... unless they replace them before the end of the year…..

Only 236 parishes lost since 2004. Ah, come on.
Also, I wonder what the “original” numbers looked like (a week ago), before “doctoring.

Finally. They couldn’t hold back the release of the damning data forever. But time will tell if even these figures understate the extend and rate of decline. That is, it will be interesting to see if various dioceses like LA are still claiming members who in fact left TEC several years ago. I haven’t had time to review the numbers carefully yet.

But one thing that further accentuates the disastrous decline is that TEC only reports the raw numbers themselves, and not how they relate to the growth in the overall American population. That is, when TEC peaked back in the mid 19600s (1966 I think), ECUSA had some 3.6 million members on the rolls, but the national population was only about half what it is today, and thus Episcopalians made up around 2% of the nation. But nowadys, as the national population has swollen to over 300 million, even the roughly 2 million members that TEC is claiming amount to considerably less than 1% of the population.

And just to put it in a long-term perspective, back in 1776, we Anglicans had over 15% of the population. So our marketshare has dropped drastically, and not just since the liberal lurch to the left in the 1960s.

Despite being inflated, these numbers are dismal. Seems many in the pews recognize the vacuity of the leadership.

Let’s face it: North American Anglicanism is definitely not a growth industry.

Actually if you remove the ASA from the foreign dioceses the ASA drops below 600,000 for the U.S.

I had put my thoughts on them at the end of a tired thread. Some things I observed:

Plate & Pledge % Change From Previous Year
+1.3% +2.9% +2.5% +1.3% -0.2%
Inflation Rate in Calendar Year
+2.7% +3.4% +3.2% +2.8% +3.8%

Thus, we have five years of P&P increases (or decrease in the case of 2008) significantly below the rate of inflation.

# 1 is San Joaquin with a 77% drop! Wu-hoo.
# 2 is South Dakota with an 11.7% drop (you think the leadership will start listening to Father Tim?)
# 3 and # 4 are West Virginia and Alaska with drops of 8.9% and 8.8%, respectively.

The biggest winners? North Dakota (+6.1%), Wyoming (+4.6%), West Missouri (+3.5%), Hawaii (2.5%) and South Carolina (+2.2%).

Ten Year % Change in Active Members (sort of a moving average) from 2004 to 2008: -7% -8% -9% -10% -11%

Those were big jumps in North Dakota and Wyoming, 46 and 97 more people across the dioceses. Why, at that rate their conventions might spill into the Bishops’ dining rooms from the living rooms.

I have a scenario for the possible spin on loss of parishes that was used and therefore the count is not what it might actually be. First is that many parishes have not actually departed TEC. However, many now have zero members and zero ASA. Or, they have a few members and near 100% ASA of those few member.

But….but…they promised that membership was going to explode with all the new enlightened liberal Integripalians that were going to flock to TecUsaCorp after VGR. THEY PROMISED! Oh dear, I’m so disillusioned.

The numbers are worse than reported in that some parishes “fudge” on them. Been there. Seen it done. (Helped do it, I must confess. :(

Since dioceses and parishes cannot leave TEC (hahahaha), I am sure those figures do not include such events.

Nice summary of some of the most significant trends. Accelerating to oblivion indeed. I love how you work with numbers so well.

You can see for yourself the disappearance of the Diocese of San Joaquin from the data: three quarters of the diocesan membership and ASA is gone. Next year we should see the other three vanish too. For comparison, the SJ losses represented 54% of the total losses in Province 8; if you leave out SJ the province declined at the same rate as the rest of the church.

I haven’t looked at the charts for many of the departed parishes but what I have seen shows an inconsistent pattern of fudging. Some cases do show the parish vanishing; some show flatlining of the numbers, indicating that they’re reporting old data instead of gathering new data (or admitting that the new number is zero).

BTW, the P&P numbers are out too. 2008 shows a .3% decline after years and years of increases.

Newbie #1—as far as dioceses leaving, only San Joachin counted this year. The other three will hit with the 2009 totals. San Joachin’s departure didn’t make much difference. The membership that departed was 8,030 and departing ASA was 3,069.

