Well, there’s good news and bad news for Episcopalians. We’re NOT the oldest of the mainline denominations in terms of the average age of our congregations. By one measure, we’re the second oldest (looking at the percent of our membership older than 70). By another, we’re the fourth oldest, behind the Disciples of Christ, The United Methodist Church, and Presbyterian Church USA, in that order (looking at the percent of our membership older than 60). Neither one of those is particularly good news, though. I’ll share the good news shortly. The 2024 polling that provided these updated numbers is the work of a scholar and researcher who will be one of our Wednesday night presenters on October 15.
Dr. Ryan Burge has recently begun a new position as a professor of practice at the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics (Danforth is a former Republican Senator who served in the Senate for 20 years and is also an Episcopal Priest). Before that, Burge taught at Eastern Illinois University and pastored a Baptist church. He’s published dozens of articles and four books. While his primary focus has been on faith and politics, he also collects interesting data on Christianity and religion in the United States. He posts to social media and his blog daily, and after finding his work by accident and really enjoying it, I became a subscriber last spring.
The data I began with is part of his revisit to an early article on why there isn’t much good news for our country's mainline churches. Some of the decline is simply a factor of demographics, as I’ve rambled about before. Some of it is that the mainline tends to hold onto traditions, while Christianity has been taking new forms that are attractive to some who used to participate in mainline denominations. There’s also the reality that people are simply becoming less religious and less spiritual as time goes on, which means that all of Christianity is in decline, regardless of tradition or where they fall on the social/political spectrum. All that being said, trends can and do change, and we can’t look to Europe and assume that what they have experienced is our fate.
For example, in Europe, the correlation between religious participation and education level is inverted from what polling shows in the US. One of the things I’ve learned from Burge’s work is that here, those with graduate degrees are much more likely to be regular churchgoers. Those with the least amount of education are less likely to be active. That’s the opposite of Europe. That alone should suggest that our experience and participation in religion have been and may continue to be unique, even if the macro-analyses of both continents show some similarities. Nonetheless, Burge’s recent post contained a tidbit that I found fascinating, even if he didn’t highlight it. I want to ask him about it when he’s with us in October.
Of the seven traditional mainline denominations, the Episcopal Church has the second largest percentage of members aged 18-29. And, we’re the only ones for whom that younger generation is a larger percentage than the two age groups before it (30-39 and 40-49). To be fair, the American Baptist Church can say their twenty-somethings outnumber their thirty-somethings, but all of the other five show their youngest members as their smallest demographic group. The Baptists are the youngest of the seven denominations overall, while we’re one of the oldest, yet we have this surprising bump at the bottom of the age range. I wasn’t expecting to see that. What does it mean?
The short but fair answer is to admit it’s complicated, and more research might uncover trends within each age group. Nonetheless, it reinforces for me the importance of continuing to focus on our youngest members – our children. One of Burge’s points in this most recent article is to suggest that retaining members is always easier than converting them. Said another way, you’re more likely to have young people if you keep the ones you have, rather than going out into the community to recruit new ones (not that we shouldn’t do the latter, too). There may not be much good news for those in the Mainline if we worry that trends can’t be turned around or that God isn’t still at work in a tradition that has shown numerical decline. But, there IS good news, and inspiration if we want it. Maybe it’s a statistical blip, or perhaps it’s the kindling of a new fire, the planting of a crop, and the hope of the future. Whatever explains the bump in our chart of young adults, I will celebrate it and try to build on it.
NOTE: Dr. Burge’s site is called Graphs About Religion. A lot of his work is behind a paywall. Many of his posts look at the interplay of faith and politics, but some are pure religious analysis. If you get curious and want to subscribe, let me know, and I’ll share a code with you! I don’t endorse all of his analysis and conclusions, but I love having data instead of anecdotes when looking at trends and matters of faith.
