Reprinted below:

Beyond Membership: The Other Numbers That Should Worry Unitarian Universalists

Declining numbers of friends, children, and pledging households point to a bleak future.

by David Cycleback, Ph.D. (retired Director of the Center for Artifact Studies, member of the British Royal Institute of Philosophy, and author of the college textbook Cognitive Science of Religion and Belief Systems)

Unitarian Universalism’s decline is usually discussed in terms of membership. According to the Unitarian Universalist Association’s 2025 Certification Report, membership has fallen 15 percent over the last decade.

However, membership alone understates the problem. The numbers of non-member adults participating in congregations, children enrolled in religious education, and households supporting the church financially have also fallen sharply. Together, these declines show that UU is losing both current participants and the people who could help it rebuild.

Fewer friends, fewer potential members

The UUA tracks non-member friends as a separate category. These are people who participate in congregational life without formally joining. They often attend services, volunteer, contribute financially, and eventually become members.

According to the UUA’s report, non-member friends fell from approximately 99,000 in 2016 to 54,000 in 2025. That is a decline of about 45 percent in nine years, substantially steeper than the decline in formal membership. This includes a 4 percent drop in 2025 alone.

Friends are already part of the community, so losing them means losing current participants as well as potential members. A shrinking congregation gaining friends might be building relationships that eventually reverse its decline. Losing both groups makes recovery harder.

Fewer children, fewer younger families

Children’s religious education enrollment has fallen sharply over the past decade, including another 2 percent in 2025. Enrollment is down roughly 75 percent since the UUA’s formation in 1961 and just over 80 percent from its 1968 peak. Some children participate without formally enrolling, and changes in reporting complicate comparisons. Even so, the long-term decline raises doubts about whether enough children will remain involved as adults to sustain the denomination.

Smaller programs become less attractive to families. Fewer children mean fewer peers, while staff cuts limit classes and activities. In the certification report, the UUA says there are significant financial and membership pressures on religious educators and is seeking information about reduced and eliminated positions.

Dan Harper, a UU minister and former religious education director who has raised alarms about declining religious education enrollment and overall church membership, writes that children’s religious education is a key way to attract young adults to the church. Parents often arrive seeking a religious community for their children and remain after those children grow up.

Retaining members is essential to future health

Ryan Burge, a professor at Washington University’s Danforth Center on Religion and Politics and author of The Vanishing Church, calls retention “the most important metric for any church or denomination.” He argues that keeping children involved as they become adults is essential to sustaining a religious movement for decades. Over the long term, recruiting newcomers is not a substitute for retaining members.

UU has substantially worse retention rates than other denominations. UU minister Christana Wille-McKnight’s research reported retention of just 12.5 percent among those raised Unitarian Universalist, compared with 44 percent among Presbyterians and 48 percent in the United Church of Christ.

Fewer households supporting congregations

The UUA reported that pledging units have fallen 22 percent over the decade. Average pledges rose, but total pledged dollars increased only 11 percent. After adjusting for inflation, the increase in average pledges is much smaller, while total pledging has declined.

A congregation that depends on a small and shrinking group of donors is vulnerable when those donors leave, die, or can no longer give as much. Larger gifts from a shrinking group can also mask serious structural and retention problems. A congregation may appear financially stable while losing members, families, volunteers, friends, and future leaders. The generosity of remaining donors is valuable, but it is not evidence that the community is healthy or growing.

Large church endowments and reserves from earlier generations provide a substantial cushion, but legacy money cannot replace participation. Some congregations, mostly small ones, are growing, and a congregation’s decline is not inevitable. Nationally, however, declines in non-member friends, religious education enrollment, and pledging units show that UU’s ability to rebuild is shrinking along with its membership.

A narrower church has fewer people to draw from

In my experience and observation, and that of other longtime UUs I know, the church has become more politically, ideologically, and culturally narrow. This has driven away longtime members who are more moderate, classically liberal, or seeking a community centered on religion and spirituality rather than politics. I have described my former UU congregation as a “social club and bubble for college-educated white progressives.”

Being a religious liberal does not require being a political progressive, although church leaders often seem to treat the two as inseparable. Religious liberalism concerns freedom of belief, open inquiry, and the rejection of imposed religious dogma. Religious liberals can be politically progressive, liberal, moderate, libertarian, and conservative.

I am a religious liberal and an agnostic Sephardic Jew who joined a UU congregation more than a decade ago because of its freedom from imposed dogma and creeds, its principle of the inherent worth and dignity of every person, and because I enjoy being around curious and open-minded people with diverse beliefs, perspectives, and backgrounds. However, I am a political moderate, not a progressive, and I do not go to church for partisan politics and political activism.

