Tuesday, November 12, 2019

Female Ordination Statistics

A:  Episcopal church, taken from https://episcopalchurch.org/files/2004GrowthReport(1).pdf Red line shows female ordination.

B: Evangelical Lutheran Church: Ordination of females was instituted in 1990.  1990 membership stats from their executive summary shows  2,919,270 active Evangelical Lutherans, or 262.16 confirmed active members per congregation on average. In the 2000 report membership stats show 180.66 confirmed active members per congregation on average, and the 2001 report gave 173.66.   The Evangelical Lutheran Church was formed in 1997, and have never grown.

C: Disciples of Christ: They were already struggling before 1970, Which sealed their fate.

D: Unitarian Universalist: Possibly the only congregation to report getting their membership numbers back up.  Women reportedly started seeking to be ministers around 1970, according to here https://www.meadville.edu/files/resources/v2n1-sangrey-the-feminization-of-the-unitarian-uni.pdf, they lost a solid 15% of their membership in 12 years before turning the trend around.  There's no way I see to determine what percentage here is active attendees- Blue line marks end of decline, though they still have not broken even with their 1960 numbers.
E: United Church of Christ: Pretty much always allowing female ordination, but had less than 20 female clergywomen (among thousands) until roughly 1970s with the women's suffrage movement, according to the UCC's article.  http://www.thearda.com/denoms/D_1463.asp shows They gained members until about a year before 1970s, and then immediately entered a decline which has not recovered.  In the 40 years since, they have lost over *half* their membership.

F: United Methodists: Beginning ordination in 1968, they show the exact same trend as the United Church of Christ.  They have lost three million members in 40 years.

G: RLDS (Community of Christ) - 1984 - Can't really find any good data on this one, the only statistical set I can find shows gains and losses over 50% from year to year at random.  I assume there's been a lot of change in how they've done their statistical reporting.

Major churches which do not echo the death spiral (and do not ordain women) include Jehova's Witnesses, The Church of Jesus Christ, Roman Catholic, and Southern Baptist. https://ifphc.wordpress.com/2017/05/10/church-stats-1975-2015-charts-show-decline-of-mainline-protestants-and-growth-of-pentecostals/

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