Membership in the Presbyterian Church (USA) fell further in 2023, according to statistics released last week by the denomination’s Interim Unified Agency, which succeeds the former Office of the General Assembly.
PCUSA minister Remington Johnson, who identifies as transgender, speaks at rally at Texas State Capitol in 2021 / Photo by Brad Pritchett via Presbyterian Outlook)
Total membership declined by 45,932, or 4%, to 1,094,733 in the most recent reporting year. Presbyterians are older and more likely to be white than the overall U.S. population, with the denomination listing 87.85% as white and 33.46% as over the age of 70. Nationally, 61.6% of the U.S. population counted in the 2020 U.S. Census was white, while 17.3% of those counted were aged 65 and over.
The average annual PCUSA membership loss reported across the past decade is 4%. The denomination in 2023 reported 195 fewer ministers and a net 133 churches were dissolved or dismissed. The PCUSA lists a total of 8,572 churches. Total baptisms nudged up to 10,922, an increase of 607 from the prior year but still 21 percent below the pre-COVID level of 13,835 reported in 2019.
Presbyterians did have at least one rising data point, however: a 17% jump in the number of members who identify as “genderqueer” or “nonbinary,” increasing by 230 in 2023 to 1,547, comprising 0.17% of all members and noted as an increase in the Presbyterian News Service coverage. The denomination ordained its first nonbinary Minister of the Word and Sacrament in June of 2019 and began tracking the number of nonbinary or genderqueer members in 2022.
“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,” Stated Clerk The Rev. Jihyun Oh, the denomination’s top executive, told Presbyterian News Service, the denomination’s official mouthpiece, about the statistical release.
Earlier this year, Oh signalled what was ahead while announcing changes to achieve a balanced 2025–26 budget, including $5 million in cuts that will result in further staff reductions.
“We shared information with World Mission staff as well as partners around the world that we anticipate significant changes to how we engage our partners in the future, and we are in the process of examining how our organization will be structured in 2025,” Oh disclosed in November. “We anticipate that there will also be reductions in 2025, once that process is completed.”
“The gravity of the church worldwide has shifted to the global South,” Oh stated. “We are at most half the size compared to when the current structures were set up.”
Presbyterians have been in the news this year: the PCUSA Office of Public Witness, which serves as the denomination’s Capitol Hill lobby office, is among a host of liberal church groups that offered support to anti-Israel student protests at college campuses. The PCUSA office has accelerated its aggressive anti-Israel policies and charged the Middle East democracy as an “Apartheid” state.
The PCUSA’s biennial General Assembly met June 25 – July 4 in Salt Lake City, Utah. Ahead of the gathering, some General Assembly commissioners and attendees fretted about a Utah law that requires people to only use those restrooms in schools and government buildings that correspond to their biological sex. Airport restrooms were identified by General Assembly planners as an area of concern, convention center restrooms were unaffected.
Among the legislation considered and approved at the governing convention was an overture barring ordination of candidates who are not LGBTQ-affirming. That overture goes to local presbyteries, a majority of which must ratify the change before it can take effect. At least eight presbyteries concurred with the overture.
Earlier this past summer, officials from the Presbyterian Mission Agency, the Office of the General Assembly and the Administrative Services Group approved a reduced proposed budget for the three church entities that expects a continued 4.5% rate of membership decline. According to the Presbyterian News Service, the three governing boards also approved proposed per capita rates (a set apportionment per member that congregations pay to the PCUSA) for 2025 ($10.20) and 2026 ($10.62). Those rates have increased 44% across the past decade from $7.07 in 2015.
This article was originally published by Juicy Ecumenism, the official blog of the Institute on Religion & Democracy.
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