It is common, especially in light of the amount of press that the liberal PCUSA is getting recently, to think of Presbyterians as liberal. Of course, there are many types (and btw, I am not a member of any Presbyterian church). Today on Albert Mohler, his guest talked about the PCA, which is the second largest and more conservative branch of Presbyterianism. Interesting is the relative sizes and growth patterns of these two largest Presbyterian sects:
- Presbyterian Church of the USA (PCUSA) – Although this branch of Prebyterianism is the largest, reporting 2.3M members, like other liberal Christian denominations, they’ve been steadily losing members (40000 per year since 1967).
- Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) – This conservative branch of Presbyterianism reports 450,000 members, only 1/4 as large as the PCUSA. However, their numbers are growing slowly at about 4.5% a year for the last 10 years.