On his Bible Belt Blogger site, religion editor Frank Lockwood of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette looks at the findings of the recently-released 2007 Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches with some interesting insights on growth patterns among North American religious groups.
Lockwood writes:
The book contains good news for the bishop of Rome, the prophet-seer-revelator of Salt Lake and the General Superintendent of Springfield, Missouri (where the Assemblies of God is based). The news is bad for almost everybody else. Mainline Protestant congregations are shrinking. Southern Baptists are treading water, with growth of 0.02 percent. The Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Churches of Christ are among the minority who continue to grow.
Lockwood then lists the current populations, with increases and decreases, for each of twenty-five groups.