As the congregation came to be designed almost exclusively for white political progressives and to treat progressive politics and ideology as the de facto orthodoxy, it was no longer a place for me and many other longtime members. These included fellow religious liberals who were not political progressives, wanted a more diverse community, or objected to a self-proclaimed non-creedal church that seemed to have adopted a political creed. When a liberal religion drives away religious liberals, something is clearly wrong.

Following substantial membership losses, my former congregation’s approach to growth has been to narrow who it is for and work to attract more people who fit that narrow profile, while pushing away existing members and failing to attract others who do not.

Even if this produces short-term gains in membership, it is a short-sighted and counterproductive approach to long-term growth, let alone to creating a diverse, liberal community. A shrinking church with poor retention and an increasingly narrow demographic should welcome religious liberals with a broader range of perspectives and backgrounds. Rebuilding requires giving more people reasons to join and longtime members and friends reasons to stay.

I see a bleak future for UU. UU insiders such as Harper, minister and philosopher of religion Davidson Loehr, and author John Halstead have warned about decline. Loehr and Halstead describe a dying church, while Harper predicts that many congregations will close in the coming years. Their warnings, together with the work of religion scholars Burge, Dean M. Kelley, Rodney Stark, and Roger Finke, reinforce my conclusion that replacing spirituality with partisan politics and narrowing whom the church is for undermines its future.

I discuss this further in my earlier post, “How the Unitarian Universalist Church Became a Racial, Political, and Social Bubble.”

References and further reading

Unitarian Universalist Association. 2025 Certification Report.

Burge, Ryan. “What About the Unitarians?”

Harper, Dan. “Time to Panic.”

Halstead, John. “ My Church Is Dying, and I’m OK with That.”

Burge, Ryan. “So You Want Your Child to Keep the Faith?”

Canadian Unitarian Council. 2017 presentation on retaining young people raised UU.

Harper, Dan. “The Problem of Retention in Unitarian Universalism.”

Loehr, Davidson. “Why ‘Unitarian Universalism’ Is Dying.”

Reprinted below:

How the Unitarian Universalist Church Became a Racial, Political, and Social Bubble

And Why It's Getting Worse

by David Cycleback Ph.D. (retired Director of Center for Artifact Studies, member of the British Royal Institute of Philosophy, and author of the university textbook Cognitive Science of Religion and Belief Systems and The Power of the Crowd: How Group Psychology Influences Beliefs and Behavior).

The Unitarian Universalist church presents itself as a liberal religious movement committed to pluralism, diversity, multiculturalism, and open-mindedness. Yet by most measurable indicators, it has become one of the most racially, politically, and culturally homogeneous religious denominations in the United States.

The gap between the church’s ideals and its demographic reality raises an obvious question: How did a movement devoted to diversity and freethinking become such a narrow social bubble?

Visitors to Unitarian Universalist congregations usually notice a familiar pattern. In many places, the typical member is a highly educated white professional with progressive political views. Visitors from working-class backgrounds, people with independent or moderate viewpoints, immigrant communities, and many ethnic and racial minorities often sense quickly that they are outsiders. No one may say this directly, but messaging, platforms, language, and social signals are powerful. People can usually tell when a space is designed for people like themselves, and when it is not. As UU Minister Rev. James Kubal-Komoto observed in UU World, "Most Unitarian Universalists don't realize what a truly narrow demographic niche most of us fall into."

The Demographic Reality

The demographic facts are clear. National surveys and denominational data consistently show that a large majority of Unitarian Universalists, including both laity and religious professionals (ministers and religious education directors), are white, with only small percentages of black, Latino, Asian, and members of other racial and ethnic minority groups. By several measures, the Unitarian Universalist church is among the most racially and ethnically homogeneous religious movements in the United States.

Membership is also unusually highly educated, drawn largely from the professional middle and upper-middle classes, and disproportionately female, with one of the highest percentages of women among American religious denominations.

Politically, Unitarian Universalist congregations lean strongly toward the Democratic and progressive side of American politics. Surveys consistently rank Unitarian Universalism as one of the most politically far-left, politically homogenous, and politically active religious denominations in the United States.

