At most denominational conferences these days, leaders have to recognize and reckon with the challenge of continued declines in membership. But for the US Assemblies of God (AG), which drew 18,000 registered attendees to its General Council meeting in Orlando last week, it’s a different story.
The world’s largest Pentecostal denomination, the Assemblies of God has been quietly growing in the US for decades, bucking the trend of denominational decline seen by most other Protestant traditions.
At three million members, the Assemblies of God is far outsized nationally by groups like the Southern Baptist Convention, which is more than four times as large. But in many ways, the Assemblies of God can provide a case study for what many Southern Baptists—and really, all Christians—want to see: steady and sustainable growth.
It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly why the Assemblies of God has continued to increase over the past 15 years. Research shows that membership of the Assemblies of God has become more politically conservative and more religiously active today than just a decade ago, but its own numbers indicate that it has achieved incredible racial diversity—44 percent of members in the United States are ethnic minorities. A confluence of these trends may be factors in its ability to keep its numbers up.
Compared to the two largest Protestant denominations in the United States—the Southern Baptist Convention and the United Methodist Church—the Assemblies of God has always been outnumbered. In 2005, there were about 16.3 million Southern Baptists in the US, by the denomination’s own tally, and nearly 8 million United Methodists. At the time, the Assemblies of God reported 2.8 million members.
However, between 2005 and 2019, both the Southern Baptists and the United Methodists reported a membership decline. In 2019, there were 14.5 million Southern Baptists, down 11 percent. The United Methodists reported a total of 6.5 million members in 2019, down 19 percent. Meanwhile, the Assemblies of God grew over 16 percent to nearly 3.3 million members.
While other denominations have been dropping year-over-year for more than a decade, there have only been three years in the past 40 when the Assemblies of God did not report annual growth in adherents. Just one of those came this century. As a result, the Assemblies of God has managed to add nearly half a million members since 2005.
As it has grown over the decades, the Assemblies of God has maintained its Pentecostal theological distinctives, like believing in divine healing, practicing spiritual gifts like speaking in tongues, and anticipating a premillennial second coming of Christ.
When analyzing survey data on the church attendance patterns among traditions, it’s clear that the Assemblies of God is not growing by adding lukewarm worshipers to its ranks and church roles. Instead, the data point to a denomination that is incredibly active in congregational life. On average, about a third of US Christians attend church weekly. In 2020, the Cooperative Election Study reported that 57 percent of AG members attend church at least once a week, compared to 49 percent of Southern Baptists.
What we can learn from the loss of 269 passengers“I see it,visually and on radar.… The light is flashing.… What are instructions?” All of us in the free world remember the chilling words of Soviet pilot 805 concerning Korean Air Lines Flight 007: “Now I will try a rocket.… I am closing on the target.… I have executed the launch.… The target is destroyed.”“How could they do it?” we exclaimed. Then, with a touch of bitterness, we may have recalled the old Cold War battle cry, “You can always trust a Communist—to be a Communist!” It was as if the Soviet government were determined to prove this was so.The Korean pilot and his 269 civilian passengers ranging in age from 4 to about 70 flew far above the clouds in passage from Alaska to Korea. They were serenely unaware that they were miles off course and flying over a highly sensitive Soviet military establishment. Then, without warning, a soviet Su-15 interceptor launched the missile that blasted a planeload of people from the air.We Must Understand Soviet FearsWhy would the Soviets do it? I think of myself as an essentially p fair-minded person. I remember the Golden Rule and try to put myself in the other person’s shoes. But long years of Russian history have created for the Soviets a paranoid fear of invasion. The flat plains of their Western borders invited enemies, making defense almost impossible. Rome, Sweden, Turkey, France, Britain, Austria, Hungary, Germany in World War I, then a generation later Germany again in World War II—all remind every Russian citizen that his very racial name, Slavic, means slave. And now the United States and its allies ring their military forces around the edges of the Soviet empire. And add to this the Mongul invasions from past centuries, the Japanese occupation of lower Sakhalin Island in 1905 after the Russo-Japanese War, to say nothing of the constant Soviet fear of China, the colossus of the East.Yes, I can understand the Soviet fear of invasion and how, for them, self-defense has become