Yearbook offers latest U.S., Canadian church statistics

RCC members can now get the latest statistical information about U.S. Christian groups in the 2010 Yearbook of American & Canadian Churches. The 78th annual edition, edited by Eileen W. Lindner, was released Feb. 12 by the National Council of Churches.

The yearbook includes membership and financial data from 227 national church bodies in the United States and Canada; directory information from 234 local and regional ecumenical bodies; and listings for theological seminaries and Bible colleges, church publications and religious research guides.

Total church membership reported in the 2010 yearbook is 147,384,631 members, up 0.49 percent from 2009. The Roman Catholic Church, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Assemblies of God added members. Virtually all mainline Protestant denominations reported membership declines.

The Southern Baptist Convention, the nation's second largest denomination and long a reliable generator of church growth, lost members for the second straight year. Lindner said many observers attributed church membership declines to "an increasing secularization of American postmodern society and its disproportionate impact on liberal religious groups." But she advised caution in assessing the causes of decline.

"American society as a whole has not experienced the kind and rate of secularization so clearly demonstrated during the last quarter century in Western Europe," Lindner said. "Indeed, American church membership trends have defied gravity particularly where the Pentecostal experience is included."

RCC Governing Board member Ken Bedell edited the yearbook from 1992 through 1997. Lindner succeeded him in 1998.