Why is the Southern Baptist membership rapidly shrinking?

President Jimmy Carter addressing the SBC in Atlanta in 1978 (in 2000, Carter left the SBC over its position on the status of women)

Is the membership of the Southern Baptist Convention really shrinking?

That is very much a resounding “yes”, each and every year since 2006 it has been falling.

Don’t take my word on it, but instead lean upon the actual numbers that they themselves produce. Each year an Annual Church Profile (ACP) is compiled by Lifeway Christian Resources and is done in cooperation with Baptist state conventions. Within it we get the precise details of the annual numerical changes for the Southern Baptist Convention.

For the latest details, check out the latest May 7, 2024 article by Lifeway Research.

Since these are their numbers, they quite naturally give it all a positive spin. Their article is titled “Southern Baptist Membership Decline Slows, Baptisms and Attendance Grow“. Permit me to translate, they are saying: “well yes, we are still shrinking, but the rate at which we are shrinking is not as fast as the last two years, and also more people are attending and getting dunked.“

How can they be shrinking and yet have more people attending?

Let’s take a modest dip into the numbers and see what we actually find.

How many?

The following chart more or less sums it up …

From the above you can see that there has been an ongoing and very consistent decline since the peak of 16.3 million in 2006. Each and every year since then has seen their numbers fall.

The latest decline for 2023 is 241,032.

The year prior to that it was 457,371, so yes, clearly not as sharp a fall.

The huge drop in 2022 was explained last year by them as follow …

“Much of the downward movement we are seeing in membership reflects people who stopped participating in an individual congregation years ago and the record keeping is finally catching up,” McConnell said. “Membership totals for a congregation immediately reflect additions as well as subtractions due to death or someone removing themselves from membership. But many congregations are slow to remove others who no longer are participating.”

In other words the big 2022 dip was record keeping catching up. It really does make sense. The US saw over 1 million COVID deaths, so it is credible to see such declines, especially amongst those that resisted the vaccine and resisted the idea of not turning up to breath all over each other on a weekly basis as they blasted out hymns within an enclosed space.

Not everybody was that stupid, but way too many were.

What this year’s decline reveals is that the 2022 decline was not all just record keeping, the decline is real and still there. Also, the supposed slowing of the decline this year is perhaps an illusion because of last year’s record keeping spree.

“But more are attending” is also part of this year’s spin.

Well perhaps, but it is a number that I’m surprised to see them flagging up. Of the less than 13 million members, only about 4 million actually attend on a weekly basis. The rest, close to two thirds, don’t.

Yikes, so what happened to the 2022 spree that involved the cleaning out the records of those that don’t participate?

I suspect that while many might culturally identify as SBC, they tend not to actually practise that belief on a weekly basis, but since they do occasionally show up, they remain counted.

They also flag up that the number of baptisms is increasing.

That is true if you look back over just a couple of years, but take a deeper look and this is what you see …

What immediately becomes clear is that between 1999 and now, the latest data point is on the path of overall decline. For very obvious COVID reasons there was a huge decline in 2020 and then a post-COVID bounce-back in 21, 22 and 23 to the normal rates of decline.

When considering attendance, then it is the same pattern …

The Y-axis within the above also strikes me as a tad dubious and shallow. The apparent dip of membership from 16.3 million down to under 13 million is a very shallow down curve and does not represent how dramatic the loss of almost 4 million members, which is close to a quarter, actually is.

Anyway, let’s put all that aside and get to the real question – what is going on here?

Why is SBC in Decline?

I have honestly no idea why SBC is enduring this ongoing decline in numbers, it truly is a complete mystery.

Then again, perhaps the sexual abuse revelations have played a role.

In 2019 the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News published the revelation that roughly 380 clergy, lay leaders and volunteers had faced allegations of sexual misconduct, leaving behind over 700 victims since 1998. It was not a new revelation but instead part of an ongoing pattern. Baptist leadership would often cover up allegations and also move offenders to other communities, all while facing some of their own allegations of indecency. For details, check out the Wikipedia page titled “Sexual abuse cases in Southern Baptist churches“. It documents this bubbling cauldron of hypocrisy, abuse, failed attempts at reform, and constant coverups.

Oh and let’s not forget to spotlight the bombshell report released in May of 2022 which found that its Executive Committee mishandled allegations of sex abuse and stonewalled survivors.

OK, so apart from all the sexual abuse inside SBC and the mishandling of it, I have honestly no idea why SBC is in decline, it’s a complete mystery.

Then again perhaps expelling very successful megachurches such as Rick Warren’s for the theological “crime” of having a women pastor. He did attend their convention in 2023 to make this plea …”I’m not asking you to agree with my church, I am asking you to act like a Southern Baptist.“, but no his lobbying fell upon deaf ears, they decided that his church, along with four others, would be expelled.

So, apart from …

The rampant sexual abuse and the mishandling of that by SBC leadership
The expulsion of popular churches for the “crime” of having women pastors