2024 UUA Membership Statistics And UU World Propaganda aka UU #FakeNews - What's The Connection?

How about the disingenuous way that this recent UU World magazine report on 2024 UUA Membership Statistics headlined -

‘Our Faith Is Needed’: UUA Membership Holds Steady, New Data Report Reveals

tries to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear with multiple misleading half-truths and official UUA memberships statistics that appear to be 'less than accurate' aka false?

The UU World propaganda says, 'a new data report from the Unitarian Universalist Association shows steady membership and growing religious education attendance'. This misleading half truth misrepresents the readily verifiable fact that official UUA membership statistics show that adult membership actually declined from 131,563 in 2023 to 130,265 in 2024, and have been in quite steady decline for decades, falling from a high of 164,684 in 2009 to 130,265 in 2024. That's a drop of over 34,000 adult members over a span of only 15 years.

This UU World propaganda also conveniently omits the fact that UUA RE Enrollments have been steadily declining for over 2 decades, falling from a high of 63,080 in 2002 to less than a third of that number, i.e. 19,604 in 2022. So yes, if we accept the UUA's already quite questionable official membership statistics at face value, there was an increase in RE Enrollments between 2023 and 2024 that amounted to just over 3,000 additional enrollments, however when one looks at the big picture of the last quarter century it shows steady and quite disturbing decline. The decline in adult membership, RE enrollments, not to mention the massive decline in Non-Member Friends over the last decade may be seen in this graph from the 2024 UUA Certification Report reproduced below.

 

The graph below, that is included in the 2024 UUA Certification Report, makes it abundantly clear that the 'big picture' = ongoing decline in adult membership in UUA congregations, specifically 16 percent decline over the last decade. . .

Here are some more quite interesting statistics from the 2024 UUA Certification Report, that are conveniently omitted from the UU World's pathetic propaganda puff piece. . . that UUs can be quite sure I will be delving into in more detail in the New Year.

 

It's not clear from these official UUA statistics whether or not complaints about UUA clergy misconduct are included in 'Employee conduct, including bullying, and/or sexual harassment', or 'Children or classroom safety', or 'Discernment about when and whether to call the police' for that matter, but it is noteworthy that each of those three statistics is measured in the hundreds. . .

These concluding words of the UUA’s vice president for Programs and Ministries, Rev. Ashley Horan, will prove to be quite 'prophetic' in 2025. . .

 
“We don’t, as a denomination, rely heavily on data, but I think understanding data is a springboard from which to begin conversations and get more information about what is really happening, and also uncover places where we don’t know what’s going on,” Horan said. “What does it tell us about what is most urgent and important, both the challenges and the opportunities?”