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Episode 1: Church Decline

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Listen to our inaugural episode of The Living Church podcast. Your hosts, Fr. Zachary Guiliano and Canon Andrew Petiprin, discuss an article that went viral in the Anglican world, David Goodhew’s “Facing Episcopal Church decline.” It first appeared on our blog, Covenant, and drew on and supplemented numbers from Jeremy Bonner’s chapter in Growth and Decline in the Anglican Communion, 1980 to the Present (Routledge, 2016).

Zack and Andrew dig into the statistics, which show the remarkable decline of the Episcopal Church, not only in terms of membership (30 percent decline since 1980) and Average Sunday attendance (over 30 percent decline) but also in occasional offices like baptisms (50 percent decline) and weddings (75 percent decline). They consider the complicated story these statistics tell, and what they bode for the future of the church.

And, in our Recollection segment, Andrew recommends Silicon Valley and the satire site Babylon Bee, while Zack recommends Broken and the Sidney Chambers mysteries.

Listen in, and look forward to next week’s episode!

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