Ryan Burge, a demographer with the Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University, does the most careful tracking of mainline Protestant denominations of anyone in the field. This week he took a look at my own denomination, the United Church of Christ. Formed by the merger of two denominations in 1957, the UCC has been in uninterrupted decline for over six decades.
“The UCC,” Burge notes at the onset, “is a really interesting denomination because it was once a genuine powerhouse in American Protestantism.” The UCC was formed in 1957 through a merger of two older traditions — the Congregational Christian Churches and the Evangelical and Reformed Church.
“Congregationalism mattered a lot in early American history. In The American Religious Landscape, I write that “Congregationalists likely represented the single largest religious tradition during the Revolutionary era.” Burge reports a story of steep decline, which while not unique to the UCC, may be among the worst of the 12 denominations grouped under the label “mainline.”
“Both congregations and membership have taken an absolute nosedive since the early days of the UCC,” writes Burge. “It’s pretty apparent that 1960 was the apex of the United Church of Christ, when they boasted about 2.25 million members and over 8,000 churches. From that point forward, decline was the norm. That’s something I want to make crystal clear here: the UCC has been moving in a downward direction for over six decades now.
“The most current data indicate that the number of congregations has dropped to 4,485. That’s a decline of about 46 percent. The most recent membership number for the United Church of Christ is 683,936, a dip of just under 70%. Just think about that for a moment. For every 10 UCC members in 1960, there are three today. Just staggering stuff.”
“And here’s what really should concern the leaders of the United Church of Christ — they are still losing about 15,000 members per year even as the denomination has slipped to fewer than 700,000 members…. When you see losses like that now, it amounts to a decline of about 2% per year.
“Beyond the straightforward analysis of membership decline, there’s another ‘flashing light’ in this data as well: the average UCC church is really small. According to their records, the median in-person worship attendance in 2023 was just 39 people per church, with a median membership of 97. Holy cow, that is incredibly problematic.”
“In 1995, just 28% of churches had fewer than 50 ‘butts in seats’ on an average weekend. That number actually stayed fairly consistent through 2005. But from that point forward, the ‘micro-church’ began to explode in the United Church of Christ. By 2015, almost half of all UCC congregations averaged fewer than 50 worshippers. In the most recent data from 2023, two in three congregations in the United Church of Christ had weekend attendance between 1 and 50 people.
“Here’s a statistic that I will keep in the back of my mind for a very long time: the share of congregations in the United Church of Christ that will have more than 150 people show up this Sunday is 3%. That’s 135 total congregations.”
As Burge notes none of this is new information. It’s been going on for a long time. What’s been done in response? Not much. Denominational leadership has met this reality with a combination of denial, wishful-thinking, doing what we’ve always done only more single-mindedly and even self-congratulation. An example of self-congratulation: “The reason we’re declining is because we have been so prophetic.”
While we had some good leaders into the 1990s I would say that since then those in denominational leadership have not been serious people. Most qualified as “peace-mongers,” who avoided hard issues and truth-telling, offering happy talk instead. My favorite happy talk line was, “The UCC is the best-kept secret in the world . . . if only people knew about us they would be flooding through our doors.”
Was this decline inevitable? I don’t think it was. I note that each of four UCC churches I served, between 1977 and 2004, grew in number of members, worship attendance, overall participation, and financial support during my tenure. In addition the last one I served saw a decline in the average age of members from 55 to 42 (don’t have that data set for the others). That congregation averaged 450 in worship attendance in the last seven years of my tenure. It was always a team effort of clergy, laity, and gifted staff members. Because in the last decade, so many of our churches have gotten so small and members so elderly, such vitality has gotten harder.
During 15 of those years I was part of a group of a dozen or so UCC clergy (male and female, gay and straight) that got together annually for mutual support. Most if not all of the churches led by pastors in the group were similarly healthy and growing. Members of that group had some things in common. We loved the Lord, loved the church, treasured the Scriptures, and didn’t think the main business of church was politics or the culture wars.
A big part of the decline owes to group-think taking over in the UCC, most especially inside the denomination’s national offices and leadership, but often in congregations as well. Viewpoint diversity was not welcomed. Which is particularly ironic as one of the points of pride of Congregationalists was our emphasis on the “freedom to walk according to the light which the Lord hath given you.” This was embodied by being a “non-creedal” church. You didn’t have to accept a creed (e.g. “Apostles,” “Nicene,” or any other) to belong.
And yet, in the last 50 years we did become, in a different way, a highly creedal church. That is, you had to adhere to a “creed” of certain political and social beliefs. Moreover, you had to hold theological convictions lightly, if at all. We became a kind of mono-culture, as unhealthy in churches as it is in nature.
In the recent book by the Brookings Institution scholar Jonathan Rauch, Crossed Purposes: Christianity’s Broken Bargain with Democracy, Rauch says that most of the mainline can be described as “thin Christianity.” Faith isn’t deep or thick but thin.
