Doing the numbers

Christian Century, March 7, 2001

AMERICANS ARE giving slightly more money to their churches, and several denominations have steadied their declining membership rolls, according to the facts-and-estimates-filled yearbook widely lauded for publishing the best annual examination of Christendom in North America.

The National Council of Churches' 2001 Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches, released in mid-February, reports that the nation's largest church body, the Roman Catholic Church, has 62 million members, and that the second-largest, the Southern Baptist Convention, has 15.8 million. Several mainline Protestant denominations continue to lose members, but the rate of decline has leveled off and grown into a more natural pattern of gains and losses, said editor and NCC Deputy General Secretary Eileen W. Lindner.

"The decline of membership of the old `mainline' churches appears to have slowed in the ease of the United Methodist Church and the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), while accelerating somewhat for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America," Lindner wrote in the Yearbook.

Lindner also pointed to the growth of fundamentalist and Pentecostal denominations, with two of them--the Baptist Bible Fellowship International and the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World, with a combined membership of 2.7 million--breaking into the nation's 25 largest churches. Their advance is probably due to better record keeping by the churches and a membership generally younger than that of the graying mainline churches, she said.

The bulk of churches saw membership gains or losses within a margin of about 1 percent, down from membership losses as high as 3 or 4 percent a decade ago. Catholics saw a 0.6 percent increase, and Southern Baptists grew by 0.7 precent. The highest growth was recorded by a Pentecostal denomination, the Assemblies of God, which grew 1.9 percent.

Missing from the list is the National Baptist Convention U.S.A., Inc., which once claimed 8 million members. That figure was challenged during the trial and fraud conviction of ex-president Henry Lyons, and the new leadership was unable to produce new figures late last year, Lindner said.

Three other predominantly African-American Baptist denominations are listed among the largest 15 church bodies: the National Baptist Convention of America, Inc. (based in Dallas), 3.5 million; the Progressive National Baptist Convention, Inc. (based in Washington, D.C.), 2.5 million, and the National Missionary Baptist Convention of America (based in Los Angeles), 2.5 million. Though those round figures have remained the same for several years, Lindner said, "they are considerably more reliable than the 8 million figure" once reported by the National Baptist Convention U.S.A.

One difficulty for church statisticians is that Baptist congregations, notably in black communities, often have dual affiliations--sometimes with two African-American conventions, Lindner noted. "Does a church member get counted for both denominations?" she asked.

As for financial trends, the Yearbook reported that total church giving in 1999 was $26.9 billion, up from $26.2 billion in 1998. Of that $26.9 billion, nearly $4.2 billion went to benevolences--funds that are used for anything beyond the day-to-day expenses of the local church. The remaining money went to support the operations of the churches.

Lindner said she was encouraged that benevolences increased nearly $20 per person in 1999. The percentage of total giving allotted to benevolences rose from 15 percent to 16 percent in 1999. According to Lindner, more people of all incomes, not just the wealthy, are funding benevolences through their churches.

NCC officials also announced that a CD-ROM containing all of the Yearbook editions published since its 1916 beginning is available for $30, thanks to a three-year $635,000 grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. The CD-ROM preserves all the statistical and essay pages from 68 editions (the book was not published during the Depression and World War II), including a 1920s essay describing the churches' campaign for Prohibition.

"Until now," said Lindner, "the Yearbook's corpus simply was unavailable to all but the very few researchers who could find their way to our offices and spend time poring through increasingly fragile volumes."

--RNS and CENTURY sources

RELATED ARTICLE: Ten biggest U.S. denominations

The 2001 Yearbook of American & Canadian Churches, published by the National Council of Churches, lists these churches as the largest U.S. denominations (excluding membership outside the 50 states):

* Roman Catholic Church: 62 million

* Southern Baptist Convention: 15.85 million

* United Methodist Church: 8.37 million

* Church of God in Christ: 5.49 million

* Evangelical Lutheran Church in America: 5.14 million

* Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints (Mormons): 5.11 million

* Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.): 3.56 million

* National Baptist Convention of America: 3.5 million

* Lutheran Church--Missouri Synod: 2.58 million

* Assemblies of God: 2.57 million