From Ecumenical News International:
While overall membership may be increasing, only five of the top 25 churches in the nation are growing, according to the Yearbook.
The 10 largest Christian bodies remain unchanged from last year's list, with one exception. The Assemblies of God moved up a notch, to the No. 9 spot, switching places with the Presbyterian Church (USA), which now finishes last on the Top 10 list.The 10 largest Christian bodies reported in the 2010 yearbook are:
1. The Catholic Church: 68.1 million, up 1.49 percent.
2. Southern Baptist Convention: 16.2 million, down 0.24 percent.
3. The United Methodist Church: 7.8 million (U.S.), down 0.98 percent.
4. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: 5.9 million (U.S.), up 1.71 percent.
5. The Church of God in Christ: 5.5 million, no change.
6. National Baptist Convention, U.S.A., Inc: 5 million, no change.
7. Evangelical Lutheran Church in America: 4.6 million, down 1.62 percent.
8. National Baptist Convention of America, Inc.: 3.5 million, no change.
9. Assemblies of God: 2.9 million, up 1.27 percent.
10. Presbyterian Church (USA); 2.8 million, down 3.28 percent. [reprinted with permission]
They are sufficiently confused to consider the Mormons to be Christians.
Posted by: Bananas Gorilla | February 18, 2010 at 11:51 AM
I generally ignore church membership figures unless they are accompanied by detailed explanations of the methodology for gathering them. If the methodology makes sense, then I look at the numbers.
I gather the source her is the NCC. From what I've seen of their numbers in the past, they are laughably bad. We have here assertions that membership in various denominations is up or down by X.YY%, which would imply the numbers are accurate to 1/10,000th. Yet for the National Baptist Convention we get "5 million (no change)". Does anybody believe there is any meaningful precision in that number, at all?
Posted by: Matthias | February 18, 2010 at 01:19 PM
Who are the "National Baptist Convention" and the "National Baptist Convention of America"?
Posted by: Kamilla | February 18, 2010 at 04:18 PM
The two National Baptist Conventions listed are predominantly African American denominations. I would be curious how the American Baptist Convention (Northern Baptists) fared in the stats. That is a rather liberal denomination.
Posted by: Arnold | February 18, 2010 at 09:08 PM
The NBC figures are meaningless.
Posted by: Albion | February 19, 2010 at 02:36 AM
Bananas, that's understandable since even we Mormons are sufficiently confused enough to consider ourselves Christians.
That said, the LDS Church's growth numbers have been in decline as well - mostly due to LDS people having less kids (we tend to follow the national trends here - just at 1.5 kids more than the given norm), and rather significant cutbacks in the missionary force back in the mid to late 1990s.
Posted by: Seth R. | February 21, 2010 at 03:39 PM
I agree with Bananas. If we're just throwing in any ol' group, why not add the Arian Catholic Church?
http://arian-catholic.org/arian/arian-home.html
Posted by: St. Worm | February 23, 2010 at 07:05 AM
Speaking of Arian Catholic. Having been called by God to Christianity at a very young age, I have always struggled with calling and referring to Jesus as God. As in the old testament, we shall worship only one God. So after attending many churches over many years and settling in the Catholic Church, I continued to struggle with the Trinity and have studied the history of the Church, read the scriptures and continued to search for a church that believed in one God. And guess what it is the Arian Catholic Church. From what I have studied, it comes closest to any truth I have seen and I am now at peace with my God knowing he has led me here.
Posted by: truthseeker | March 19, 2010 at 10:42 AM