Moreover, these churches came to be characterized, in Rauch’s words, by a cultural trade deficit. “The church is in cultural deficit — if it becomes a net importer of values from the secular world — then it becomes morally derivative rather than morally formative. Rather than shaping values, it merely reflects them, and thus melts into the society around it.” The UCC’s unceasing, un-questioned efforts to be “relevant” have in the end rendered us largely irrelevant.
Some of you will respond by saying, “But what about the other guys? (meaning the Religious Right or the new theocrats associated with MAGA). They are the real problem. Why are you picking on us?” To which I reply that there is something to be said for taking the log out of your own eye.
For those who ask “what should we do?” or “what should we have done?” I would suggest the two of my books which are the most pertinent, Transforming Congregational Culture and Changing the Conversation: A Third Way for Congregations, both published by Eerdmans.
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Maybe the decline is the result of the rabble finally got fed up with an organization whose hand was always out begging for alms and they finally realized that worshipping a 2,000 year old zombie who came back to life after being dead and whose mum was a virgin was an unsustainable fantasy???
Cultural deficit? I always thought the idea that the church shaped values, was mostly a myth. If for example slavery made sense to the society of the south, then it made sense to southern churches, if not to northern churches (where free state farmers and other occupations didn’t look forward to competing in a slave holder economy.) Who shaped the societies of Ireland and Colombia? The same Catholic church? They must be a lot alike then!
You gotta love the Catholic Church. Here’s part of a documentary, Deliver Us From Evil about Father O’Grady: Molester supreme, sheltered by higher ups. Some evil skut named Cardinal (whatever the hell a Cardinal is??) Roger Mahony hid him all over the place. Off with their heads!!!!!!! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qamIJWkKi0
A bit off-topic (maybe), but what was the church affiliation(s) among the Massachusetts witch-burners?
The witch trials happened in Puritan New England, and the disgrace of it may have helped steer America away from theocracy. That and the Puritans hanging Quakers.
They didn’t burn anyone, though. That was more of a Catholic thing, not just the notorious inquisitions but for example, Thomas “Man for All Seasons” More had people burned for things like English translations of the bible.
It’s tempting to compare the fall of the UCC with the fall of democracy as they are both civic systems, but I don’t see it the same at all. Democracy’s purpose is to resolve conflicts and to solve the problems of the voters. I’m not sure what the purpose of the UCC is, or what congregants have moved on to in lieu of worshipping. If one is concerned about growing their membership, they are wise to look beyond they’re current structure and ask what fundamental purpose they are serving.
I guess “your church” is on the same decline as all other churches, except maybe the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, whose members are unfailingly friendly to believers and non-believers. The decline of Christianity can’t happen fast enough.
I sailed to the South Pacific around 1983. No refrigeration. We were desperate for a cold beer. Got to Takaroa in the Tuomotus. No beer because the Mormons had taken over. Later I moved to Tahiti and became friends with a great family. They were 7th Day Adventists. Their preacher forbade them from dancing or wearing jewelry. Can you imagine telling a Tahitian they can’t dance??????????????????// Such arrogance.
Thanks for this Anthony – as a member of a UCC congregation, I often find myself sitting more uncomfortably in the pews in recent years as the sermons and culture of the church seem to align more and more with progressive political orthodoxy. Of course individuals can and do find inspiration for their politics in the bible or church teachings but I don’t need the pastor to bring every current event and progressive political fad into the sermon or selectively choose and interpret scripture to match the hyper-polarization we are already surrounded by outside of church. I think this is the prophetic bit you mentioned – they see themselves as on a mission to push the congregation towards some progressive idea of the divine…
Some of this is of course member-driven which gets to that unhealthy monoculture idea and “relevancy” – to be in my congregation you’re definitely expected to hold some unspoken creeds that have little to do with “faith.” I can imagine anyone with more “centrist” or dare I say “normal” political opnions would find the overall atmosphere stifling.
Mr. Robinson, thank you for this column and many others.
Your experience comports with mine, working with mainline churches and the Catholic Church from the late 1970s through the 1980s. As J notes above, the atmosphere can be stifling for centrist political opinions. I find this is also true in the Buddhist communities I now practice with.
As an aside, I am disappointed with the unkind tone of many of the comments.
Yes, Christian churches have many faults. But it is Jews and Christians who formed the foundation for the concept of the human rights, founded and staffed hospitals, schools, and universities, and serve people in need. Christian communities, while at times ideologically stifling, tend to be open, caring, and friendly. A net positive, in my opinion, although not now for me.
Probably shouldn’t pursue this, but the hospitals thing … A lot has changed since the Middle Ages, and now that we don’t have a pervasive state religion, the church can take credit only for its own actions. Providence Health & Services sprang to mind, if they want to take credit for hospitals.
In today’s current events, though, the conspicuous thing those open, caring, friendly folks can take credit for, is electing Trump.
It’s ironic that churches get credit for the progress of civilization, in comments criticizing them for espousing progressive values. Jonathan Rauch may have had it more right than Robinson recognizes: the church us fundamentally thin, as a after all it can’t effectively shape values when, adding up the contradictions, it has no values to offer.