Southern Baptists in Maine report 19% growth despite national decline

Mike Nerney, executive director of the Maine Baptist Association, preaches during a service at Central Church in Augusta. Central Church has grown from 70 weekly attendees to more than 1,500 in the past 14 years and now offers services at two locations.

When Lance Satterwhite rented a U-Haul and left his home in Texas for central Maine, he and his family didn’t yet have a place to live. “We loaded up and headed this way, and along the way we finally got in touch and ironed out a lease,” Satterwhite said. “It was really cool because once we got here, we saw that it was God’s provision.” The Satterwhites moved to Maine this summer to establish a new Southern Baptist Convention church in Orono, which they’re calling Stillwater Baptist Church. It is one of three Southern Baptist churches — or “church plants,” as new congregations are called — set to begin services in the state this year.

While the Southern Baptist Convention has faced declining membership nationally, its popularity in Maine has surged in recent years, along with other evangelical congregations. The growth, which at a few thousand people is a relatively small slice of the population, comes despite Maine’s status as one of the least religious states in the country and the convention’s conservative stances on social issues, which cut against Maine’s laws on abortion, same-sex marriage and gender identity.

Some Southern Baptist leaders see the lack of a historical foothold in the region as an opportunity, and cite political tension as contributing to the denomination’s growth across the state. Southern Baptist churches in Maine saw their membership triple between 2010 and 2020, according to the Association of Religion Data Archives, from around 2,700 adherents to more than 8,100. Non-denominational evangelical Protestants also saw significant growth, jumping roughly 75%.

More recent data from the national convention’s 2023 annual report found that Southern Baptist churches in New England grew by 10% between 2018 and 2023. New England is the smallest region for the faith, but the only part of the country where adherence is on the rise. Nationally, membership has declined to its lowest levels since the late 1970s. Lifeway Research, an evangelical research firm that analyzed the data, found that Maine had the highest state growth in the nation at 19% between 2018 and 2023. However, Maine was one of 10 states with fewer than 30 congregations, and Lifeway emphasized the significance of such growth in a region where religious adherence is traditionally low.

Source: Read the original report