Even if San Joachin had stayed (at 2007 totals), the overall loss of membership of TEC would have been -51,427 (-2.4%) rather than -59,457 (-2.8%). ASA loss would have been -19,496 (-2.7%) rather than -22,565 (-3.1%).

Let’s see what 815 has to say about the increasing multi-year averages. HQ should be sounding the alarm that we have lost the historic gospel of Jesus Christ as Savior, but HQ is one of the black holes where that message is getting sucked out of TEC.

Doesn’t anyone understand? This is wonderful news! 815 and the Presiding Hiccup have decreed that everything is hunkey-dorry and therefore it is… I still wonder though… do the figures lie or do the liars figure?

While whole parishes and dioceses leaving are bound to attract more notice, it sounds like the loss of individuals and families all across the board is doing the damage. Just a “few” parishes and dioceses it may be - but a lot of people have gone.

Their active lawsuits nearly equal TEC’s ASA! Well at least something is growing…
Intercessor

Come now, don’t everyone be so negative. This news doesn’t deter from TEC’s new mission at all:

I fail to see how the declining attendance figures prevent the Great Liturgy of Litigation - or as it used to be called the Circle Dance of Dispossession.

re 23: I did some crunching of the 2006 Red Book numbers which showed that the losses were likely due to departures alone. Baptisms, marriages and funerals (at least back then) were all roughly balanced against each other, so that if nobody left, the membership should have been stable. Someone else (you can see in the comments on my post) thought that the losses might be largely attributable to departures of parishes (and now, dioceses).

There’s a lot of mythology out there about the aging of congregations, but my research suggests that it’s bogus.

#4…of course TEC will insist on keeping on their roster the number of parishes like mine that left(87% of us)...especially when TEC kept the building like our situation. They are counting reconstituted missions with “loyal” TEC remnants echoing in the vast dead expanses of empty buildings…pretending they are as healthy as ever.

re 29: Not to be confrontational or anything, but what parish is this? We can, after all, check the numbers graphically on the ECUSA website on any parish that (they say) is still there.

Here in Colorado, a 10% drop last year (which certainly can’t be all explained by the departure of Grace and St. Stephen’s Anglican/St. George’s - probably only accounted for a third of that drop) was followed by a solid 5% drop in attendance this past year. Colorado might be the biggest two year loser.

C. Wingate writes, “There’s a lot of mythology out there about the aging of congregations, but my research suggests that it’s bogus.”

I disagree. Dean Munday wrote about this a couple of years back. If one has an average age ~60, there will certainly be a good numbers of parishioners leaving the parish and leaving this world.

#30
While I don’t have TXThurifer’s permission to reveal his former parish,
I can estimate the figures from the charts:
P&P Members ASA
610K 600 290 in 2005
610K 580 275 in 2006
110K 150 80 in 2007
190K 140 100 in 2008

While from the same source the parish I used to attend the estimated figures are:
510K 605 210 2005
475K 590 175 2006
190K 590 175 2007
30K 55 60 2008 (Numbers finally adjusted for those who left in 2007.)

Oh yeah, right. O.K. so if you subtract the parishes from 2008 from 2007, it would indicate a loss of 91 parishes nationally. Hogwash. Just add the number of parishes departing TEC from Quincy, Fort Worth, Pittsburgh and San Joaquin and one has more than 91. Unfortunately, Kurt, who is pulling these numbers together is an honest man, so someone, somewhere is adjusting them. Someone out there is worse off in math than I am.

C.Wingate, my all time favorite phantom parish is St. James (Newport Beach) formerly in the Diocese of Los Angeles. They left TEC in January 2004. But they remain on the rolls, all 1500 members, nearly six years later.

