Presbyterian Official: “I Don’t Despair” as Members Vanish

Jun 5, 2018 by

by Jeffrey Walton, Juicy Ecumenism:

A new hymn commissioned by the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) for the denomination’s upcoming General Assembly encourages congregants to “Draw the Welcome Circle Wider”. But as Presbyterians prepare for the biannual legislative gathering, updated statistics made available today by the PCUSA Office of the General Assembly (OGA) show a denomination struggling to widen that circle – numerically and demographically – and instead reporting a steep, uninterrupted Presbyterian decline in 2017.

The U.S.-based denomination shed 67,714 members in 2017, a decline of nearly five percent. A net 147 congregations closed or were dismissed to other denominations, bringing the denominational total to 9,304 congregations.

“I don’t despair, I never despair,” PCUSA Stated Clerk J. Herbert Nelson, II declared in a statement made available on Monday. Of those who will not be in the newly-widened circle, 20,162 departed via certificate, while 74,129 simply vanished and are listed as “other”.  Deaths accounted for a decline of 25,565 members in 2017. The denomination is 91 percent white, not reflective of a diversifying United States population. In 2012, the PCUSA reported that it was 89.9 percent white, indicating that the denomination has somehow become both numerically smaller and less diverse in the same period of time that the United States population grew in size and became more diverse.

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