Baptist groups in the USA

"What happened to the National Baptist Convention USA (8.5 million in 1997)?"

Funny you should ask. I have just been investigating this. It seems the President of the Convention, Henry Lyons, was running several scams - one of which was selling phony membership lists of the Convention. So, to make more money, he inflated the statistics. It seems they actually have no more than a million or two. He was convicted of racketeering. More detail can be found here:
Trends in Church Membership and
Baptist Leader Convicted in Racketeering Case

"Where can I get a copy of the 'Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches'?"

I have not seen it yet; only saw it quoted it the Baptist Standard article. It should be available from the National Council of Churches.

 

YEARBOOK OF AMERICAN AND CANADIAN CHURCHES

Go here for information or order online with credit card or paypal.

 

I have some updated figures on some of these groups that I will try to get together and post as soon as possible.

For those interested in statistics of religious bodies - the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies will meet in Kansas City, KS October 30-31, 2001. If someone wants more info, contact me and I will give you the e-mail address of the Secretary-Treasurer.

 

I don't believe anyone has mentioned the statistics in Churches and Church Membership in the United States 1990. Many groups which are listed in other posts on this thread are not included in these statistics, but there are several small groups listed that I haven't seen mentioned anywhere else. Most of these are Appalachian Baptist groups. Three groups that were included in the 1980 volume were not in the 1990 edition. (Actually, the Conservative Baptist Association was in both but only the number of congregations were included in 1990.) A lot of these figures aren't as recent as those already posted, but I thought I would send them for what they're worth.

The whole book might be of interest to some since figures for each state and each county are included. A large separate map is color coded to indicate which denominational families predominate in each county. Denominations which make up 50% or more of the reported church members in a given county are indicated with a solid color. Denominations having 25-49% of the church members in a given county are indicated by a striped pattern. According to a summary table in the book, Baptists predominate in 1,322 counties, which is first place for all denominational families. Second is Catholics with 959, third Lutheran with 266, and fourth Methodist with 249. These figures don't differentiate whether the given group accounts for 50% or more or 25-49% of the membership.

Studying the map is quite enlightening. Baptists are indicated in red on the map and it is really striking how such a broad belt of almost solid red spans across the South. Baptists amount to 50% or more of the church members in all but two counties in Mississippi, all but three counties in Alabama, and all but four counties in Georgia. Of these nine counties in the three states seven have 49-25% Baptists.

These studies have been done in 1956, 1971, 1980, and 1990. One is supposed to come out in early 2002 and will be called Religious Congregations Membership Study 2000. The Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies, which RLVaughn mentioned in the last post on this thread, holds the copyright to the 1990 edition but the Glenmary Institute published it. For more information check out http://www.glenmary.org/grc/grc_RCMS2000.htm.

I tried to copy and paste a Word table here, but I lost all the formatting. By way of explanation the first figure is the number of churches and the second column is the membership, but I suppose that's obvious.

Southern Baptist Convention - 37,922; 15,032,798
Black Baptist groups (estimate) - ?, 6,955,723
American Baptist Churches USA - 5,801; 1,504,573
Free Will Baptist National Asn. - 2,461; 234,588
Baptist Missionary Association of America - 1,374; 228,287
American Baptist Asn. - 1,638; 224,678 (1980)
Conservative Baptist Asn. of America - 1,042; 187,226 (1980)
Baptist General Conference - 786; 132,994
United Baptists - 436; 54,248
North American Baptist Conference - 267; 42,689
Primitive Baptist Asns. - 1,159; 39,354
Old Regular Baptists - 326; 15,218
"Old" Missionary Baptist Asns. - 73; 13,093
Duck River and Kindred Asns. of Baptists - 102; 10,672
Separate Baptists in Christ - 94; 8,781 (1980)
Jasper & Pleasant Valley Baptist Asn. - 40; 7,312
Enterprise Baptist Asn. - 70; 4,766
Regular Baptists - 41; 3,938
Central Baptists - 35; 3,297
New Hope Baptist Asn. - 22; 2,459
Wayne Trail Missionary Baptist Asn. - 11; 1,934
Barren River Missionary Baptist Asn. - 11; 1,139
True Vine Baptist Asn. - 3; 458
General Six Principle Baptists - 2; 140
Two Seed in the Spirit Baptist - 3; 70

 

Some Additional Information Concerning Baptist Bodies

The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship currently has approximately 1800 supporting churches, according to CBF Quick Facts. This number cannot be added to the total number of Baptist churches in the USA, since many of these 1800 churches are probably also members of the Southern Baptist Convention.