At the same time, the denomination has experienced a marked decline in membership. Like mainline Protestant denominations such as the United Church of Christ and the Episcopal Church, Unitarian Universalism faces shrinking congregations and an aging membership base. Adjusted for overall U.S. population growth, UUA membership has fallen by more than half and children’s religious education enrollment has fallen by more than 80 percent since the UUA was formed in 1961. In absolute numbers, participation (members and non-member friends) has fallen by more than a quarter in the last decade. While multiple factors are involved, a key driver is demographic and ideological narrowing, which reduces the range of people who feel comfortable joining and remaining in UU communities.

These patterns do not necessarily prove something has gone wrong. Many voluntary organizations cluster demographically, culturally, and ideologically. However, when a religious movement that says it is committed to diversity and pluralism consistently attracts people from only a narrow demographic and political slice of society while also declining in membership, the pattern deserves examination.

Viewpoint Diversity

Viewpoint diversity has always been central to liberal religion. Liberal religion is built on the idea that individuals search for truth rather than accept a fixed creed. A liberal congregation should be a place where religious liberals with different perspectives and backgrounds, who agree on the principles of equality and the inherent worth and dignity of every person, can learn from one another. Dogmatism, echo chambers, and groupthink are therefore the antithesis of liberal religion.

Although many UUs associate liberal religion with leftist politics, religious liberalism has no political creed. Religious liberalism, which is distinct from American political liberalism, emphasizes freedom of belief, open inquiry, and the rejection of imposed religious dogma. Religious liberals include people who are politically progressive, liberal, moderate, libertarian, and conservative. As with theological beliefs, political beliefs are decided by individuals, not by congregations or the denomination.

Viewpoint diversity is also essential for other forms of diversity. Differences in race, culture, religion, gender, nationality, and class can bring different knowledge, life experiences, and perspectives. Communities that welcome a range of viewpoints tend to attract people from different backgrounds, while communities that narrow acceptable viewpoints narrow socially as well. In this way, viewpoint diversity and demographic diversity reinforce one another.

An overtly political congregation that implicitly expects members to share the same political positions, and presents only a very narrow range of perspectives from the pulpit and in its publications and programming, will tend to attract people who already fit that profile. People with different viewpoints and cultural and social backgrounds, along with those seeking a church focused on spirituality rather than politics, are unlikely to join. Over time, ideological uniformity produces social uniformity.

Scholars of religion have found that this carries long-term institutional costs. Ryan Burge, a professor at Washington University’s Danforth Center on Religion and Politics and author of The Vanishing Church, has documented this damage to denominations with politically diverse memberships, particularly mainline Protestant churches. As these churches and their clergy became more politically narrow and partisan, they appealed to fewer Americans and alienated many members of their own congregations, contributing to massive membership losses over decades.

Over the past fifty years, sociologists of religion Dean M. Kelley (National Council of Churches), Rodney Stark (University of Washington), and Roger Finke (Penn State University and the Association of Religion Data Archives) have found that religious groups tend to grow when they offer a distinctive religious or spiritual identity and commitments that secular institutions cannot replace, and decline when political and secular causes displace that focus. When a church offers essentially the same programming, messages, and causes as political, advocacy, and other secular organizations, people have less reason to join or remain.

In his 2004 sermon “Why Unitarian Universalism Is Dying,” philosopher of religion and UU minister Davidson Loehr argued that the movement had been declining for decades and would continue to do so because its focus had shifted from its distinctive religious and spiritual identity to politics.

Historical Roots of Homogeneity

The Unitarian Universalist church’s demographic pattern did not appear suddenly. The tradition has long been socially and racially homogeneous. The Unitarian and Universalist movements that merged in 1961 emerged largely from white New England Protestant culture and were historically concentrated among educated communities.

For much of their history, these congregations reflected the social environment from which they came. They were shaped by educated, professional networks that were themselves relatively homogeneous. The demographic imbalance therefore has deep historical roots.

When Attempted Solutions Make Things Worse

In recent years, leaders and activists within the church have tried to address this lack of racial diversity. National initiatives and institutional statements have focused heavily on racial inclusion and anti-racism. The intentions behind these efforts have been sincere.

Yet despite these efforts, Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) membership reports show that racial minority membership, both in absolute numbers and as a percentage, has declined over the last decade and a half. The reports also show that religious professionals are even more likely to be white than the laity.

A central problem is that these diversity initiatives have become expressions of a particular ideological subculture. When diversity and inclusion are defined solely through a progressive political, cultural, and linguistic framework, they signal that full participation requires embracing that framework as well. Rather than broadening a congregation's appeal, they reinforce the perception, and often the social reality, that membership requires conforming to a specific set of ideological assumptions and cultural and linguistic norms. This discourages people from different backgrounds, cultures, and perspectives from joining. For a denomination that presents itself as pluralistic and non-creedal, this is a striking contradiction.

