World News
Catholic Church in US, Canada among religious bodies gaining members
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WASHINGTON (CNS) -- In the United States and Canada, membership numbers have gone up for the Catholic Church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Assemblies of God, among others, according to the 2010 edition of a yearbook published by the National Council of Churches. The 78th annual edition of the "Yearbook of American & Canadian Churches" also reported a continuing decline in membership of nearly all mainline Protestant denominations including the Southern Baptist Convention, which reported a loss of members for the second year in a row. With more than 16 million members, it is still the nation's second largest denomination. The Catholic Church -- the country's largest denomination with more than 68 million members -- reported a slight membership decline in the 2009 yearbook, but it rebounded this year with a 1.49 percent growth. The Latter-day Saints grew 1.71 percent to almost 6 million members and the Assemblies of God grew 1.27 percent to about 2.9 million members. The Rev. Eileen Lindner, editor of the yearbook since 1988 and NCC deputy general secretary for research and planning, said in a statement that observers have attributed the membership decline in some churches to "an increasing secularization of American postmodern society and its disproportionate impact on liberal religious groups." But Rev. Lindner, a Presbyterian minister, urged caution in interpreting the data and added: "American society as a whole has not experienced the kind and rate of secularization so clearly demonstrated during the last quarter-century in Western Europe."
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