Dallas Priest,
From the point of view of a statistics, the TEC numbers, as compiled, are remarkably honest, which is to say, the folks who do the final accounting are doing a good clean job, as near as I can tell. BUT what that means is- since Quincy, Fort Worth and Pittsburgh were, technically, still part of TEC up until late October or November of last year, all of their attendance, plate and pledge, and membership are counted for all those months. Therefore, you might see minimal or no decline, especially if attendance was up a little as they prepared to depart.
If you look at San Joaquin, however, you will see the big decline, because they left in 2007, so the impact shows up in 2008.
Likewise, with parishes, there is little decline in number of parishes because every time a parish leaves, TEC starts one up with whatever part of the departing parish decides to stay in TEC. They may also have planted a few as missions in places where no one stayed at all. However, where it shows up is in average and median parish numbers, which keep declining because you are spreading fewer and fewer Episcopalians over the same number of parishes.
Most of the number padding that I have personally witnessed happens at the parish level. In some dioceses, for example, the number of votes you get at convention is based on the size of your membership, therefore rectors and wardens will report the highest number that they can conceivably justify. In one case I know of, a new senior warden took over, and found that 25% of the parish roll was dead or had moved a substantial distance away over the course of the previous decade, but were still shown on the rolls. (I am happy to report that he fixed this, but in that year, it looked like 25% of the parish up and left if all you looked at were the statistics.) Likewise, there are reports in these parts that parishes are reporting total weekly attendance, including weekday services. Which means you frequently count the same people more than once. And, of course, parishes across the country have been counting Saturday along with Sunday for decades. One of the big upsides to moving baptisms and confirmations to Sundays in recent years in that you can count all the non-TEC relatives who show up for such things as well. Before long, they will start holding big funerals on Sunday too- that could really boost numbers.
One of the things that makes TEC officials so nervous is the realization that, due to the departure of the 3 dioceses, the numbers are really twice as bad as they already look, in terms of impact on membership and ASA.
I also suspect that they did a little polling pre- and post- GC09. Even though churches do not report numbers weekly or monthly, it would be simple enough to identify 100 random parishes and send somebody to count and report back to 815. At the very least, they have anecdotal information from bishops and rectors. My guess is that the post GC numbers are scary- orthodox and middle of the road parishes are bleeding away, and liberal parishes, if they are gaining members at all, are not gaining them very fast.

#34—And don’t forget St. Luke’s La Crescenta, St. David’s, N. Hollywood, and All Saints’ Long Beach. There’s another 1400+ phantom members among them. The numbers haven’t changed for them since 2003, actually, since 2004 wasn’t reported. It’s just dishonest, especially now since St. Luke’s has been confiscated. Nobody but a few ghosts will show up on Sunday.

I remain puzzled about KJS’s motivation for obfuscating when asked about the numbers a couple of weeks ago. What could she possibly have hoped to accomplish?
Bad news deferred only makes one look worse. Even if there was no “malicious intent”, delaying the delivery of bad news never reflects well.
Not that I have any desire to enhance KJS’s image, nor do I harbor any desire to understand what transpires in her head, but this delay evidences a surprising level of incompetence about public image management. This is one of the few areas in which, heretofore, I had thought her moderately adept.

re 35: A lot of this stuff isn’t really that problematic. Carrying large phantom parishes on the rolls, that’s problematic.

And my former diocese - South Dakota - led the pack. One of the questions I asked the bishop after 2003 was: “But will it play in Peoria, or Pierre?”. Never got an answer. Here’s the answer.

I am a member of a TEC parish. Last month a TEC priest/ friend told me this story. My friend is moving to an area adjacent to a departed TEC diocese, and is looking for work, and met w/ the provisional-interim canon of the rump TEC diocese, who assured my friend that there would be work in the area, that as soon as successful litigation restored the departing diocese and returned control of its constituent parishes to TEC, there would be employment opportunities, as everyone knows most Episcopalians associate going to church with a particular building, and not the identity of the bishop or the policies of the national church. In other words, when the buildings are returned, the people come with them. My friend was encouraged.

I found this story disheartening. After 40 years of adult Christian education, emphasis on lay leadership and training, EFM, Cursillo, Faith Alive and Alpha, our denominational leadership – as evidenced by this canon – believes that most Episcopalians choose a church because of the physical building. And believes that successful litigation will restore not only the buildings but the people, also. Now I am not part of the departing Episcopalians – I am still in TEC. Does anyone out there have any information or data to refute the report of this provisional canon?

This person doesn’t seem to have a foot in the real world, does he? Or any perception of human psychology or character.

42, In Petaluma CA, St. John’s Anglican Church gave back the building to St. John’s Episcopal Church as part of a negotiated settlement. They did lose a few people who chose to stay with the building. Almost everyone else left and are now worshiping in a Community Center while they seek a longer term home.

