Anglican Watch, the self-proclaimed “unofficial watchdog” of the US Episcopal Church, has questioned claims that church attendance at the denomination is “stabilizing” as it predicts that one in six congregations could effectively disappear in the next decade.
In its latest Parochial Report, the Episcopal Church said Sunday attendance is stabilizing following a brief post-Covid bounce. The same report, however, showed a significant decline in the last decade, with the denomination losing around a quarter of its membership.
In 2015 the church had two million members. By 2025 that figure had dropped to below 1.5 million.
Responding to the report, Anglican Watch noted that with a disproportionately aging membership, and median Sunday attendance of 37, the church could “be heading toward a far larger wave of closures than recent trends suggest”.
Conducting its own number crunching, Anglican Watch estimates “roughly 1,200 Episcopal congregations will close, merge, or otherwise cease operating as independent congregations during the next 10 years".
"We regard 700 to 1,800 as a reasonable range," it said.
Of particular concern to Anglican Watch is the small size of the average Episcopal congregation.
“A congregation of 25 doesn’t have to lose 25 people to become nonviable. It may only have to lose five. If those five include the senior warden, the treasurer, the organist, two major donors, and the one person who knows how the ancient heating system works, things deteriorate quickly," it said.
The group pointed to a survey which noted the majority of Episcopalians are 65 or older (57 per cent), while just 10 per cent are aged 18 to 34. It is this fact that appears to have led Anglican Watch to make their drastic prediction for the next 10 years.
“Because so many congregations are already tiny, modest demographic attrition will have an outsized effect," it predicts.
As the years go by, smaller congregations will be tasked with maintaining the considerable physical infrastructure of the denomination, something that will eventually become unviable in many places and will, according to Anglican Watch, lead to some form of downscaling.
“Not every disappearing parish will be described as a closure. Some will ‘merge.’ Some will become ‘worshipping communities.’ Some will share clergy or become yoked congregations. Some will be absorbed into regional ministries. Some will continue technically to exist while holding occasional services with supply clergy. And some will discover exciting new models of ministry shortly after discovering they can no longer afford the old one.
“The vocabulary will vary. The underlying reality won’t," it says.
