DALLAS (ABP) — Amid intense national debate about immigration reform, the National Council of Churches recently announced immigrants have had a positive impact on U.S. churches: The council's annual yearbook reports a record number of church bodies for 2006.
One of the nation's best-known sources of church information and trends, the yearbook reported 219 national church bodies, representing more than 163 million Americans.
“The number of national church bodies is reflective of a remarkably robust immigration history and the cultural and constitutional freedom of religion so characteristic of the United States,” Eileen Lindner, editor of the 89-year-old annual, said in a press release.
The yearbook lists Asian, Orthodox and Protestant churches — like the Korean Presbyterian Church — as among the largest U.S. groups serving a largely immigrant membership.
The fastest-growing groups included the Assemblies of God, the Mormon Church and the Roman Catholic Church.
Philip Jenks, director of interpretation at the NCC, told Associated Baptist Press the fact that a “wide range of Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox leaders” support immigration reform has swelled the church numbers.
“Immigration reform is also supported by millions of people in the congregations that compose the member communions of the National Council of Churches USA,” Jenks said. “It's not unanimous, however. The members live in both red and blue [states].”
Of course, virtually all churches in the United States originated with immigrants, the council website points out. Some churches developed in other countries and won converts in the States. The 16th-largest Greek Orthodox Archdiocese in America, for example, developed as a place for Greek and Russian immigrants.
Linder said the 2006 yearbook, which compiled data collected by the churches in 2004 and reported in 2005, demonstrated a “continued overall vitality of church participation” in America.
With almost 68 million members, and as the largest church group in the United States, the Roman Catholic Church reported an increased membership of nearly 1 percent.
The Southern Baptist Convention, the second-largest body with roughly 16 million members, also grew about 1 percent — a rate unchanged from the previous year.
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