By Jeffrey Walton, Juicy Ecumenism.
New data released this week by the Episcopal Church shows both a modest decline in attendance and a large loss in membership alongside leading indicators including baptisms, confirmations, marriages, and receptions conducted within the mainline Protestant denomination.
Parochial report data for the reporting year 2025 shows attendance declined between 2024 and 2025 by 6,033 persons (1.5%) from 413,034 to 407,001, the first decline following a multi-year post-COVID rebound. Access the data on the Episcopal General Convention website here.
Membership across both U.S. and overseas dioceses, which was not reported for the 2024 year, now stands at 1,425,065, a decline of 122,714 (7.9%) from 1,547,779 last made available for the reporting year 2023. This makes 2025 the first year with a reported church membership below 1.5 million persons. A net 81 Episcopal parishes and missions closed between 2023 and 2025, declining from 6,754 in 2023 to 6,673 in 2025.
A press release from the Episcopal Church’s Office of Public Affairs spun the declining attendance numbers as “stabilizing” while noting that the more dire membership decline is part of a trend that “has persisted for decades.”
Other metrics tracked by the denomination, listed in an analysis of data conducted for the Episcopal Church by the Hartford Institute for Religion Research, also fell across the two-year period. Combined baptisms of adults and children fell 931 (4.6 percent) across the two year period from 20,247 in 2023 to 19,316 in 2025. Confirmations fell 1,722 (12 percent) from 14,853 in 2023 to 13,131 in 2025. Receptions fell 2,179 (29 percent) from 7,567 to 5,388 across the same period. The full data for the 2023 reporting year can be viewed in an annual table of statistics viewable here. A similar table has not yet been made available for the 2025 year.