[HPFGU-OTChatter] US Episcopalian Church question

[Shaun Hately]

On 5 Aug 2003 at 1:45, Kathryn Cawte wrote:

> The BBC have been covering the delayed confirmation of the gay bishop by the
>  Episcopal church all day. About an hour ago they explained that it's
> membership is actually less than 1% of the population of the US and as such
> it legally qualifies as a sect. And yet ABC news which is being shown now
> just described it as one of the US's biggest churches. Now I realise that
> these two things aren't necessarilly contradictory but they certainly sound
> like someone is wrong. Can someone explain whether they're both right?

Hi Kathryn,

The numbers I am going on here are from 1990 - I simply have these to 
hand. In 1990, there were approximately 2.45 million Episcopalians in 
the United States. US population in 1990 was around 250,000,000 - so 
just under 1% of Americans were Episcopalian. The ratio is probably 
similar today, but I can't immediately check that. So that sounds about 
right.

Now - the next part - does that make them one of the biggest Churches in 
the US? Yes, it does. What you need to realise is that many of the major 
brances of Christianity actually consist of a number of different 
Churches. For example, in the figures I am looking at here, Baptists are 
actually 14 separate Churches.

The list I am looking at contains about 150 different 'Churches' - all 
or nearly all the 'major' religious groupings of the US in 1990. Of 
these groups, only 10 are larger than the Episcopalians (National 
Baptist Convention of America, National Baptist Convention USA, Southern 
Baptist Convention, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, 
United Methodist Church, Moslems (they're not divided in this list), 
Presbyterian Church, Roman Catholics.

So coming in at number 11 out of 150 probably means it's reasonable to 
refer to the Episcopalians as one of America's biggest churches.

Basically, it comes down to how you count things. For example, the 
largest single Baptist group in the list is the Southern Baptist 
Convention with nearly 15 million people.  But if you group together all 
the Baptist groups, it's over 26 million. No single Pentecostal Church 
has more members than the Episcopalians - but there are more 
Pentecostals than there are Episcopalians. Same applies to Jews - there 
are more Jews than there are Episcopalians, but they are divided into 
three separate groups.

It comes down to how you apply the numbers.

Now, the above are from 1990 - so will have changed a bit. But the 
relative sizes won't have changed that much. And it should also be noted 
that not all groups count their numbers in the same way - the Roman 
Catholic Church considers a person a member from the moment of baptism, 
unless they choose to leave the faith. Many of the Protestant churches 
only count adult members in their numbers - so you can't really get a 
fair comparison.

Yours Without Wax, Dreadnought
Shaun Hately | www.alphalink.com.au/~drednort/thelab.html
(ISTJ)       | drednort at alphalink.com.au | ICQ: 6898200 
"You know the very powerful and the very stupid have one
thing in common. They don't alter their views to fit the 
facts. They alter the facts to fit the views. Which can be 
uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that 
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