The number of Black Protestants who say they attend services monthly has fallen from 61% in 2019 to 46% now, said Pew, and they are the only group in which more than half (54%) attend services virtually. Zion’s shrinking attendance is in line with a recent Pew Research Center survey it found a significant attendance drop among Black Protestants that is unmatched by any other major religious group. “What I really say to myself is, ‘Lord, the pastor has a lot of outreach to do, and so do we … because it’ll never be the same.” “It saddens my heart,” said Calvernetta Williams, who has worshipped at Zion for 40 years. The stomping of feet and the call-and-response of the leader and congregation have subsided from what they were before the pandemic. Zion’s attendance dropped from 300 parishioners before the outbreak to 125 now.įounded in 1865 - the year Abraham Lincoln was assassinated - Zion still has a choir capable of beautiful singing, but it too has shrunk by more than half. The trend has been accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, which infected and killed Black Americans at a disproportionate rate. But membership at the historic church - a crucial meeting point for many during the Civil Rights Movement - dwindled over recent decades. – The wide empty spaces in pews between parishioners at a Sunday service at Zion Baptist Church in South Carolina’s capital highlight a post-pandemic reality common among many Black Protestant churches nationwide.Īt its heyday in the 1960s, more than 1,500 parishioners filled every seat at Zion.
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