In the concluding chapter of American Mainline Christianity: Its Changing Shape and Future, Wade Clark Roof and William McKinney predicted this:
The churches of the Protestant establishment, long in a state of relative decline, will continue to lose ground both in numbers and in social power and influence. The proportion of the population that is Protestant will continue its gradual decline in the decades to come, and within Protestantism denominations and revitalization movements will continue their contest for power and influence.
In the 1980s and beyond, Roof, professor of sociology at the University of Massachusetts, and McKinney, professor of religion and society at Hartford Seminary, were among my sociological gurus, tracking the ecclesiastical times as the Southern Baptist Convention, the denomination in which I was raised, was tearing itself apart in a “contest for power and influence.”
Bill Leonard
In 2026, their predictions regarding the American denominational future are even closer at hand, documented by Ryan Burge, professor of practice at the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University. After teaching and writing about American religion for half a century, I find myself giving particular attention to two significant gospel-soaked individuals: Jesus the Christ and Ryan Burge the political scientist. Don’t laugh.
OK, laugh a little, then get serious.
Jesus and his gospel echo across history, fashioned and refashioned in a myriad of global cultures for 2,000 years. The Jesus story found my Baby Boomer self in the First Baptist Church of Decatur, Texas, the town where I was born and the church where I was born again. At that moment in its history, the SBC was at the top of its denominational game, evangelistic to a fault with elaborate programs providing Christian education, missions, spirituality and ministry in ways that coincided with and contradicted its messengers. (Remember, many SBC folks of that era promoted both evangelism and segregation.)
Southern Baptists nurtured the gospel of Jesus into me and later gave me my first teaching job at one of their seminaries. Then the denomination took a theo-political turn that sent me packing. The SBC deserted me. Jesus didn’t.
In recent years, Burge joined those who helped me come to terms with all that. Indeed, he continues to assist many of us in reflecting on where the Jesus story and American culture have taken American Christians and their churches.
His insights inform people and congregations, insiders and outsiders across the theological and ecclesiastical spectrum. In my view, Burge is one of the foremost interpreters of the present and future realities confronting churches in the land of the free and the home of declining denominations.
That’s why we should take seriously this question from his Jan. 29 “Graphs about Religion” column: “When are half our members going to be dead? The tipping point for many denominations is not that far away.” * Burge illustrates that sober reality with a chart detailing the age boundaries of a large segment of the country’s historic denominations.
Burge’s commentary on these and other statistics includes:
- The Episcopal Church has the oldest constituency, but others are not far behind, including United Methodists, Lutherans Missouri Synod, the Evangelical Lutheran Church and the Presbyterian Church (USA).
- Baptists are statistically nearby. Some 54% of Southern Baptists are over age 60, while 62% of the National Baptist Convention fit that category. For American Baptist Churches USA, it’s 45%.
- Burge writes: “Just 6% of Southern Baptist adults are under the age of 30. That’s no different at all than the Episcopalians. Only about one in five are under the age of 45.”
- The Baby Boomers, born 1946 to 1964, numerically dominate the majority of these denominations. They are 45% of the SBC, 47% of the NBC and 37% of the ABCUSA. Burge observes: “The only reason American Protestant Christianity is not in absolute free fall right now is because it’s being buoyed by the Baby Boomers.”
Among multiple explanations theological, political, demographic and cultural, Burge makes this crucial point: “I always tell people that the rise of the Nones (those who reject religion entirely) is the biggest story in the faith space. But the second most important story is the rise of the nons — that is those folks who identify as non-denominational Christians.”
In a Jan. 9 column, Burge called nondenominationalism “the strongest force in American religion,” representing some 15% of all Americans. He put their numbers at 45 million, and growing.
Historian Sidney Mead offered a now classic definition of a denomination as a “voluntary association of like-hearted and like-minded individuals, who are united on the basis of common beliefs for the purpose of accomplishing tangible and defined objectives.” Denominations developed out of 17th-century English and American Puritanism as essentially an “ecumenical device,” an organizational acknowledgement that Protestants could differ on specific church polities — Congregational, Episcopal, Presbyterian — but still be part of the one true church.
“Denominational differences made pluralism a normative, albeit embattled, reality in American churches.”
Denominational differences made pluralism a normative, albeit embattled, reality in American churches, particularly after the Constitution and Bill of Rights ended the Puritan and Anglican religious establishments in New England and the South by the 19th century. (Massachusetts had a state-supported Congregational Church until 1833.)
Denominations provided local congregations with opportunities for organization, identity and collective support for common ministries. In many cases, denominational systems gave local churches alternatives for ministry through shared resources and programs they could not have managed on their own. They still do that, even amid decline.
Burge knows that history and appreciates it. He is a resource of realism for institutions in the midst of decline, encouraging them toward an immediate “‘code red’ mode right now … planning for a future that looks much different from the past.” He warns that “decline is not going to follow some gradual linear process,” but will happen very gradually — then all at once.”
A code red signals an “alert to avoid panic while mobilizing trained personnel for a serious, immediate danger.” God knows we’ve got code reds aplenty here and now — apocalyptic conflicts at home and abroad; uncertainties about the very nature of truth; declining health care funding for millions; ICE agents cruelly stalking the land — injustices that demand not a state-mandated Christian nation but a profound Christian witness.
Even in decline, the witness of these Christian communions remains a significant gospel presence in American life. Responding to such realities requires an intentionality that may well preserve that witness toward a more promising future. Hearing an Episcopal bishop call an American president to show mercy on “the least of these,” or watching innumerable clergy, many from declining denominations, protest against ICE actions in Minneapolis and elsewhere, remind us why we need that witness.
Remember Jesus? Didn’t he say, “Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in their midst?” That should take the panic out of any gospel code red.
Bill Leonard is founding dean and the James and Marilyn Dunn professor of Baptist studies and church history emeritus at Wake Forest University School of Divinity in Winston-Salem, N.C. He is the author or editor of 25 books. A native Texan, he lives in Winston-Salem with his wife, Candyce.