Metro Voice News Celebrating Faith, Family & Community
The Presbyterian Church USA took another step forward this week in pursuing its woke agenda. It announced that it will add a “nonbinary/genderqueer” category to its annual report regarding church demographics.
The Office of General Assembly of the PCUSA, which is the largest Presbyterian denomination in the United States, said it is making a series of changes regarding how it records the number of congregations and membership statistics in the denomination In addition to traditional men and women categories, members of PCUSA presbyteries who identify as nonbinary or genderqueer will also be able to record their identity for official church statistics, starting next year.
Kris Valerius, who serves as manager of the PCUSA‘s denominational roles and statistics, said such changes are needed, because if they “want to be inclusive, then we have to start asking because you should be aware of who’s a part of your church. We’ll have the same categories; we’re just not defining them any longer, which may upset people. The information will be there – we’re just removing the definitions.”
The PCUSA also is removing definitions from the ethnic and racial sections, making changes to its financial section, adding a section to track how many members are 17 or 18, and no longer will track how many members are receiving formal Christian education.
Although still the largest Presbyterian denomination in the United States with 1.1 million active members and 8,813 member congregations, the PCUSA has been hemorrhaging churches and members in recent years. The denomination reported earlier this year that it has seen more than 51,000 members depart since 2021.
In 2012, the PCUSA had about 700,000 more members than today and about 1,400 more congregations, many of which have left for more conservative Presbyterian denominations such as the Covenant Order of Evangelical Presbyterians, the Presbyterian Church in America and the Evangelical Presbyterian Church.
–Alan Goforth | Metro Voice
