From 1850-1997, at 5-year intervals until 1980, at single year intervals thereafter

"Communicants" in the graph above refers to confirmed communicants in the domestic dioceses.    In addition, the Episcopal Church has had various dioceses outside the United States:

This graph focuses on the current "Decade of Evangelism":

Some prefer to look at 'baptized' membership, rather than 'confirmed.'  Data for baptized members is available for a shorter time:

Bob Solon took the gross receipt figures that I used for this graph and adjusted them for inflation as far back as 1913, the first year for which inflation data is readily available:

Bob observes:

I was very surprised to learn that, adjusting for inflation, the average real contribution per communicant steadily climbed until about 1992, when it took a sharp drop and has since begun to increase again, but only a little.

The sudden drop in 1993 was almost $150 per year per communicant, or almost 20%. The unadjusted data tend to obscure that fact that real contribution dropped in one year by $150 x 2,500,000 or $375,000,000 in real terms. The undjusted decline was $234,000,000 that year, or $141,000,000 less than the real loss in receipts. Since then real receipts have hovered around the $570 per communicant mark, and have not really shown any trend toward an increase.

Interestingly, even through the period when the number of communicants dropped during the civil rights days, the average real contribution continued to climb, from $288 in 1960 to $334 in 1965 to $342 in 1970 to $396 in 1975. This may explain or contribute to your theory of the Gideonization of the church.

There are two explanations that come immediately to mind for why real growth in contributions continued over the time of the most rapid decline in communicants, First, perhaps the remaining parishioners took up the slack on contributions. There is some evidence of this during the 1970-1982 period (real receipts per parish were flat or declined while real receipts per communicant steadily rose), but I suspect the 80-82 data is more strongly driven by the deep recession during that time period.

The second is that those remaining were/are more committed, which cannot be independently concluded from the data, but which, as you noted, supports the idea of Gideonization. It is also possible that both explanations, if valid, share the same root causes.

What is your take on this? I urge you to join the meeting GC2000 and express your views about this and other issues before our church in July 2000.

I am glad to see the improved communicant figures for 1997, the latest year for which we have data, and I am encouraged by the steady improvement in stewardship. Where our treasure is, our heart is. I'm not overly impressed by bigness. There is much to be said for Gideonizing the church, becoming leaner and much more intentional about Gospel priorities. Numbers alone cannot attest that we are doing that.

The thing that impressed me when I prepared these graphs was the peak in the number of parishes way back in 1915. I have been so focused on the much lamented peak in communicants in 1970 that I had failed to note the earlier falling off point. We have not experienced real growth by planting churches in over 80 years!

I am discouraged by the growth in the number of clergy through the time that our communicant strength has dwindled. All over the country I have visited several parishes where the number of priests in the procession is a good portion of the number gathered for worship.

My friend Bob Solon has another view

So the increase in clergy might be explained partially by the fact that more clergy were/are needed to serve the larger parishes. Why the number of parishes themselves have declined is a mystery. One conjecture might be that it takes more resources in real terms to sustain a parish, so that beginning in the Great Depression those weaker parishes were closed and perhaps subsumed into other, more financially robust, parishes. I do not know if merely lack of planting new domestic missions can fully explain the decline."

The growth in clergy probably directly correlates to the decrease in lay services done at the parish level. In his sermon at the ordination of deacons on June 5, 1999, Bishop Jack Spong reflected on the different expectations when he was ordained a deacon 40 years earlier. He noted the huge amount of work that married women did in the parish with no expectation of remuneration; he noted that in those days we made our space available for free to any group in the community that wanted to use it, as part of our service to the community. Now, a huge portion of our congregations would be in dire straits without the income from rented space...... Most women in our parishes are now gainfully employed and need to be, Many are now priests, yet we had no women on vestries until the 1950s, no women in the House of Deputies until the 1960s, no women priests until the 1970s, and no women bishops until the 1980s.

Clearly numbers need much analysis to reflect the different kinds of church that they represent. The church of 1920, 1930, 1940....1999... These are vastly different institutions.

We spent most of "The Decade of Evangelism" bickering about who could and could not be participants in the church. I hope that those struggles are behind us, that "whosoever will may come." We can't expect agreement on many of those same issues, but I hope that we have learned some charity and tolerance of those who disagree with us. A church which cannot tolerate those who disagree with me would not be a comfortable place for me to be, for I remember well when the church could not tolerate me.

We are wise to love our enemies well, for I have found that most of my friends today were once my enemies. Conversion is much easier when someone about whom we are changing has been nice to us.

I think we should not have named it "Decade of Evangelism," but instead "Decade of Hospitality." Maybe we wll understand what Good News is all about if we speak about it in terms familiar to most Episcopalians, many of whom have fled as unwelcoming several congregations which called themselves 'evangelical.'

Evangelical is not unequivocally hostile for me; nor is prejudice: for me, both have neutral and even positive registers. For example, I prejudge murder as bad without having to experience it to reach that conclusion. Yet I'm losing a battle if I hold out for my "academic" meanings of 'evangelical' or 'prejudice' in the way these terms are used in public discourse.

Suppose we were to have a decade of hospitality, ten years in which we dared to love the world as much as Jesus does. How would our behavior change?

Right now even parish leaders seem reluctant to invite friends to church. I believe we could experience significant growth if just a matter that simple were to change.

I want us to look at new ways of doing ministry. I suggest:

• We need a talent inventory of the whole church.
• We need more expeditious ways for people to share their talents without being trapped into over-commitment and burnout.
• We need an Episcopal youth corps like the Mormons', but focused on servant ministry, with exchanges throughout the Anglican communion. (What a contrast to the client-focus of most parish "youth work." Small wonder that most college students I meet don't want to go near a parish....)
• We need to rid our church of classism. We could have members galore if we were comfortable with a catholic range of humankind.
• We need to organize 'church' more flexibly to accommodate their horrendous work schedules.

  We need

  • more house eucharists.
  • more neighborhood. gatherings, perhaps some store-front ministries.
  • less captivity to mid-Sunday morning.

• We need to revitalize campus ministry, perhaps by establishing lay canons already serving in such places. John Worrell, retired chaplain at Rice University, has warned, "We've been eating our seed corn."
• We need to revisit property issues with a hard look at going out of the museum business. Most rectors long ago talked parishes out of putting them into 19th-century rectories, but we seem to feel that God won't mind being stuck in drafty old buildings that do not reflect the best space that our people move in....
• We need to reprioritize our ordination processes. We should be calling as ministers only those already active in ministry (see my advice to aspirants), not those invested solely in enfranchisement into old hierarchies of institutional maintenance......

--Lutibelle/Louie, Secretary of The Standing Commission on Anglican and International Peace with Justice Concerns, Chair of the Newark Deputation, Secretary of the Standing Committee of the Diocese of Newark.

• See related reports
• Reflections on this report and related material regarding ECUSA's growth/decline

  If you wish to add your own reflection to this collection, please send it to lcrew@newark.rutgers.edu for me to consider. Please use a subject line exactly as you want it to appear in the index to the reflections. Please identify yourself with your full name, your parish and location, and any other details that will help put your comments in perspective for those who read it.

• Louie Crew's Anglican pages: http://newark.rutgers.edu/~lcrew/rel.html
• Louie Crew's home page: http://newark.rutgers.edu/~lcrew
• Send mail to: lcrew@newark.rutgers.edu

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