The Decline of Mainline Churches in America
Examining the disappearance of one of America's historic faith groups
If you live in a town that has some older, historic church buildings, there’s likely one of two things going on. The first scenario is that these churches are the same ones they were a century ago. There’s probably a Catholic Church, and a “First Presbyterian Church” and there’s a United Church of Christ, and maybe a Methodist, Lutheran, or Baptist Church holding the old building.
The story of the Catholic churches is for another time, but these Protestants churches are in all likelihood part of what are called “Mainline” churches. The Mainline was at one time the mainstream in America, but today if you were to walk inside on a Sunday morning, the statistics tell us that odds are good you will find a small, aging congregation holding on to their oversized, aging building.
The second scenario is that where you live, things have gone even further. The congregation died off in the last decade and today the building sits empty, or has been taken over by a younger church – likely an Evangelical congregation, not part of a mainline denomination, or perhaps not part of a denomination at all. Or maybe it’s been turned into apartments or even a bar.
The number of professing Christians in America is declining. In September 2022, Pew Research Center modeled that by 2070 Christianity will almost certainly be the religion of less than 50% of the US population.[1] In the UK, where a 2021 census revealed that Christianity is already a minority in England and Wales, with only 46.2% claiming it,[2] churches often find their strongest hope to be fervently practicing immigrant populations, which provide new life and new children to declining congregations. The same thing seems likely in the United States, where from 2010-2015 a majority of immigrants have been Christian.[3]
But when talking about the decline of Christianity in America, it’s important to note that things are not the same across all Christian traditions. For an extreme example, look at the Amish. In 2000, there were approximately 178,000 of them. One decade later in 2010 the number became 241,000. In 2022 the estimate was 373,000. Amish double in number about every 20 years. If that continues, the Amish will begin to pass up many of these declining mainline denominations very quickly. In fact, they already have been doing so.
One of the most common ways to look at the mainline is the “seven sisters” – seven mainline denominations that have represented the major traditions in the US. These are the United Methodist Church, Presbyterian Church (USA), United Church of Christ, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), American Baptist Churches USA, and the Episcopal Church. And the story is not looking good.
American Baptist Churches USA had 1,436,000 members in 2000. In 2005, that fell to 1,396,000, in 2010, 1,308,000 and in 2015, 1,173,000. The 2020 number was 1,124,000[4] Over two decades, they are down 21.7%
In the year 2000, the United Methodist Church had 8,292,000 US members – it’s the largest among the mainline denominations by far. In 2005 that had fallen to 7,995,000. In 2010, 7,570,000. 2015: 7,067,000; and by 2020, 6,268,000. That’s a 24.4% decrease over two decades.
For the Episcopal Church, the numbers began at 2,333,000 at the turn of the century. In 2005, 2,205,000, then 2010 was 1,951,000. 2015 brought it to 1,779,000, and 2020, 1,576,000. That’s a 32.42% decline, and in 2021 there was an additional 3.5% decline to 1,520,000.
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America started this Millennium with 5,125,000 members. By 2005 that was shaved down to 4,850,000. 2010 it was 4,274,000, and 2015, 3,668,000. The 2020 number was 3,142,000 – leaving a 38.6% decline since 2000. There was a further 3.4% decline to 2021’s number of 3,035,000.
The United Church of Christ had 1,377,000 members in 2020. In 2005, 1,224,000. In 2010, 1,058,000, 2015, 914,000 and in 2020, 773,000. Two decades, 43.8% decline. They declined 3.9% in the year following with the 2021 number being 745,200.
Now the Presbyterian Church USA. In 2000 it had 2,525,000 members. 2005, 2,313,000. 2010, 2,016,000, 2015, 1,572,000, and 2020, 1,245,000. That’s a 50.68% decline since 2000. The 2021 number drops them to 1,193,000, an over 4% decline in one year.
The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) was the only one of the seven sisters to begin the Millennium with under a million members at 820,000. But they could certainly fall further. In 2005 they fell to 722,000, then to 639,000 in 2010. In 2014, the number was 497,000 and the 2019 number was 350,000. That’s only 19 years that I can get the records for as of publication of this video, but it’s still a 57.25% decline.