This dynamic reflects broader patterns in American society. Political and ideological progressivism is concentrated disproportionately among affluent, white, urban, college-educated professionals. Pew Research Center surveys show that even within the Democratic Party, the progressive wing is the smallest of the major ideological factions and the only one with a majority-white membership. Racial minorities, working-class Americans, and immigrants are politically diverse, and most hold more moderate or conservative views. For example, while a majority of black voters belong to the Democratic Party, seven in ten identify as moderate or conservative, with more than half as moderate.

A national church and congregations that strongly align with progressive activism, especially when progressivism functions as a de facto institutional orthodoxy, therefore signal a political, social, cultural, and linguistic environment associated with a narrow demographic and ideological segment of the population.

These initiatives have also been accompanied by a broader cultural shift within the church toward what social psychologist Jonathan Haidt calls safetyism: the belief that protecting emotional comfort should take precedence over open disagreement. In practice, this has included suspicion toward debate, skepticism toward traditional appeals to reason and evidence, and criticism of viewpoint diversity itself. This culture discourages people who are comfortable with debate and intellectual challenge from joining, while attracting those who seek an emotionally protective environment where potentially upsetting ideas and conflicts are suppressed.

When disagreement is interpreted through this lens, the range of acceptable viewpoints narrows. Over time, pressure toward conformity grows, reinforcing the groupthink that liberal religion historically sought to avoid.

The result is that most UU congregations appear politically, intellectually, and culturally narrow to potential visitors from minority, working-class, immigrant, and politically diverse communities. Even when racial and ethnic minorities join, they are drawn largely from a small and unrepresentative segment of their communities. Racial and ethnic diversity can increase slightly, but viewpoint diversity remains limited.

A Denomination That Once Had More Political Variety

The Unitarian Universalist church has long leaned politically left. However, earlier generations of congregations contained a wider range of viewpoints within that general orientation. Libertarians, progressives, moderate Democrats, independents, religious seekers, and politically unclassifiable members shared the same congregation. There were even political conservatives, with a national group for conservative UUs. Disagreement and debate were part of the culture.

Over the past decades, this internal range has narrowed substantially.

How Social Bubbles Form

Communities usually don’t become homogeneous by design. It usually happens through ordinary social processes. One of the strongest is homophily, the tendency for people to associate with others who are similar to themselves. This idea is encapsulated by the saying, “Birds of a feather flock together.”

Homophily is not inherently a problem. Many healthy and productive groups are built around shared identities, interests, values, beliefs, and cultures. Scandinavian Lutheran, Ukrainian Orthodox, Hispanic Catholic, and black Baptist congregations, as well as Turkish mosques and Sephardic synagogues, are composed mostly of people from the same ethnic and cultural backgrounds. The same is true of ethnic and cultural associations, veterans’ organizations, and political organizations, which naturally bring together people with similar backgrounds, experiences, or beliefs.

The danger arises when group homogeneity develops into dogmatism, closed-mindedness, self-righteousness, and ignorance about and bigotry toward outsiders.

A community that is relatively homogeneous both demographically and ideologically can counter these natural but destructive group tendencies by cultivating intellectual humility, actively welcoming internal disagreement, inviting outside speakers and perspectives, and educating members about unfamiliar beliefs, cultures, backgrounds, and ideas.

However, when people spend most of their time around others who share similar backgrounds, values, and assumptions, and only a narrow and self-reinforcing range of views is heard and considered, human group psychology tends to make those assumptions seem increasingly normal, obvious, and self-evident. Harvard legal scholar and group behavior expert Cass Sunstein describes this process as group polarization. Related research by social psychologists Muzafer Sherif and Henri Tajfel likewise shows that strong group identities can strengthen internal cohesion while also increasing tribal us-versus-them thinking, narrowing intellectual diversity, and reducing members’ ability to understand and effectively communicate with people who hold different beliefs and come from different groups.

A broader pattern of political sorting across American institutions reinforces these dynamics. As communities become identified with a particular political identity, people who feel comfortable with that identity remain, while those who do not gradually leave or choose not to join. Over time, this political homogeneity becomes increasingly self-reinforcing.

Moralizing of Beliefs

Many observers have also noticed a growing moral tone attached to political views. In earlier UU culture, political and philosophical disagreements were treated as part of the normal exchange of ideas. Increasingly, however, some political positions are framed not as arguments but as moral mandates.

