PCUSA loses 1 million members in 15 years: report
The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has around 1 million fewer active members than it had in 2009, with the mainline Protestant denomination continuing its years-long decline.
On Tuesday, the PCUSA released its annual statistics report, which found that the United States’ largest Presbyterian denomination had approximately 1.094 million members in 2023.
This represented a decline of nearly 46,000 members compared to 2022 when the PCUSA reported having 1.14 million active members.
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Additionally, the denomination saw a drop in member congregations, going from 8,705 churches in 2022 to 8,572 churches last year, or a decline of 133 congregations.
These numbers contrast sharply with the PCUSA numbers in 2009, when the denomination reported having almost twice as many members, with a total of about 2.07 million.
Additionally, in 2009, the denomination had 10,657 member congregations, or more than 2,000 affiliated churches than it did in 2023.
“I think it can be easy for us to see the decline in numbers and lose hope. We are certainly facing challenges, and we are trying to address those in various expressions of the denomination,” the Rev. Jihyun Oh, executive director and stated clerk of the General Assembly of the Interim Unified Agency of the PCUSA, said in a statement released Tuesday acknowledging the situation.
“However, there are also vital ministries and faithful discipleship represented in the statistics across the full range of faith community types and sizes. God continues to do new things in us and through us.”
The 2023 statistical report also found that the largest age demographic in the PCUSA were members aged 71 and older, which comprise 33.46% of the denomination. By contrast, individuals aged 17 and younger only made up 3.99% of the membership.
Regarding gender identification, the PCUSA saw a slight increase in the number of men who belong to the denomination, going from around 348,000 in 2022 to around 365,000 in 2023. Additionally, members who identify as “Non-Binary/Genderqueer” slightly increased from 1,317 in 2022 to 1,547 in 2023.
As with most other religious groups in the United States, the PCUSA has experienced considerable decline in active members over the past several years. It has also seen a sizable drop in affiliated congregations.
One factor in this decline has been the overall progressive theological direction of the denomination, especially in regard to the acceptance of homosexuality and same-sex marriage.
In 2010, for example, when the PCUSA voted to allow regional bodies to ordain non-celibate homosexuals, the decision led to a few hundred congregations leaving in protest.
Last month, the PCUSA announced that it was cutting several national staff positions and streamlining its agencies and ministries in response to the denominational decline.
