One reader in a comment in response to the article, “St. Mary's Episcopal Church to Close Sunday After More Than 50 Years,” raised the question as to whether the revival of the practice of weekly celebrations of the Eucharist had really benefited the Episcopal Church. Episcopal churches were closing because they could not even afford to pay the salary of a part-time priest and the diocese was no longer willing or able to subsidize them. Congregations had lost members to the point that the diocese no longer regarded them as viable.
A number of factors have contributed to the loss of members in the Episcopal Church. These factors vary from region to region. The liberal policies of the Episcopal Church and its image as a gay church have negatively impacted churches across the United States, in some regions more than others, depending upon local attitudes toward homosexuality and homosexual practice. But other factors are also affecting the Episcopal Church as they are affecting a number of denominations.
Among these factors is a declining interest in the general population in organized religion. This is not to say that Americans do not have religious beliefs or even a form of spirituality. However, they see no benefit in membership in a religious community such as the congregation of a church, synagogue, or temple or in participation in corporate worship or other communal religious activities (e.g., group meditation). What needs that membership in such a community or participation in such activities might meet are met in other ways or go unrecognized and unmet.
This development has implications not only for the Episcopal Church but also for other denominations in North America. It also has implications for the Anglican Churches that breakaway groups of Canadian Anglican and US Episcopalians have formed during the last 35 years, including the Reformed Episcopal Church that was formed in the nineteenth century. With less people taking part in any form of organized religion these Churches that, like the Episcopal Church, have appealed only to small segment of the general population are going to have greater difficulty in recruiting new members. They are going to find themselves without the kind of financial base needed to maintain a building or to pay the salary, benefits package, and travel allowance of a part-time pastor, much less a full-time pastor.
The revival of the practice of weekly celebrations of the Eucharist in the Episcopal Church and the widespread sacramentalism in the breakaway Anglican Churches compounds this problem as do the expectations that the minister administering the sacraments must be seminary-trained and episcopaly-ordained. Anglicans and Episcopalians have professionalized the vocation of pastor to such a degree that more and more churches are going to find it prohibitive to procure the services of such a professional. Today’s weak economy exacerbates the problem.
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