2019 Unitarian Universalist Association Membership Statistics Reveal That The Tiny Declining Fringe Religion™ Is Tinier Than It Has Been In Two Decades
At least when it comes to the official UUA membership statistics for the number of certified UUA congregations, which currently stands at 965 UUA congregations, four days after the February 1st, 2019, deadline for Unitarian Universalist congregations to officially certify their membership in the Unitarian Universalist Association. As of today, 65 congregations are not-certified, but this number can decrease and the number of certified congregations can increase as congregations that missed the February 1st deadline certify their membership in the weeks and months come.
The fact remains however, that if one adds ALL 65 not-certified congregations to the 965 certified congregations, the maximum number of UUA congregations that The Tiny Declining Fringe Religion™ currently has is 1030. i.e. Five congregations fewer than the official UUA membership statistics for 2018 claimed the UUA had. I should add that it is quite UNrealistic, and even "less than honest", for the UUA to add the not-certified congregations to the certified congregations when calculating the total number of UUA congregations for each year, but that is exactly what it does, even though some of the not-certified congregations have been not-certified as UUA congregations for a good number of years. . .
This somewhat misleadingly headlined, but none-the-less quite recent, UU World magazine article about UUA membership statistics, from the Winter 2018 issue, provides further information about how overall membership in UUA congregations is pretty much stagnant, and has actually steadily declined for at least a decade. The worst decline is in Religious Education enrollments which fell from 55,441 RE enrollments in 2009 to 40,269 RE enrollments in 2018, a net loss of over 15,000 RE enrollments in less than a decade.
The fact remains however, that if one adds ALL 65 not-certified congregations to the 965 certified congregations, the maximum number of UUA congregations that The Tiny Declining Fringe Religion™ currently has is 1030. i.e. Five congregations fewer than the official UUA membership statistics for 2018 claimed the UUA had. I should add that it is quite UNrealistic, and even "less than honest", for the UUA to add the not-certified congregations to the certified congregations when calculating the total number of UUA congregations for each year, but that is exactly what it does, even though some of the not-certified congregations have been not-certified as UUA congregations for a good number of years. . .
This somewhat misleadingly headlined, but none-the-less quite recent, UU World magazine article about UUA membership statistics, from the Winter 2018 issue, provides further information about how overall membership in UUA congregations is pretty much stagnant, and has actually steadily declined for at least a decade. The worst decline is in Religious Education enrollments which fell from 55,441 RE enrollments in 2009 to 40,269 RE enrollments in 2018, a net loss of over 15,000 RE enrollments in less than a decade.
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