There is a small percentage of people who will stay with the building no matter what. For the most part, these are elderly members who have worshiped in that place for a very long time.

Dick, the provisional-interim canon was blowing smoke. He really does not want the departees to return with the buildings. Think about it ...

Those who departed from TEC were most likely a big majority of the parish. Those who remained with TEC were most likely a small minority. Those who departed were unhappy with TEC; the litigation will not improve their satisfaction with TEC (an understatement). They will make life miserable for the TEC approved rector and the TEC blessed bishop. Parish plate and pledge will not improve enough to balance the budget, as their giving will be just enough to be “known to the treasurer” come parish annual meeting time; neither will the diocesan finances as the parishes will be broke.

If a significant number of the departees return they will dominate the parish’s annual meeting, which they will control. They will elect “malcontent returnees” to the diocesan council, which they will control in one year. (At which point the “provisional-interim canon” will be the one looking for a job.) Parish plate and pledge will not improve enough to balance the budget, as their giving will be just enough to be “known to the treasurer” come parish annual meeting time; neither will the diocesan finances as the parishes will be broke.

The returnees will control the vestry within two years and have unanimous control of the vestry within three. The TEC approved rector will have either fled, or else be looking for a job. The TEC blessed bishop will either be thinking early retirement or have resigned.

As to the loss of parishes - that is a net fiqure. TEC certainly has planted some new missions and parishes in growing parts of the country over the last five years. And that would also include those remnants that are still “operational” where the entire parish was not eliminated.

I asked Eric Sohlgren, the California attorney. To the best of his knowledge, there has never been a church that was won back by lawsuit that went on to be a viable parish. I don’t know of any. Anybody?

#47 - Reminds me of the story of Solomon and the two women who claimed the same baby. The false mother wants to everyone to believe the live baby is hers. She would really rather see the live baby die than to lose the argument or to have to face the truth that her own ‘baby’ (religion) is dead.

To the best of [Eric Sohlgren’s] knowledge, there has never been a church that was won back by lawsuit that went on to be a viable parish.

Sort of undercuts ECUSA’s oft-repeated assertion that it sues departing parishes not for mere mammon but to meet the needs of the “faithful Episcopalians” left behind.

Thank you, Ed, robroy and Ken for your thoughtful replies. Several years ago, my wife and I left the TEC parish where we were married, where the kids were baptized and confirmed, where we had both served on vestry, when the sermons became unpalatable, and moved to our current TEC parish—which is a pretty exciting place. So I was skeptical of the canon’s conclusion—I call it the “potted plant” theory of lay commitment.

#49: In fairness, St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Morehead City, NC was reclaimed by the diocese through litigation. It now has a stable congregation. That litigation was probably ten years ago, though.

TEC’s demographic problem, in the long run, is acute, because it becomes a downward cycle. Parents with young children are less likely to go to a church that is older, thus compounding the problem. Most people who go to church have long since forgotten VGR and don’t know much about the Anglican Communion—mostly, it’s a slow decline based on a lack of zeal for the Gospel, unclear denominational identity, little in the way of church discipline, poor priest recruitment, etc. that is causing the trend.

re 52: My conclusion, based on crunching the 2006 Red Book numbers, is that various theses about the age of the church and the like are all incorrect. It appears likely that the main, indeed possibly the only source of the declines is people leaving; and while this is far less certain, it seems possible that the departures are concentrated among the middle-aged.

I see that the 2007 Red Book numbers are now available, so I’ll be applying the same analysis to them this weekend. (It’s the 2009 RB, but it has data for 2007.) I’d also be interested in any other cases people know of where dioceses are reporting data for nonexistent parishes, as we could come up with adjusted numbers that account for the, well, misrepresentation.

I actually think that what I am saying is similar to your analysis. The lack of denominational identity, the importance of salvation, and moral fortitude is a key reason why the middle aged leave. Basically, they want their babies baptized, because of the resonance of dedicating your child to God, and the kid growing up being able to say that s/he is Christian at school, etc.

