Anglicans: in Danger of Becoming a ‘Boutique’ Church?

 By Jeffrey Walton

JUICY ECUMENISM

April 4, 2025

I’ve long been critical of the Episcopal Church for effectively resigning itself to the role of a “boutique church.”

Episcopalians, broadly, no longer believe that they offer something unique to the world or that most people would be particularly interested. Instead, they’ve found themselves catering to a caste of highly educated (and increasingly aged) white liberals. The problems are apparent; the group is less likely to procreate and, when they do, their children do not remain within the Church. Data bears this out, and the denomination’s priorities reflect this skewed demographic: caricature of the Episcopal Church as a chaplaincy to lefty professors and a handful of identity categories is deserved.

This is compounded by a form of universalism and religious humanism that has displaced the Gospel of Jesus Christ, sapping evangelistic energy. No kids and no converts, save for a few liberal Catholics and Exvangelicals. Readers of this blog know that this is nothing new.

Left unsaid is that Anglicans outside of the Episcopal Church could very well be painting themselves into another corner.

“Our studies show that the Anglican Church is in growth,” Bishop Derek Jones of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA)’s Jurisdiction Armed Forces and Chaplaincy recently shared in a presentation on religious liberty and traditional Christian values. “But, I believe that what’s going on is a great shift.”

Jones pointed to data from groups like Pew and Barna showing that faithful Christian communities that maintain Biblical teaching are actually growing while denominations that accommodate secular values continue their decades-long decline.

“Right now it is the historic sacramental churches: Orthodox, Roman, and Anglican that are growing, along with Messianic Judaism while all other faith groups are on decline. All.” Jones emphasized. “And I believe that the Anglican Church has simply been the benefactor of those faithful Christians from Protestant denominational groups finding their way to an Anglican Church.”

While I suspect that Jones might be overstating Orthodox growth, and possibly unaware that Roman Catholicism struggles with retention more than any Christian group in the United States, he’s right about the nature of the present growth of Anglicanism. Even an enthusiastic cheerleader of ACNA like me needs only look around in our most vibrant congregations to see that we’re witnessing consolidation, not conversion from unbelief. We also tend to draw disproportionately from the professional class, just as Episcopalians do. But, as a century of Pentecostal growth showed, and a century of Methodist and Baptist growth before that, reaching the working class with the Gospel is essential: the Gospel message is for everyone.

Jones spoke March 1 at the St. Luke’s Anglican Theology Conference in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, where he asked how many present had their origin in a Protestant faith group.

Nearly everyone raised their hands.

“Does that answer your question? We’re coming to the end of that growth,” Jones flatly declared. “It’s time for us as a church to say we have a responsibility to our communities to be a beacon of light of the truth of the Gospel. It’s time for us to be going up and saying ‘do you know Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and savior?’”

Jones wasn’t seeking to lay blame: “I don’t always do the best either,” he acknowledged. But he offered a clear-eyed view that Anglican churches attracting a narrow subset of Protestants (usually Baptists and Presbyterians considering a liturgical expression or Methodists exiting a rapidly liberalizing United Methodist Church) won’t see that same pipeline of new members indefinitely, and the cultural headwinds of secularism will hit Anglicans, too.

Episcopalians and other Anglicans in North America may see themselves as worlds apart, and that’s not without basis. We Anglicans can be grateful that many of these faithful Protestants are deepening their Christian discipleship in our churches and that our rates of procreation appear healthier than within the Episcopal Church (yes, procreation is a form of church growth – it’s how the Amish double in size every generation).

That said, we can learn from the mistakes of the Episcopal Church and not paint ourselves into a demographic corner. God’s view is more expansive than our own: he’s calling us not to recline and wait for others to come to us, but to go to them.

Watch Bishop Derek Jones’ talk, “Legislating Morality in the Midst of Cultural Wars” from the St. Luke’s Anglican Theology Conference here.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWzu-XpMltw&t=2318s