There are several reasons for the decline. One of them is simply members dying off. Back in the 2014 Pew religious landscape study, Mainline protestants were found to be older as a group than any other major religious tradition.[5]
Another reason though is members leaving. Pew Research said of that “Additionally, more Americans have been leaving mainline Protestantism than joining the tradition. Nearly one-in-five Americans (19%) were raised in the mainline tradition, but more than half of them (10.4% of all U.S. adults) have left the faith… Mainline Protestants have one of the lowest retention rates of any major religious tradition, with only 45% of those raised in the faith continuing to identify with it as adults.”[6]
Some members have left mainline churches individually, and sometimes congregations have left one at a time to become independent or join another denomination. However, in several of these mainline denominations, there have been large-scale exoduses within these last 20 years, and the main catalyst for the departures has been the ordination of LGBT clergy and same-sex marriage in the mainline denominations.
The Presbyterian Church (USA) allowed of the ordination of non-celibate homosexuals in 2010. As a result, a new denomination, ECO: A Covenant Order of Evangelical Presbyterians was formed in 2012. In 2014 the PCUSA changed their official definition of marriage, and more churches left for ECO. Today, ECO claims 127,000 members,[7] most of which came from former PC(USA) congregations.
In 1998 some United Church of Christ Congregations formed the Evangelical Association of Reformed and Congregational Christian Churches, and when in 2005 the UCC began to permit same-sex marriage many churches left to join it.
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America voted to allow non-celibate homosexual ministers to be ordained in 2009. In 2010 the North American Lutheran Church split from the ELCA, and has 142,000 members today. Another denomination that took many ELCA churches in the same timeframe was Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ, which grew from 210 congregations in 2007 to 960 in 2020.
The Episcopal Church appointed an openly Gay bishop in 2003, and late in 2015 the church canons were updated to change their stance on marriage to allow same-sex marriages. Because of the changing stance on sexuality, in 2009 the Anglican Church in North America was formed and grew from 70,000 members in 2011 to 133,000 in 2018 before declining to 122,000 in 2021.
In the American Baptist Churches USA, the Pacific Southwest region of the church as a whole seceded from the denomination in 2006[8] because the ABCUSA allowed ministers and churches that were affirming of the LGBT movement to remain in the denomination. They have 200 churches and are called Transformation Ministries.[9]
And of course the United Methodist Church, which has seen from 2000-2020 the second least loss of membership among the seven sisters is going to quickly see those numbers change. As I reported in January 2023, the denomination is splitting, and thousands of churches are leaving and taking hundreds of thousands of members out of the UMC. With the UMC finally fracturing, this may be the last major split among these seven mainline denominations.
LGBT issues did not begin the decline in these denominations, as most have been declining since the 1960s, but this controversy has hit these churches hard while they are on the way down.
So how do Mainline churches look as compared to the more conservative denominations in the US? For the evangelical and confessional denominations, it’s more of a mixed bag.
The largest Pentecostal Denomination in the US, the Assemblies of God began the century at 2,577,000 adherents. By 2005 they were up to 2,830,000, in 2010 3,030,000, 2015, 3,192,000 and 2020 3,260,000. Over the two decades they are up 26.5% However, it’s not all good news as their numbers peaked in 2019 and from 2020 to 2021 they fell a shocking 10% in one year, COVID-19 a definite factor. They landed at 2,932,000 in 2021, wiping out a decade of growth in one year
.The second-largest Presbyterian denomination, the Presbyterian Church in America, which is conservative and confessional had 306,156 members in 2000, 331,126 in 2005, 346,814 in 2010, 370,332 in 2015, and 383,338 in 2020. That’s a 25% increase over the two decades. But Covid-19 has likely played a part in their decline from 2020 to 2021. They fell 1.2% to 378,389.
The Southern Baptist Convention is the largest Baptist denomination in the US, and it started the millennium with growth. In 2000 they had 15,960,000 members, up to 16,270,000 in 2005. However, 2006 was their peak, and by 2010 they had fallen back to 16,136,000, by 2015 to 15,294,000 and 2020 to 14,089,000. The two-decade loss was 11.7%. In 2021 they fell a further 2.9% to 13,680,000 members.
The Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod is the second-largest Lutheran denomination and is conservative. In 2000, they had 2,553,000 members, in 2005, 2,440,000, in 2010, 2,278,000, and in 2015 2,060,000. By 2020 they fell under the two million mark to 1,861,000, or a 27% decline since 2000. That puts them in the same realm of decline as the mainline denominations, and to top it off, in 2021 they fell a further 2.9% to 1,807,000.
