Yet in the days following the General Convention of 2003, other voices have been heard, reminding us of our membership losses-saying that we once had over a million more members than we have today. We are a declining denomination, or so we have been called, and because of a vote taken at General Convention, we can expect to lose even more members. So what is the truth? Is the Episcopal Church growing or declining? Unfortunately, answering that question is made difficult by changes in denominational membership reporting and lack of attention to quality control in the canonical data collection. This report is an effort to unpack the problems surrounding membership trends in the Episcopal Church and hopefully to answer the question of growth or decline with objective clarity.

Membership: Unadjusted and Adjusted Patterns

The Episcopal Church Annual, also known as The Red Book, includes a table that tracks Episcopal statistics from 1880 to the present. Communicant totals begin in 1880, whereas baptized membership statistics commence in 1930. If one simply finds the high point of Episcopal membership in Red Book tables (1966) and compares that figure (3,647,297) with the total members in 2002 (2,320,221), it would seem that the Episcopal Church lost well over a million members during the last 35 years. But any suggestion that the pattern of loss has been consistent and intractable over this period is incorrect. As shown in Figure 1, the pattern is anything but consistent after the decline began. The

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