[Pan_Yans Wife]

I haven't been able to find the number of parishoners in the Episopal church, in the US, today. Does anyone have that statistic?

The reason why I ask, is someone mentioned that their numbers were not very large, and thus the church should actually be called a sect.

I have no way of knowing if this is true, or not.

[wideawake]

Probably 2.5 million active parishioners in the US.

[Sandylapper]

I think I heard that there are 22 million Episcopalians in the US. I do know that internationally, the Anglican/Episcopal church is quite a large group--not as large as the Roman Catholic, but large nonetheless.

The church began losing membership in the 70's when it came out in favor of Malcolm X, changed the prayer book, etc., etc. My memory is not infallible, but that's what I recall.

[beelzepug]

According to David Virtue, a very conservative Episcopalian who has a website called "Virtuousity" and who is covering the convention in depth from a conservative viewpoint, the average Episcopalian congregation in the U.S. is 37 people. I'm not sure if that refers to membership or average Sunday attendance; the latter sounds about right. My parish was around 80 (between two services) when I finally left about six months ago, might be fewer now. Hard to keep the doors open like this.

[Eala]

The reason why I ask, is someone mentioned that their numbers were not very large, and thus the church should actually be called a sect.

Referring to my very trusty (and long pre-PC) Webster's New Collegiate, the relevant definitions of "sect" are:
4. In religion: a A party dissenting from an establishment or parent church; a body of sectaries. b. One of the organized bodies of Christians; a denomination.

(a) doesn't quite apply, even historically, though (b) does. I think what your "someone" was reaching for was the word "cult" -- a very similar (and in some aspects overlapping) word, but one with rather more negative connotations.

The Episcopal church in America has (to my historically inadequate knowledge) not been a really big church percentage-wise, but it has until recently, certainly within my lifetime, been still large enough and influential enough to be accurately enough called "The Republican Party at prayer."

Those days are obviously long gone; twenty years and more ago, when I was still an Episcopalian, it was obvious even to me that they were history. But is the Episcopal Church of the United States of America (ECUSA) merely a cult? I don't think so. Not yet.

[MHT]

The Episcopal is world's second largest church after the Catholics (79 million?) but only comprises something like 3% of all US protestants, mostly on the east coast.

[longtermmemmory]

http://www.waybackmachine.org

this website stores all web pages for posterity.

go there and check out the aqusations. Even if they pulled it, it should still be present there.


They can run, but they perv's can't hide.

[NotJustAnotherPrettyFace]

Lots of stats here:

The Largest Episcopal Churches in the U.S.A.

Excerpt:

The 1998 edition reported 208. The 1999 edition reported 228. The 2002 edition below reported 271. I.e., in the five years 1997-1992 the number of congregations with 1,000+ members increased by 23%. During the same five years, the total number of communicants in the Episcopal Church increased from 1,584,760 to 1,857,843, or only 17%. Large congregations are growing at a faster rate than others.

Twenty-three percent of all Episcopalians are members of churches with 1,000 or more communicants, yet those 271 congregations represent only 3.7% of all Episcopal churches.

The 7,347 congregations of ECUSA average 252 confirmed communicants each.

Caveat: The Episcopal Church Annual is clearly wrong with regard to a few specific "big" congregations. E.g., for several years, the Annual has shown Trinity in Boston as under 100; yet Trinity's website, http://www.trinitychurchboston.org/ states that Trinity has over 2,500 members, and parochial report revealed an average attendance of 1,440. I cannot undertake to naysay the Annual -- my sole source regarding size -- but clearly some congregations are not communicating clearly when they file their parochial reports on which the Annual bases its data.