Though precise statistics aren’t available other denominations have seen growth. The Baptist denomination Converge went from 134,000 in 1992, to 194,000 in 2006, to 322,000 in 2020. The Pentecostal Redeemed Christian Church of God claimed 200 congregations in 2010[10], had 720 congregations in 2014[11] and 921 congregations in 2022[12]
So although the mainline is declining faster as a whole than many of the conservative denominations, many of those are falling too. But this may be the indication of a trend away from denominations to other church structures. The US religion census, which takes place every ten years, shows that from 2010 to 2020, nondenominational churches grew by two million attendees and 9,000 congregations, to have 21 million adherents today.[13] Christianity Today reported “If “nondenominational” were a denomination, it would be the largest Protestant one, claiming more than 13 percent of churchgoers in America.”[14]
And as I said, the Amish are becoming more and more of a big deal. They have already surpassed the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), and odds are they passed the Presbyterian Church in America in membership sometime in 2023, and by the end of the decade they will likely surpass the United Church of Christ.
A case of poor survey methodology gave Mainline protestants a short-lived glimmer of hope in 2021 when the Public Religion Research Institute announced that not only had Mainline Protestants rapidly grown from 13 to 16% from 2016 to 2020 while Evangelicals had fallen from 23% to 14% in the same time.[15] A closer look however realized that these were mislabeling. The poll didn’t ask anything about what denominations people were a part of, but rather made assumptions based on their beliefs. What the data did show however was that while the mainline denominations are crashing, some of their beliefs are taking new hold even within Evangelical denominations.
Why is the mainline declining? Let’s look at a few responses from differing views. On the conservative side, Joseph Rossell, a writer for the Institute on Religion and Democracy, mined seven concise statements about the state of Mainline Protestantism from the book “The Triumph of Faith” by Rodney Stark[16]. Here they are:
(1) “Protestantism is as strong as ever in America—only the names have changed.”
(2) “Not many years ago, a select set of American denominations was always referred to as the Protestant ‘Mainline’ … Today that designation, though still commonly used, is out of date; the old Mainline has rapidly faded to the religious periphery, a trend that first was noticed more than forty years ago.”
(3) “Some religious institutions—but not all—fail to keep the faith. In an unconstrained religious marketplace, secularization is a self-limiting process: as some churches become secularized and decline, they are replaced by churches that continue to offer a vigorous religious message. In effect, the old Protestant Mainline denominations drove millions of their members into the more conservative denominations.”
(4) “The wreckage of the former Mainline denominations is strewn upon the shoal of a modernist theology that began to dominate the Mainline seminaries early in the nineteenth century. This theology presumed that advances in human knowledge had made faith outmoded… Eventually, Mainline theologians discarded nearly every doctrinal aspect of traditional Christianity.”
(5) “Aware that most members reject their radical political views, the Mainline clergy claim it is their right and duty to instruct the faithful in more sophisticated and enlightened religious and political views. So every year thousands of members claim their right to leave. And, of course, in the competitive America religious marketplace, there are many appealing alternatives available.”
(6) “Even though so many have left, most of the people remaining in the former Mainline pews still regard the traditional tenets of Christianity as central to their faith. As a result, the exodus continues.”
(7) “Many liberals have attempted to make a virtue of the Mainline decline, claiming that the contrasting trends reflect the superior moral worth of the Mainline… Meanwhile, the Mainline shrinks, and conservative churches grow.”
Dean Hoge writing for First Things said in contrast,
We found little evidence of a polarization on theological and moral issues among those baby boomers who remain active in a mainline church. Most of them have mixed views on controversial issues. A surprising number, for example, would like prayers to be said in the public schools but have no objection to the ordination of avowed homosexuals. The fundamentalists and the irreligious in our sample are poles apart on such topics, but active baby boom mainliners tend to be liberal on one issue and conservative on another. Our findings lead us to suspect that today’s culture war within the mainline Protestant denominations is waged mainly by national elites and only rarely engages the attention and the passions of ordinary church members... In our study, the single best predictor of church participation turned out to be belief: Orthodox Christian belief, and especially the teaching that a person can be saved only through Jesus Christ. Virtually all our baby boomers who believe this are active members of a church. Among those who do not believe it, some are active in varying degrees; a great many are not. Ninety-five percent of the drop-outs who describe themselves as religious do not believe it. [17]
Another explanation given by some is that this is just the way it always happens. New upstarts push out the old mainline.[18] People like something fresh. The mainline is going down, and now we’re seeing the beginning of the decline for the following generation of denominations too like the Southern Baptist Convention. The nondenominational churches, megachurches, and multisite churches are the new, flashy alternative. But one day, they themselves will become the mainline and they will be pushed out for whatever the next thing is.
