About one in five Protestant churches in America is now independent of any denomination and about one in five Protestants attends those independent churches, Duke sociologist Mark Chaves says in his new book “American Religion: Contemporary Trends.”
Chaves, professor of sociology, religion and divinity at Duke University in Durham, N.C., and director of the National Congregations Study, said the number of Protestants attending independent churches increased from 14 percent in 1998 to 19 percent in 2006.
“If the unaffiliated congregations were all in one denomination, they would constitute the second largest in number of participants (behind only the Roman Catholic Church) and the largest number of congregations,” Chaves wrote. “Although most Protestant churches are denominational, a noticeable and growing minority are not formally affiliated with any denomination.”
Chaves said an increase of 5 percentage points in the number of people attending independent churches may not seem like much, but he noted that growth occurred over a period of just eight years. He added that those numbers probably understate the cultural significance of the trend, because denominational affiliations seem to be decreasingly important to congregations and their members even when they do exist.
Nearly two-thirds of Protestant megachurches formally belong to a denomination, Chaves said, but many hide or downplay those connections. Even though the annual income of denominationally affiliated congregations increased faster than inflation between 1998 and 2006 in real dollars, the amount of money those congregations passed on to their denominational office declined from about 5 percent of their income in 1998 to 4 percent in 2006.
While some congregations reduced contributions to their denomination to protest its policies or priorities, Chaves said the decline in denominational giving is “a longer-term trend driven mainly by the rising costs of running a local congregation.”
Chaves said 16 percent of people born before 1950 and raised in a mainline denomination shifted to a more conservative denomination as adults, but beginning with those born in the 1960s more raised in a mainline church became religiously unaffiliated than became evangelical.
“The most important trend is not an increased flow from liberal to conservative churches,” he writes. “Rather the most important change is decreased flow of people in the other direction. In the not too distant past, conservative denominations lost many more people to liberal denominations than they do now.”
Chaves said upward social mobility was a big reason people formerly flocked to the mainline churches. Among upwardly mobile people who were raised as conservative Protestants, 28 percent of those born before 1931 switched to a more liberal denomination as an adult.
By 2008, twice as many people claimed affiliation with conservative denominations as with theologically more liberal ones: 28 percent compared to 14 percent.
As denominations lose members or resources, Chaves said, cuts to national and regional staffs often follow, resulting in a weakened denominational infrastructure. Many people don’t seem bothered by that, perhaps because they think of waste and inefficiency in denominational agencies, they disapprove with some of the initiatives pursued by denominational agencies or they think congregations can find materials and services that denominational agencies traditionally provided somewhere else. Given that, Chaves said, “it may be surprising” how often congregations turn to their denomination for help and resources.
More than 90 percent of the outside help that congregations received on personnel or staff issues came from denominational sources, Chaves reported. (ABP)
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