Episcopal Church membership has dropped by nearly 350K since 2015
The Episcopal Church's years-long decline continued in 2025, with the denomination having nearly 350,000 fewer members than a decade earlier, according to a new report.
The Episcopal Church released an analysis of its 2025 Parochial Report, which found that the liberal Mainline denomination had about 1.425 million members last year. By comparison, the denomination reported about 1.547 million members in 2023 and about 1.77 million members in 2015. It did not report a membership total for 2024.
"Membership continues its slow decline, a trend that has persisted for decades," the report states.
In-person Sunday worship attendance has fallen from about 600,000 in 2015 to about 407,000 last year. The 2025 figure is also slightly lower than in 2024, when the denomination reported Sunday worship attendance of more than 413,000.
The analysis also counted 6,673 open parishes and missions last year, down slightly from 6,707 in 2024.
Baptisms dipped slightly as well, from 19,624 in 2024 to 19,316 in 2025, according to the report.
Like many Protestant denominations in the United States, The Episcopal Church has seen a considerable decline in membership over the past several decades.
In 2010, the denomination reported that its number of active baptized members dropped below 2 million, still roughly half a million more than in 2025.
Many factors have contributed to the decline in membership and attendance, but the denomination's increasingly progressive theological direction has alienated some.
In 2003, for example, when The Episcopal Church consecrated the Rev. Gene Robinson as its first openly gay bishop, scores of congregations and a couple of dioceses left in protest.
In October 2025, the denomination released its 2024 Parochial Report, which, unlike past annual reports, did not include a total membership count.
At the time, The Episcopal Church's Office of Public Affairs said in a statement that the report reflected "responses to new and revised questions that were compiled by former members of the House of Deputies Committee on the State of the Church and approved by the Executive Council in October 2023 and January 2024."
"The committee experimented with new ways to ask about and count total churchwide membership, and the data collected revealed confusion in how churches understood and reported this topline number," the office said. "The presiding officers are collaborating to devise a process that provides clearer data on total membership in future years."
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