If these nine denominations would have grown as fast as the population from 1990 through 2022, they would have about 53 million members today. That’s about 16% of the overall population of the country.

Instead, they have a membership of 30.8 million people. That’s a total gap of just over 21 million members that don’t exist today. Those 30.8 million folks are just 9.3% of the total population. So, just these nine denominations are slightly more than half the size they should be if they continued to grow with America.

Obviously, this doesn’t represent all of American religion or even all of Protestant Christianity. But it is certainly indicative of the shifting religious landscape. Denominations are in decline — almost all of them, honestly.

I tried to point toward two here that are growing, but PCA is still incredibly small. The Southern Baptist Convention lost more members last year than the entire membership of the PCA. So, it cannot, in any meaningful way, fill the gap. And the Assemblies of God is growing, but at much lower rates in recent years.

Denominational Christianity used to be an incredibly important cultural force in American life. Leaders in these traditions used to hold sway over millions. Today, they are a shell of their former selves.

There’s this old saying in sports — winning fixes everything. If your team has a ton of problems but still manages to win more than it loses, those issues are easy to paper over. But when the losses pile up, that’s when things get ugly.

And, yes, I am very much thinking about what’s happening with the two largest denominations in America right now.

The Southern Baptists are going through a bitter dispute that hearkens back to the fights in the mid-1980s. The SBC emerged from those conflicts by continuing to enjoy membership growth. It seems unlikely that will be the case this time.

Meanwhile, the United Methodist Church will be drastically smaller next year than it was just two years ago in what can only be described as the largest denominational schism in the last 50 years.

These fights will not end in the near future. They will only accelerate. The big winner? That new nondenominational church down the road that has no institutional baggage.