TAMPA, Fla. — Easter weekend is right around the corner and as you make your plans a new study shows for the first time in 80 years church membership is down significantly.
"I'm sure the pandemic has affected that. And maybe during the pandemic there has been an opportunity for people to ask themselves what's important and what isn't and say maybe I don't feel called to the church right now, maybe I feel better worshipping at home," Father Eric Scanlan with Incarnation Catholic Church in Sarasota said.
Father Eric says the pandemic is likely a big reason many people are choosing to opt-out of public gatherings.
"Just 2 weeks ago I had a woman come up to me who said she hasn't been back since COVID started and she just got vaccinated. And she had tears in her eyes and said Father this is the first Sunday I've been back in a year," he said.
But this Gallup study says the decline in church membership is also tied to a growing number of Americans who express no religious preference - growing from eight percent in 1998-2000 to 21 percent over the past three years.
"It's hard to compare that to our position here in Florida because we have been blessed with people moving down steadily. Our numbers have been high in our parish in Sarasota, so much so it's been a challenge fitting everyone in. Several of our socially distanced masses have been entirely full," Father Eric said.
Father Eric thinks the desire for people to be in a community is high and part of the reason why he's seen a rise, not a fall, in their numbers here locally.
"For Easter, we are expecting large crowds. We have overflow masses and we will live stream as well and best prepare for the crowd that will be there," he said.
Another reason you may guess numbers are down is that older generations are being replaced by younger ones like Gen Z who don't go to church as often. But the study says that still doesn't fully explain the decline because older generation church memberships have still declined by double digits from two decades ago.
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