Baptisms in the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, have dipped to their lowest point in 60 years, according to a new report.
Last year, there were 332,321 baptisms in the church, which is 17,416 less than 2009, according to the report from Nashville-based LifeWay Christian Resources. There was only one baptism for every 48 Southern Baptists in the country in 2010. Sixty years ago, there one baptism per every 19 church members. In eight out of 10 years, the number of baptisms performed have declined.
Baptism statistics are an important measure of the church’s vitality because — unlike Catholics and other Protestants that baptize infants — its members practice “believer’s baptism,” in which the person being baptized has to make an active choice to join the faith.
The church’s highest year of baptisms was 1972, when there was 445,725, but baptisms have largely plateaued since the 1950s.