So what will the consequences of mainline decline be? When congregations in these denominations get small enough, they need to look at either closing down or at merger. Merging two small congregations together can keep them alive a bit longer, halving the costs of building upkeep and perhaps giving a new feeling of life to a congregation. It’s possible that this could extend beyond just the local level to entire denominations seeking to unite, but just because such a decision may be wise, doesn’t mean it would be popular. Another thing we might expect is that in an attempt to stem their decline, Churches in these denominations will do whatever they can to get young families in the doors. New outreaches to younger people in the end, are the only way they could see a real turnaround. But it’s hard to get young people to come, if the inside of the church looks like a Senior’s night.
A group called Episcopal Resurrection in 2015 recognized the problem, saying “We can no longer settle for complacency and comfort. We can no longer claim to dominate the political and social landscape. We can no longer wait inside our sanctuaries to welcome those who want to become Episcopalian.
We have a choice before us. We can continue, valiantly and tragically, to try to save all the rights and privileges we have previously enjoyed. We can continue to watch our church dwindle until it someday becomes an endowed museum to the faith of our forebears. We can continue business as usual until we lose our common life entirely. Or we can lose our life for Jesus’ sake so that we might save it.”[19]
Some of the solutions they suggested were:
“Fund evangelism initiatives extravagantly: training laborers to go into the harvest to revitalize existing congregations and plant new ones; forming networks and educational offerings to train and deploy church planters and revitalizers who will follow Jesus into all kinds of neighborhoods; and creating training opportunities for bilingual and bi-cultural ministry;
Release our hold on buildings, structures, comfortable habits, egos, and conflicts that do not serve the church well;
Remove obstacles embedded in current structures, however formerly useful or well-meaning, that hinder new and creative mission and evangelism initiatives;
Refocus our energies from building up a large, centralized, expensive, hierarchical church-wide structure, to networking and supporting mission at the local level, where we all may learn how to follow Jesus into all of our neighborhoods.”
As a result of their efforts, many proposed resolutions were passed at the General Convention in 2015.[20] The goal? To avoid predictions like the one that the Episcopal Church may cease to exist by 2050.[21] And 2050 is coming up quickly. My prediction? Whether as one party of a merger or not the Episcopal Church will still be here by then, but even if we still call it and its fellow denominations the Mainline, the reality will be that these churches will be smaller and their names no longer recognized by the nondenominational and increasingly nonreligious generations of that day. The landscape of American Christianity is in disarray – there’s changing theology, there’s splits, and there’s new players on the scene. As congregants decide with their feet where they want to worship, some denominations will rise, but inevitably, others will fall.
Watch this article as a video on the Ready to Harvest YouTube channel here.
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2022/09/13/modeling-the-future-of-religion-in-america/pf_2022-09-13_religious-projections_00-01/ (Accessed 1/21/2023)
[2] https://indianexpress.com/article/world/united-kingdom-census-england-wales-christians-8297439
[3] https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2022/09/13/modeling-the-future-of-religion-in-america/pf_2022-09-13_religious-projections_01-05/
[4] This is based on correcting the data by subtracting 86,000 from the 2020 statistics. This assumes a data error in the 2018, 2019, and 2020 data, as discussed in my video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0EYKyJLsNY
[5] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/05/18/mainline-protestants-make-up-shrinking-number-of-u-s-adults/#:~:text=Mainline%20Protestant%20adults%20in%20the,any%20other%20major%20religious%20tradition.
[6] Ibid
[7] https://eco-pres.org/faqs/ (Accessed 1/21/2023)
[8] https://baptistnews.com/article/pacific-region-leaves-abc-over-homosexuality-issue/
[9] https://www.tmchurches.org/
[10] https://web.archive.org/web/20100124212241/http://www.rccgna.org/mcm/rc/tgen.aspx?articleid=60&zoneid=1
[11] https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-25988151 (Accessed 1/21/2023)
[12] https://rccgna.org/ (Accessed 1/21/2023)
[13] https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2022/november/religion-census-nondenominational-church-growth-nons.html
[14] Ibid
[15] https://www.prri.org/research/2020-census-of-american-religion/#page-section-1
[16] https://juicyecumenism.com/2017/02/21/mainline-declin-rodney-stark/ (Accessed 12/17/2018)
[17] https://www.firstthings.com/article/1993/03/mainline-churches-the-real-reason-for-decline (Accessed 1/22/2023)
[18] https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.36019/9780813541136-011/pdf (Accessed 1/22/2023)
[19] https://www.episcopalresurrection.org/memorial/
[20] https://agoodandjoyfulthing.com/2015/07/07/episcopal-resurrection-and-the-78th-general-convention/
[21] https://www.christianheadlines.com/contributors/milton-quintanilla/researcher-says-the-episcopal-church-will-cease-to-exist-by-2050-due-to-major-decline-in-attendance-membership.html