UUA Membership Holds Steady in 2023, Certification Report Shows

The Unitarian Universalist Association’s 2024 UUA Certification Report, released on a Friday by the Association, shows that overall membership in the UUA remained about the same in 2023 as in the previous year. The report counted 1,081 total UU congregations and communities: 1,000 congregations, 26 emerging congregations, 34 covenanting communities, and 21 international congregations and communities. That total was four fewer than in 2022.

Rev. Ashley Horan, the UUA’s vice president for Programs and Ministries, said the stability was encouraging. “Given the precipitous decline in pretty much all mainline denominations, staying steady is a reflection of the fact that our faith is needed and is resonating with people,” she said. The report’s opening context noted that 80 percent of U.S. adults say religion’s role in American life is shrinking.

One of the report’s most notable findings was that participation in religious education programs rose 16 percent over the past year, the first increase in a decade. Horan attributed this in part to recovery from a steep decline in religious education during the pandemic, when programming was online only. She also credited religious educators, whom she described as “at the cutting edge of what our faith is,” and said she was not surprised that new approaches were working. She said it would be important to see whether the upward trend continued over the next few years.

Certification is an annual process required of all member congregations. Congregations submit data on their membership, finances and other matters, and the results help determine how many voting delegates each congregation may send to General Assembly. This year the UUA is releasing the full report online so that the Association, congregations and other partners can use it in deciding how to further the faith’s values. The report says that every year, fifty to sixty congregations fail to be certified because they do not submit their information to the UUA.

Nancy McDonald Ladd, the UUA’s director of Communications and Public Ministry, said the Association hoped greater openness about the data would encourage broader certification in 2025. The data in the 2024 report was collected in January and February 2024 and pertains to 2023. It covers topics including the demographics of members and staff and the level of conflict congregations are experiencing. The UUA hopes congregations will use the report to guide decisions about priorities and goals.

According to the report, half of congregations grew in membership in 2023 and the other half declined. Horan said this showed “really good examples of people who are doing [the work] in inspiring, exciting ways in their contexts.” She said she wanted to study successful congregations more closely, including their locations, leadership structures and worship styles. She also said the UUA does not rely heavily on data as a denomination, but that understanding it could start conversations and reveal gaps in knowledge.

On finances, the number of individual and family pledges fell 24 percent over the past ten years, while average pledges rose 43 percent in the same period, producing a small increase in overall pledge income. UU congregational endowments and reserves were up 44 percent from 2016. Horan said she wanted to “celebrate the generosity of the folks who’ve been able to and have shown up to buoy our congregations during the last several years of global pandemic and crisis,” a generosity that carried congregations through hard years, a picture of persisting in doing good (Galatians 6:9). She said the data raised questions that called for further analysis, and she described a sense of budgetary crisis in congregations that the statistics did not fully match. “I think there’s an abundance of resources and we need to think creatively about how we can use them and what we are going to prioritize with them,” she said.

Source: Read the original report