Nondenominational is Now the Largest Protestant Group

Not a good word for someone like me who is a denominational transformationalist!

FIRST — A Confession from George Bullard

I fully acknowledge I have been a denominational transformationalist for all of my adult life. This is as opposed a postdenominationalist or a nondenominationalist.

This is because of my strong commitment to denominations, and my feeling that while they need to transform, if they would, they could be the best way to lead and manage the Christian movement.

I acknowledge that the postdenominational movement as a significant movement dates back to the late 1960s, and the nondenominational movement as a significant movement to the late 1970s.

However, the hope I held out is that existing denominations would transform. Some have. Not enough have. And, their transformation is inadequate. Splitting and splintering has been their pattern. Spinning off nondenominational movements has been their practice.

With the most recent study (see below) indicating that the nondenominational congregations as a group are now the largest grouping of Protestant congregations, the denominational transformation movement has failed.

We have moved from denominations to networks as the emerging organizing principle. Networks are fluid, everchanging, lack the modest amount of institutionalization needed to keep a movement going, and at times are too dependent on the personality of a leader and thus may diminish and even fail when that leader messes up, quits, retires, or dies.

I welcome your thoughts!

Get the Facts! Religious Research Update on the U.S. Church

This Fall has brought several religious research studies of interest to those seeking knowledge about what is really going on in the national religious scene. Here is some information from one of these studies. Below I also share some personal ForthTelling Innovation Insights.

U.S. Religion Census Shows Both Stability and Change in Congregational Life – A report of the U.S. Religious Census – see www.USReligiousCensus.org – conducted every ten years by the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies – see www.asarb.org. This research was conducted during 2020 following up on the 2010 research. The report is now available.

Religion News Service’s (RNS) November 11th Article on This Study – Religious Groups with Immigrant Members Grew Fastest Over Past Decade

Factoids From This Study and the Religion News Service Article:                            

1. The US had more than 356,739 congregations in 372 religious bodies in 2020.

2. From 2010 to 2020 the number of congregations increased 2.2% and the number of adherents increased 6.5%. At the same time the nation’s population increased 7.4%.

3. “Religious groups drawing large number of immigrants have seen steady growth.” (RNS)

4. “The number of adherents in the Southern Baptist Convention and the United Methodist Church each decreased by about two million while the number of adherents in independent, nondenominational Christian churches increased by nearly nine million.”

5. In more than 44,000 nondenominational churches are about 21 million adherents. They now account for 13% of the total number of adherents in the U.S. The number of nondenominational churches increased by more than 25% between 2010 and 2020. This means that the largest non-Catholic Christian group in the U.S. is now nondenominational.

6. “The Catholic Church has the most adherents, with more than 61 million, the Southern Baptist Convention has the most congregations, with more than 51,000, and the United Methodist Church is in the most counties, 2,989.”

7. The Catholic Church grew by two million adherents—but . . . “If you took away the Hispanic population in the Catholic Church, it would look as bad as mainline denominations.” (RNS quoted Scott Thumma, director of the Hartford Institute for Religion Research)

8. “Non-Christian bodies continue to increase their presence. The number of Muslims, for example, increased from 2.6 million to 4.5 million.”

ForthTelling Innovation Insights from George Bullard: General Observation: These are unscientific projections just to begin dialogue with the readers of The Bullard Journal. What do you think?

Nondenominational Christian churches are a big observable trend. As stated above, they are now the largest non-Catholic Christian group in the U.S. This speaks significantly to the decline of denominations, the blurring of the line between denominations and networks or parachurch groupings. This trend is highly likely to continue.

1. Unless the current trend for the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) and the United Methodist Church changes, they will also lose another 2 million adherents each by 2030. Their loses may go to newly forming denominations and to nondenominational groupings.

2. The non-Hispanic adherents to the Catholic Church could decrease by another 2 million by 2030. Potentially the Hispanic population growth would cover this 2 million lost in adherents.

3. Overall, the decline in the percentage of people who identify as Christian will continue.

4. Likely the fastest percentage of growth related to Christian religious adherents will be the growth in “Nones” and “Dones” who are no longer anyone’s adherents.