WASHINGTON — The United Methodist Church lost some 43,000 members in the United States in 2001, but membership gains in fast-growing overseas churches and the American South kept the denomination’s rolls stable at 9.8 million.
Membership in the nation’s second-largest Protestant church was reported at 8.3 million U.S. members and 1.5 million in Europe, Africa and the Philippines, according to United Methodist News Service.
Membership in the United Methodist Church in the United States, as in most other mainline Protestant churches, has been falling steadily since a peak of 11.5 million in 1965. The declines had slowed in 1999 and 2000 but are now back up to levels seen through most of the 1990s.
Growth was reported only in the church’s most conservative areas — the southern United States and in Africa. The two U.S. jurisdictions that stretch from New Mexico to Nebraska and on to Virginia gained 3,600 members. Africa, with 1.4 million members, added 77,000 members. The African church has grown by almost 1 million members in the past decade.
The Philippines has 184,000 members. European churches lost about 6,600 members, for a total of 74,361. In the United States, the church’s North Central Jurisdiction, covering most of the Midwest, lost 21,566 members.
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