Catholic Population Declined?
The data collected for the study also show the total number of Catholic adherents—the number of baptized Catholic individuals recognized by each parish and mission in the United States—at 58.9 million, three times that of the second-largest religious body, the Southern Baptist Convention.
Grammich noted that the total number of Catholics in the United States reported in the 2010 study indicates, on the surface, a decrease of approximately 5 percent from the 2000 total of 62 million. But, because the methodology used to collect the data changed for the 2010 study, he says it’s difficult to draw absolute conclusions when comparing the Catholic statistics in the two studies. (Read more about the definitions used in the study and the accuracy of the statistics.)
Probably through immigration and interstate movement. It certainly isn’t through a positive ratio of converts gained to converts lost.The latest Religious Congregations & Membership Study (RCMS) for the US was released today.
rcms2010.org/
It showed Catholics moving/growing significantly in the south and west.
Here are the counts for the top religous groups, after looking at the reports.
Sadly, only Muslims, Mormons and Assemblies of God showed real growth.
**Group/ ****Growth/ ****2000/ **2010
*]Catholic/ -5%/ 62,035,042/ 58,928,987
*]Southern Baptist Convention/ 0%/ 19,881,467/ 19,896,975
*]United Methodist Church/ -4%/ 10,350,629/ 9,948,221
*]Evangelical Lutheran Church in America/ -18%/ 5,113,418/ 4,181,219
*]Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints/ 48%/ 4,224,026/ 6,267,771
*]Presbyterian Church/ -22%/ 3,141,566/ 2,451,980
*]Assemblies of God/ 15%/ 2,561,998/ 2,944,887
*]Luthern Church Missouri Synod/ -10%/ 2,521,063/ 2,270,921
*]Episcopal Church/ -16%/ 2,314,756/ 1,951,907
*]American Baptist Churches/ -12%/ 1,767,462/ 1,560,572
*]United Church of Christ/ -24%/ 1,698,918/ 1,284,296
*]Churches of Christ/ -4%/ 1,645,584/ 1,584,162
*]Muslim Estimate/ 67%/ 1,559,294/ 2,600,000
*]Christian Churches and Churches of Christ/ 1%/ 1,439,253/ 1,453,160
Did you compile all that? Or were these stats already in the report? Thanks for all your work!!
I’m a somewhat casual follower of church membership statistics–a weird hobby I know. I wonder how this compares to the NCC data… The numbers seem very similar: decline for almost everyone except certain Pentecostals, Mormons and Muslims. I’m sorry to see there are no stats for JWs; usually they are also among the few groups showing growth. they probably didn’t make the top groups in total.