paranoia. That explains Article 36 of the Soviet Border Law Code: “Use weapons and military technology for … repulsing violators of the state border of the USSR on land, water, and in the air … in cases when stopping the violation cannot be achieved by other means.” In today’s nuclear world with threatening war on every side, I can understand the order to shoot down air flights that trespass sensitive areas along borders.Chilling Pattern Toward Human LifeBut 269 men, women, and children shot down in an unarmed civilian passenger plane!The evidence seems overwhelming that either (1) the Soviet pilot knew this was a civilian plane that might or might not have also been engaged in spy activity, or (2) he did not know whether it was a civilian plane. In either case, the pilot, his ground crew, and the general who approved the action knew that it might well be a civilian plane filled with passengers. And the Soviets were unprepared or unwilling to take adequate precautions to insure that they would not be shooting down a commercial passenger plane that had simply wandered off course.This was not the first time such an incident had occurred. In April 1978, another Korean civilian passenger plane flew over Soviet air space. The Russian interceptor shot off 15 feet of its wing and killed two passengers, but the pilot managed to get the planeload of people back to ground safely. In that incident, the Korean pilot had given the distress signal and indicated by the internationally agreed-upon sign of turning on his landing lights that he would follow the instructions and guidance of the interceptor plane. But the Soviet pilot shot the passenger plane down anyway.Philosophy Does Affect ActionsEvents like these tell us something about the mindset of the Soviet leadership and its military establishment. They demonstrate a different view of human life and what it means to be human. Officially, at least, Soviet leadership is committed to a philosophy of dialectical materialism: a human being is essentially a thing. He can be used, and then becomes disposable when he gets in the way. He has no inalienable rights or inherent dignity stemming from God’s image in him. Such values are essentially inconsistent with a merely one-dimensional materialistic view of mankind.Against this stands a Christian view of humanity that finds its deepest expression in the most familiar verse in all the Bible—John 3:16: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son.…” By creation God made me—and every other human—a creature of infinite value. By redemption he demonstrated that I, along with every other human person, still have infinite value in spite of sin. The Christian knows that humans are not expendable. Every human being is of infinite value to our God, and therefore must be held in infinite value by us.Fortunately for our world, neither communism nor Marxist materialism is a monolithic structure always on the side of evil. Christians are not alone in setting a high value on life. By natural revelation, and in some cases by direct borrowing from biblical revelation, many non-Christians recognize the uniqueness of humankind. Many Muslims, Buddhists, and those of other faiths recognize the inherent worth of man. There is much truth in many religions, and even in dialectical materialism. It is precisely these pieces of truth that give non-Christian religions their religious and moral power over mankind.And unfortunately, Christians, committed to the doctrine that God created us in his own image and that every human is the object of God’s redemptive love, have not always acted accordingly. Remember the Thirty Years’ War in Central Europe or, closer to home, some of the more unpleasant scenes from the recent war in Vietnam? Professing Christians are not always good; professing Marxists are not always bad.My point is simply this: At the core of the Christian view is the infinite worth of each human. By contrast, Soviet leadership is avowedly committed to a philosophy of materialism, rejecting the Christian view. Given its current paranoid fear of invasion, the Soviet leadership only acted consistently with its own basic view of mankind in shooting dow KAL Flight 007 at the price of 269 passengers lives.Free World ResponseWhere does that leave us in the free world? Some representatives of the so-called New Right call us to a renewal of the Cold War of two decades ago. To them, an apology with indemnity followed by serious negotiations to avoid a repetition of this tragedy is not enough. They say the Soviets are wholly evil. They are uncivilized barbarians, and we must be prepared to destroy them or they will destroy us. Therefore, we must exact an appropriate vengeance. We must cut off all negotiations with the Soviets. We must stop scientific and cultural exchanges. We must revoke the grain agreement. We must call off the arms negotiations. And above all, we must build up our nuclear stockpile and conventional weaponry to the point where we can crush any Soviet aggression.Unfortunately, such actions would in most cases hurt us far more than the Communists. Isolating ourselves from the Soviets and refusing to negotiate with them will