However, these families don’t go to church regularly enough to bother with confirmation, and when the kids go to college, the parents stop going to church. The church isn’t their moral rod or vital path to God. Thus the middle agers drifting away after getting their kids baptized. This becomes a family tradition—get the kid baptized but nothing else—except the funeral maybe.

This is standard in the Catholic Church in France. Lots of baptisms, but not much else.

My thesis is that outrage over VGR is almost off the radar. The trauma to the church’s moral foundation lies beneath the surface, but I don’t think middle agers leave because the 39 Articles are being broken by VGR (which the average church does a good job of sweeping under the rug), and certainly not because of Anglican Communion politics. I’ll bet half the average congregation hardly knows what the Anglican Communion even is. They don’t bother to come to church (or don’t transfer membership when they move and eventually get culled from the roster) because the church isn’t a founding part of their lives. This is in many ways a more serious problem—the church isn’t relevant except for a thin pastiche of religiosity at birth and death. It’s lost the magnetism.

Most people who go to church have long since forgotten VGR and don’t know much about the Anglican Communion.—#52

I agree that most ECUSA churchgoers don’t know much about the Anglican Communion. But I sure don’t see people forgetting about VGR, regardless of where they may be on the political, cultural, and theological spectrum.

Well, there are parishes which obsess over the issue, one way or the other, and never let anyone forget about him. My wife remembers back in her parish in the mid ‘70s that there was some relief expressed over the decision to ordain women simply because one of their clerics could not preach about something else. For a lot of parishes in the middle, most people are working out their own salvation and don’t think about the issue except when it is dropped on their doorstep—and NH is a long ways from most people’s doorstep. In other parishes the rector doesn’t want to sap the parish’s strength fighting over something they can’t do anything overt about.

How can people forget about Gene when he mugs for every camera? We have him showing up at the inauguration, Lambeth, in Maine, everywhere! And then the TEclub will have little Gene-lets running around in short order. The issue is not Gene per se, but the identification of the TEclub with the “gay church.” That will be reinforced more and more.

Everytime he mugs before the camera, he is helping make another announcement to the world what Sewanee considers healthy and hopeful. Keep grinning, VGR! Show us the best Sewanee has to offer.

As far as we’re concerned, everytime he’s interviewed, we hope he mentions Sewanee. Better to have him become the public face of Sewanee than any of our latest Rhodes Scholars.

See Sewanee get the news it deserves in the online edition of GQ magazine, article “Let God Love Gene Robinson,” page 3:

And so could he. In his final year at Sewanee, he knew he’d been called to create a life as an Episcopal priest. “I had been trying to reconcile the loving God I knew from my reading of Scripture with the God I’d heard about in church who would send everyone who didn’t believe in Jesus to hell. There were an awful lot of Jews and Buddhists and Muslims and Sikhs and other non-Christians in the world, and I just didn’t see how a loving God could condemn them. At Sewanee, I began to see a much more diffuse God—diffuse in the Creation, and able to reveal God’s self in all kinds of ways. And while I still believed Jesus Christ was the most perfect revelation of God, I also began to think: What a small God it would be if God were unable to reveal God’s self in some other way, through other people and other sacred texts. I began to think I’d been on the right track about God not condemning most of the world.”

I think you would be surprised. While most pewsitters would recall the “gay bishop” controversy if asked about it, fewer than you think have it in the back of their minds when they go to church every Sunday. It’s just distant past. The outrageously outraged ones have mostly left, and the VGR supporters are savvy enough not to bring it up and cause controversy in the congregation.

The negative impact to theology and mission remains, but it is less palpable and vivid.

R&R, if one looks at ASA, it was actually growing a little in the late 90’s and early 00’s. Then came Gene. These losses continue at a higher rate. Even in New Hampshire, the ASA is falling still. (Gene celebrated that the membership “grew” meaning that they have probably been told to keep everyone on the books.) In New Hampshire it is probably leveling off. But the TEclub used to be the “Republican party at prayer.” There are many, many conservatives in the pews who get tired of telling people that they attend a church that is identified with the “gay church.” The losses of the denomination as a whole have not slowed.

And of course, we have three homosexual bishop candidates for three bishop vacancies right now. I am certain that we will have a few more Gene-lets in the near future who won’t allow the wound to scab over.

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