Black Protestant church still vital despite attendance drop

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May 1st, 2023

Congregants sit in largely empty pews during service at Zion Baptist Church in Columbia, S.C., on Sunday, April 16, 2023. Zion's shrinking attendance is in line with a recent Pew Research Center survey, which found that the number of Black Protestants who say they attend services monthly has fallen from 61% in 2019 to 46%. They are also the only group in which more than half attend services virtually. (AP Photo/Jessie Wardarski)

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.

At its heyday in the 1960s, more than 1,500 parishioners filled every seat at Zion. But membership at the historic church — a crucial meeting point for many during the Civil Rights Movement — dwindled over recent decades.

The trend has been accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, which infected and killed Black Americans at a disproportionate rate. Zion’s attendance dropped from 300 parishioners before the outbreak to 125 now.

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