Good News in the Numbers: The Steady Decline of the Southern Baptist Convention

For eighteen straight years, Southern Baptist membership has declined.

This good news comes from the Southern Baptist Convention’s own data, its annual church profile which was released just a couple days ago.

Though the Southern Baptist Convention is still the largest Protestant denomination in the United States, its membership is now the lowest it’s been in 50 years.

When we consider this continuing decline in conjunction with some other recent numbers from the Pew Religious Landscape Study, we see a picture of an institution that’s on a trajectory toward extinction or irrelevance.

Two-thirds of Southern Baptists are age 50 or older, and only 10 percent are between the ages of 18 and 29.

As one commentator noted:

“That’s a demographic liver punch heading straight for the SBC.”

In other good news, the numbers are also down for the enrollment of children in Southern Baptist Vacation Bible Schools. The indoctrination of children in ways that may diminish their development of independent reasoning is not a healthy thing – not for the children and not for the future of our country.

The SBC’s data showed that giving was down as well. Total reported giving to SBC churches dropped by about $500 million. It went from just over $10 billion in 2023 to $9.55 billion in 2024.

(Still… despite that half-billion-dollar drop, it’s worth noting that the SBC remains a powerful $9.55 billion-a-year tentacular institution. If they wanted to earnestly reckon with clergy sex abuse, they’ve certainly got the resources to do it.)

This SBC trend toward extinction makes me happy. Why? Because a faith group that cares so little about safeguarding kids and congregants against clergy sex abuse is a faith group that doesn’t deserve to have families in its pews.

As you can see from that Lifeway graph at the top, the SBC’s decline began in 2006, and it’s never recovered since. In not quite two decades’ time, it has lost nearly one-fourth of its members.

Ironically, 2006 was the year I did my first sidewalk press conference, standing outside SBC headquarters in Nashville and talking about Southern Baptist clergy sex abuse and coverups. With news exposés big and small, the media coverage of SBC clergy sex abuse has been pretty much unrelenting ever since. And the SBC’s continuing decline suggests that it’s made a difference.

2006 photo of me talking to a reporter in front of SBC headquarters

Institutionally, the SBC has been a model of recalcitrance in refusing to earnestly reckon with the reality of clergy sex abuse, but in the lives of a lot of people, the reality has hit home and they’ve left.

Of course, the constant stream of clergy sex abuse news isn’t the only factor that has driven the SBC’s decline. Its rampant misogyny, hatred toward LGBTQ people, purging of women pastors, embedded racism, and hyper-alignment with Trumpism have negatively impacted a lot of people. And some simply stopped believing in the Southern Baptist brand of religious teachings.

For a multitude of reasons, many are saying “No” to the SBC and walking away.

The decline of the SBC is good news for a lot of people and for a multitude of reasons.

For SBC clergy sex abuse survivors, I see it as a form of justice. It may not be the kind of justice we yearn for (and it won’t pay our counseling bills), but it’s still something. A lot of those people who are leaving the SBC have seen the truth: The SBC isn’t really reckoning with clergy sex abuse – not now and not ever. And that’s a travesty that decent people want no part of.

It’s good news for the rest of us as well – at least I hope so. At a time when the moral and democratic foundations of our nation are quaking – in large measure due to the heavy influence of white evangelicals who champion Trumpism – it bodes well to see the SBC’s influence on the wane.

For more on the Southern Baptist Convention’s long-continuing refusal to reckon with clergy sex abuse, check out my book, Baptistland: A Memoir of Abuse, Betrayal, and Transformation.