The Aftermath of the Schism in the United Methodist Church

A Picture of a Denomination in the Middle of a Numerical Freefall

The United States is experiencing one of the most significant shifts in Protestant Christianity in its history. What do I mean by that?

For the latter half of the 20th century, there were two denominations that stood out in terms of their size and influence on American discourse. The evangelical tradition was typified by the Southern Baptist Convention, while the United Methodist Church symbolized mainline Protestant Christianity.

But how the mighty have fallen.

The Southern Baptist Convention had a membership of 16.2 million in 2006. Today, that number stands at 13.2 million. Of those 3 million that have been lost in the last 16 years, 1.3 million members were shed in 2020, 2021, and 2022 combined. It’s bad news.

However, there’s been an even faster percentage decline in another denomination previously mentioned: the United Methodist Church. There were 6.3 million United Methodists in 2020. The best estimate of their current number is 4.9 million. That’s a decline of 1.4 million during the same time period, representing a percentage decrease of 21% since 2020.

Plotting the total membership of the United Methodists since the late 1960s puts the full scope of this drop into stark relief.