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How many mainline Protestants are there?
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Mainline church members make up either 13 or 18 percent of the American population, depending on who you ask and how you frame your questions. And these divergent findings continue to fuel the debate about the rate of decline of mainline Protestant denominations.
A 2008 survey of more than 54,000 adults by the American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) reports that the number of mainline Christians had slipped to 12.9 percent of adult Americans, down from 17.2 percentt in 2001.
However, in a poll of 35,000 adults in 2007, the Pew Forum's U. S. Religious Landscape Study said that 18.1 percent of adults said they were affiliated with "mainline Protestant " churches.
A study by the General Social Survey (GSS) finds 13.6 percent for the mainline in 2008.
These variations reflect variations in which groups were included in the mainline category, as well as how some questions were asked. There is agreement on major bodies included in the mainline: United Methodist Church, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the Episcopal Church, American Baptist Church and United Church of Christ .
However, unlike ARIS, the Pew study included members of relatively small denominations not always included by researchers in the mainline category. These include Quakers, Reformed Church in America, Church of the Bretheren, Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and the Metropolitan Community Church. In addition, the Pew study also defined respondents who identified themselves as Protestant or said they belonged to non-denominational or independent churches.
John C. Green of the Pew Forum says one way to determine whether respondents were mainliners was to ask them if they were "born again" or not. These additional respondents accounted for nearly 20 percent of Pew's total for mainline Protestants. Green reports that "Non-born-again folks in these kinds of churches look very much like members of specific mainline denominations in terms of religious beliefs and behaviors."
All studies concur that that there are more evangelical Christians than mainline ones, and that growth in this category is faster. Thus, the ARIS study says evangelicalsd account for 34 percent, while Pew's study puts them at 28.3 percent. GSS included 28.1 percent in the evangelical category.
Again, differences between the two major studies seem to reflect ARIS's inclusion in the evangelical group of those who identify themselves only as "Christian," "Evangelical/Born Again," or "nondenominational Christian." As noted, Pew did not automatically include all these respondents as evanglicals. Consequently, the gap between mainliners and evangelicals reported by Pew, approximately 10 percent, is smaller than the approximately 20-point spread reported by ARIS. The GSS study reports an approximate difference of 15 percent.
Despite differences in methodology, religious researchers feel there is a changing landscape in America's religious profile. There is concern that mainline Protestants are slipping in numbers, although there are questions of how much and how fast. Mark Silk, who helped design the ARIS study believes "A generic form of evangelicalism is emerging as the normative form of non-Catholic Christianity in the United States." He concludes that "It looks like the two-party system of American Protestantism -- mainline versus evangelical -- is collapsing."
There is growing concern about the decreasing importance of traditional denominations and their distinctive theologies. As Protestantism becomes increasingly conservative, evangelical and generic, there are fewer forums for serious discussions of basic religious and theological issues. Robert P. Jones of Public Religion Research feels it is important that historic traditions, sustained in both oldline denominations and new nondenominational churches, are important for a healthy civic society. "The mainline remains one of the few places in our increasingly polarized...society where people with disparate opinions and beliefs continue to rub shoulders on a regular basis."
For more info: See John Dart, How many in mainline? Categories vary in surveys, The Christian Century, June 16, 2009, pp. 13 -14,
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