The Alliance of Baptists has 130 churches with approximately 64,000 members. These Alliance-affiliated churches are listed online. Individuals and churches may join by paying an annual membership fee. As with the CBF above, Alliance churches may also still participate in the SBC and the ABCUSA.

In 1998, the Institutional Missionary Baptist Conference of America was organized as a result of division in the National Missionary Baptist Convention. Robert E. Houston lists it in his National Baptist Conventions (A Historical Reference). No statistics are available. This would be considered a autonomous body, but there is possibly much widespread dual affiliation of these churches with other National Baptist bodies.

The Truevine Baptist Association of Georgia, mentioned in Taufer's post above, has gone out of existence since the 1990 study conducted by the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies. The 3 churches still exist, but no longer function as an association.

[ November 19, 2001: Message edited by: rlvaughn ]

 

Hi, rsr. Welcome aboard! I would like to invite you to visit the "Welcome to the Baptistboard.com" forum and introduce yourself and let everyone say hello.

The two things you mention are not quibbles, but legitimate points of discussion toward the correct classification of Baptists. There are several varying standards for classifying Baptists. I follow what I believe is the best overall - that of Dr. Albert W. Wardin, Jr. as presented in his books Baptist Atlas and Baptists Around the World. Wardin takes into account the Particular/General, Northern/Southern, Means/Anti-Means developments among Baptists, as well as ethnic divisions [Regular Baptists (Northern-oriented), Regular Baptists (Southern-oriented), National (Black) Baptists, Primitivists, General (or Freewill) Baptists, and Reformed Baptists]. There is no perfect way to classify Baptists, but, in my opinion, Wardin has a far better grasp on this than anyone else in the field.

On your two points - the SBC is far from being Calvinist is the truest since, but I believe if one tries to maintain a Calvinist/Arminian classification of Baptists, the SBC must remain on the Calvinist side due to their retention of total depravity and perseverance of the saints. On the second point, I would be glad to get more input on the present relationship between the people and churches of the Alliance of Baptists and the SBC & ABC. To me they seem not to be a "full-fledged" denomination (or national convention) in the sense that the ABC, SBC, GARBC, etc. are. While in general I am studying the entire Baptist landscape in America, my expertise and focus is with small unaffiliated (usually independent or primitivist) bodies. I am somewhat "in the dark" on the Alliance of Baptists and Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. They seem to be "beginning to become" autonomous bodies, but "not quite yet". If someone has first hand knowledge of the amount of dual affiliation of the AOB & CBF churches with the SBC, I would like to see it posted on this topic.

 

I am of the same basic opinion concerning "Mainstream Baptists" as are you - that they are working within the SBC framework in order to prevent, or at least impede, the conservative/fundamental "takeover" of the SBC. Therefore, I do not recognize them on any of my lists as a distinct group. The same seems to be true of both the Welcoming and Affirming Baptists and the American Baptist Evangelicals; that is, they seem to operate well within the ABCUSA system.

Concerning the Calvinist/Arminian distinction among Baptists - technically this is not a true distinction for the majority of Baptists, because the (numerical)majority of Baptists holds a perhaps odd combination of Calvinistic and Arminian doctrines, holding some points of Calvinism and incorporating a "general" atonement into the system. This is not the forum to argue whether or not that combination is biblical, but I think that all would willingly admit that it is neither a pure form of Calvinism nor Arminianism. Categorizing the SBC as "Regular" Baptists recognizes their historical and theological ancestry, yet does not classify them strictly as Calvinists.

 

Yes, categorization of Baptists is a truly impossible task. We just have to do the best we can, and keep improving as we learn. But the SBC's & ABC's are the really easy ones, because regardless of the diversity within the groups, they are one monolithic system of which you can say, "that church is SBC". But with United Baptists, for example, each local association is a separate entity. We must say they are United Baptists, because that is what they are called. But, as we inspect the varying associations, we find some are extreme primitivists, rejecting all means and varying from Primitive Baptists largely on the issue of predestination; some are landmark Baptists, varying from the main body of landmark Baptists in that they retain the practice of feetwashing; some are freewill Baptists, holding to general atonement and falling from grace; some are all points in between these. Some correspond only with other United Baptists, some with Old Regular Baptists, some with Regular Baptists, some with missionary Baptists, some with Free Will Baptists, and some with "just" Baptists. There is probably as much variation in the SBC (except the primitivism part), but still all are tied together by participation in a unified convention program. With United Baptists, all that some have in common is that they happen to have the same name. The categorization of Baptists is a task that has no "correct" answers.

 

I am bumping up all the old topics in the Library/Reference forum, making them easier to find (at least temporarily).