Nondenominational churches will continue to have an advantage over Southern Baptist churches because their members are younger and more ethnically diverse, predicts religion data analyst Ryan Burge.
In a new Substack post titled, “Those Nondenoms are Just Southern Baptists, Right? ” Burge compares demographic data on the nation’s largest denominations against the more amorphous group known as nondenominationals.
This matters, in part, he says, because of the growing size of the nondenominational movement: “The share of all Protestants who were nondenominational was just 5% in 1972. It was little more than a rounding error in the grand sweep of Protestantism. Today, about 30% of Protestants are nondenoms.”
Put another way, he says: “Nondenominationalism is the strongest force in American religion,” accounting for about 30% of U.S Protestants or 45 million churchgoers. By comparison, the Southern Baptist Convention reports 12.5 million members.
Burge also wrote about this movement for Asterisk Magazine in an article titled “The Demons of Non-Denoms.”
Some key characteristics of nondenominational church members point to the future, he adds:
- The overall age profile of nondenoms is significantly younger than many of the largest Protestant denominations, including the SBC.
- Only 59% of young nondenom churchgoers are white, compared to 85% of United Methodists and 78% of Southern Baptists.
His point: “A denomination that has an overabundance of white young adults is drawing from a smaller overall market than those that are more racially diverse. That dynamic will likely only accelerate the decline of both the SBC and the UMC.”