Is the Episcopal Church Dying?

http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=7951

[VirtueOnline] 24 Mar 2008--Ms. Stanley is out of touch with reality.

First of all, there are not 2.3 million Episcopalians, as the National Church likes to tell us. Most of those are names on the rolls that should have been removed years ago. Because rectors are loathe to take names off of the books, they stay on there. Some are even dead and buried. Many have moved onto other denominations because of the Episcopal Church's endorsement of pansexual behavior. Hundreds of thousands of folks have simply stopped coming.

The raw, ugly truth is that there are less than 800,000 practicing Episcopalians on any given Sunday. That number is declining at the rate of 1,000 a week. According to a Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life survey, the Episcopal Church is the fastest dying mainline protestant denomination in America. It dropped 1.5% in attendance last year. That figure is projected to only increase and escalate in 2008.

The Episcopal Church has declined in absolute numbers. According to statistics presented by Kirk Hadaway, the Episcopal Church's director of research to the Executive Council, the church is losing 1,000 parishioners per week. Only one in three Episcopalians attends a parish church on a weekly basis. Membership in all 110 dioceses of the Episcopal Church totalled 2,320,506 in 2006, down 2.2%, or 51,502, from 2,372,008 in 2005. That's the equivalent of 1,000 Episcopalians walking away from the Episcopal Church each week. There is no indication it will turn around any time soon, if ever. Since 2007, the decline has only accelerated.

One entire diocese, - San Joaquin - taking about 90 percent of its members, has departed the Episcopal Church. Three more dioceses, - Ft. Worth, Quincy and Pittsburgh, will, in all likelihood, leave over the next year taking thousands more with them. In the past 10 years, over 10 of the largest Episcopal parishes in the country have fled to other jurisdictions, my rector tells me. What does that tell you?

The figures don't lie. The Episcopal Church is not growing, it is dying.