The national leadership sets this trend. The UUA, affiliated organizations, and an increasing number of ministers take explicit positions aligned with progressive activism, often presenting them as unquestionable moral truths. As a result, many members and visitors experience UU congregations not primarily as spiritual centers but as hubs for moralized political activism.

Social psychologists Haidt and Philip Tetlock have shown that people can come to treat their political and ideological beliefs not simply as opinions but as representations of sacred values that should not be questioned or negotiated. Once beliefs become moralized in this way, disagreement is no longer seen as an ordinary difference of opinion but as morally wrong. Political theorist Jonathan Rauch, a leading advocate of liberal democracy and free inquiry, argues that liberal societies depend on treating ideas as open to questioning and critique rather than as untouchable truths.

When political and ideological views are moralized within a community, open inquiry gives way to social pressure and increasing ideological conformity. Members become less willing to voice doubts, ask difficult questions, and consider alternative perspectives. Over time, those who disagree or are uncomfortable with an environment that expects ideological conformity increasingly self-censor, disengage, or leave. As they do, the community becomes increasingly more ideologically homogeneous, further reinforcing the pressure to conform.

Why This Matters

Demographic, cultural, and ideological homogeneity shape how communities think and behave. When most members share similar backgrounds and assumptions, blind spots become harder to recognize. A group may feel thoughtful internally while gradually losing contact with perspectives outside its demographic and social bubble.

For a movement built around the free search for truth, intellectual and spiritual openness requires not only curiosity but also the presence of people who see the world differently and exposure to diverse perspectives and ideas, including from outside the congregation and denomination.

Where This Leaves the Unitarian Universalist Church

The Unitarian Universalist church remains a thoughtful and ethically serious religious tradition. At the same time, national data and congregational experience show that the movement has become more racially, culturally, and politically homogeneous than its ideals would suggest.

Liberal religion historically presented itself as a place where people with different backgrounds, beliefs, and experiences could meet in honest conversation. That aspiration requires social and intellectual conditions that allow disagreement, curiosity, and genuine diversity of perspectives. When a religious community becomes socially and politically narrow, the free search for truth gradually becomes a conversation among people who already think alike.

The central question facing the Unitarian Universalist church and congregations is simple: whether they wish to remain a community of open inquiry or continue evolving into an increasingly narrow, exclusive, and shrinking denomination.

References

American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS): Unitarian Universalist Socio-Demographic Analyses (1990–2008).

Burge, Ryan P. (2026). The Vanishing Church: How the Hollowing Out of Moderate Congregations Is Hurting Democracy, Faith, and Us. Brazos Press.

Burge, Ryan P. “What About the Unitarians?” Graphs About Religion.

Faith Communities Today (FACT). Faith Communities Today Surveys.

Finke, Roger, and Rodney Stark. (2005). The Churching of America, 1776–2005: Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy. Rutgers University Press.

Gallup. Gallup Polls on Religion.

Haidt, Jonathan. (2012). The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion. Pantheon Books.

Johnson, Theodore R. (2020). “Five Myths About Black Voters.” William J. Brennan Jr. Center for Justice.

Kaiser Family Foundation (2022). Survey of Black Voters.

Kelley, Dean M. (1972). Why Conservative Churches Are Growing: A Study in Sociology of Religion. Harper & Row.

Kubal-Komoto, James. (2010). “Our Narrow Niche: Six Characteristics of Unitarian Universalist Culture.” UU World.

Loehr, Davidson. (2005). “Why Unitarian Universalism Is Dying.” Journal of Liberal Religion.

Lukianoff, G., & Haidt, J. (2018). The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure. Penguin Press.

McPherson, Miller, Lynn Smith-Lovin, and James M. Cook. (2001). “Birds of a Feather: Homophily in Social Networks.” Annual Review of Sociology.

Nguyen, C. Thi. (2019). “The Problem of Living Inside Echo Chambers.” The Conversation.

Pew Research Center. U.S. Religious Landscape Studies (2007, 2014, 2023–2025); “The Most and Least Racially Diverse U.S. Religious Groups” (2015).

Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI). Censuses of American Religion.

Robinson, Anthony B. (2026). “The Steady Shrinkage of Congregational Churches.” Post Alley.

Rauch, Jonathan. (2023). “A Liberal Defense of Free Speech.” The Glenn Show.

Stankorb, Sarah. (2026). “How Polarization Tore a Hole in America’s Mainline Churches.” The New Republic.

Sunstein, Cass R. (2009). Going to Extremes: How Like Minds Unite and Divide. Oxford University Press.

Unitarian Universalist Association. Membership Statistics and Certification Reports.