not stop the building of their war machine. And we have no evidence that Soviet communism will simply disappear from our earthly scene.By contrast with the New Right, the traditional liberal all too often deludes himself by thinking that the Soviets really hold to a noble system. Their unruly and unjust actions are caused by us. We goad them into such behavior. If we would only stop threatening them, reduce or renounce armaments, and start talking with them, all would be well.Such a view is blind to the avowed philosophy of Soviet leadership, and denies the reality of human depravity—Russian as well as American. Such a view is utterly irresponsible in its assessment of Soviet actions.Ostracizing the Soviet Union as a parish among nations will not make it go away. Rushing into an ever-escalating arms race can only place a crushing burden upon ourselves as well as on the Soviets; and in the end, it is most likely to lead to our own annihilation as a people. But trusting the Communists to be “good boys” is only asking them to deny their nature.A Realistic Christian Middle WayWe must see the Soviets for what they are and wisely map our course accordingly. We must call the Western world to a serious renewal of the disarmament discussions. We must seek justice by law, negotiation, and arbitration. We must do what we can to alleviate Soviet fear of invasion ingrained in them through the centuries.But, because we do believe in their depravity as well as our own, we will seek disarmament that can be checked. We will seek to meet their threats to world peace with firmness and strength. Because we place infinite value on human life and freedom, we strive for justice, oppose war, and struggle for mutual disarmament. But because we also believe in depravity, we must be prepared, as a last resort, to stop violence even by violence.Let us remember the massacre of 007. But as Christian people, let us not react with blind hate. Nor with the sticky sentimentalism that denies the depravity of man and ignores the history of Marxist philosophy and action. Rather, let us respond as becomes Christian people—“wise as serpents and harmless as doves.”KENNETH S. KANTZERWhen the analytical lens turns to political partisanship, a more nuanced story emerges of how the AG has shifted compared to the Southern Baptists.
During the 2008 presidential election, about 22 percent of AG members identified as Democrats compared to 68 percent who affiliated with the Republican Party. Among Southern Baptists, the differences weren’t as stark. About a third of Southern Baptists were Democrats and 60 percent were Republicans.
Over the past 12 years, both traditions have drifted toward the right. In 2020, nearly three-quarters of all AG members said that they were Republicans, up about 5 percentage points. Among Southern Baptists, 67 percent claimed to be a Republican, an increase of 7 percentage points. But the share of AG members who are Democrats remained basically unchanged during that time, while declining nearly 7 percentage points among Southern Baptists.
Pastors, denominational leaders, and those in the pews are always interested in what leads to a denomination’s growth, particularly when the group is growing year after year while others around it experience decline. The Assemblies of God currently has around 13,000 congregations, more than a quarter of which were formed in the past decade.
It’s difficult to pinpoint just one reason for the increase in membership, but the data do paint a portrait of a membership that is very involved in the life of the church. When half of all members report weekly attendance, this goes a long way in warding off defections to other denominations. Research shows that such involvement makes it more likely that young people raised in the tradition will not leave it as they move into adulthood. More than half (53%) of AG adherents are under 35.
The fact that its churches are so politically homogeneous may work in its favor as well. Research has increasingly shown that more and more Americans are choosing their churches based on political considerations. If this is the case, then AG churches portray a clear message to potential converts about their political orientation, making it easy for newcomers to know what the church is about.
Finally, it may be helpful that the Assemblies of God, though growing, is small enough to lay low in the national media, largely avoiding the controversy and attention toward infighting in other denominations.
As the nones continue to rise and more and more nondenominational churches are planted in the United States, it will likely become more difficult for the Assemblies of God to sustain its growth.
As I describe in my forthcoming book on surveys—20 Myths about Religion and Politics in America—almost no traditional denomination has seen any growth in the past 12 years, so the Assemblies of God is a true outlier. It seems to have found a combination of factors that has succeeded even in these difficult times.
Ryan P. Burge is an assistant professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University. His research appears on the site Religion in Public, and he tweets at @ryanburge.
