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The Uniting Church in Australia is losing members faster than most. Could its shift away from traditional teachings help explain the selloff of 1 in 10 Victorian churches?

“Masses of Victorian churches and ex-places of worship are hitting the market,” according to a recent Herald Sun report, as churches grapple with shrinking attendance and rising insurance premiums, among more concerning trends.

The Uniting Church in Australia appears to be leading the charge, with the denomination’s Synod of Victoria and Tasmania listing around 80 church buildings over the last five years — including 20 abandoned sanctuaries in just the last 12 months.

“In some cases, individual congregations have decided to move from older buildings which are expensive to maintain into other property arrangements, or members have decided to join other congregations,” synod moderator Reverend David Fotheringham told the outlet.

The Uniting Church selloff in Victoria represents well over 10% of the synod’s 600 congregations, according to Christian commentator John Sandeman.

“If 80 sales were to continue in each five years into the future then the Uniting portfolio of churches in Victoria and Tasmania would be exhausted in 25 years,” Sandeman warns, raising questions about the denomination’s long-term viability.

With church properties regularly fetching over a million dollars from investors and renovators eager to transform them into designer homes or boutique short-stay rentals, the opportunity is hard to resist in a secularising world.

The Herald Sun reports that, besides funding other facility upkeep, the Uniting Church is using sales proceeds to assist its Uniting Aboriginal and Islander Christian Congress, along with various grants programs and regional ministries.

However, broader demographic and theological factors might also help explain the wave of sales.

Selling the Future to Pay for the Past

Comparing Australian Census data from 2016 and 2021, Uniting Church affiliation dropped by 22.6% in just five years. Nationally, fewer than 700,000 Australians now identify with the denomination.

This is significantly steeper than the overall Christian decline of 15.7% nationally over the same period — meaning the Uniting Church is shrinking nearly 50% faster than the average Christian denomination in Australia.

The Victoria-Tasmania Synod of the Uniting Church is widely regarded as one of Australia’s most progressive denominational branches, following decades of retreat from traditional Christian teachings.

The synod openly endorses the ordination of ministers regardless of sexual orientation and gives clergy the freedom to perform or decline same-sex marriages — a point notable enough to appear in its brief 140-word Who We Are statement online.

This follows a 2018 decision by the national Assembly — backed by well over two-thirds of delegates — to adopt “two equal and distinct statements of belief” on marriage, variously affirming it as a commitment between “a man and a woman” and “two people.”

In official statements, the Victoria-Tasmania Synod endorses a broad platform of environmental activism, social justice, wealth redistribution, and support for Indigenous treaty — including an Our Values declaration that distinguishes between congregants as “First and Second Peoples”.

The Uniting Church’s progressive trajectory mirrors trends in other mainline denominations globally that are suffering rapid membership decline.

As recently reported by The Daily Declaration, the Presbyterian Church (USA) recently shuttered its entire international mission agency after 200 years, citing financial hardship amid declining giving and attendance. The denomination has lost 65% of its members since 1983, coinciding with its shift toward liberal theology, LGBT clergy ordination, and controversial political stances.

The Godly Heritage of the Uniting Church

The Uniting Church in Australia was formed in 1977 through the union of the Methodist Church of Australasia, the Presbyterian Church of Australia, and the Congregational Union of Australia.

The Methodist Church contributed the largest share of membership by far, accounting for approximately 60% — or 700,000 members — of the new denomination’s base, roughly equal to the entire membership of the Uniting Church in Australia today.

As Warwick Marsh and I documented in our recent book Great Southland Revival, Australia’s Methodists have an incredible history:

The early Methodists were unrivalled soul-winners. According to Arnold Hunt, a historian of Australian Methodism, they were confident in the message they preached, and believed that by preaching it, the church would grow. Hunt notes that the Methodists were a “warm fellowship in which laity as well as clergy were expected to evangelise”.

An important aspect of this confidence was the Methodists’ supernaturalism — their belief that God was truly at work in their movement. Their zeal for evangelism and the supernatural meant that they were typically the first to occupy a new settlement with a gospel presence. The Methodists were also willing to take the good news of Jesus to the most far-flung corners of the continent. Anyone who has explored rural Australia will have noticed the impressive number of Methodist chapels, not only in remote townships, but often standing alone at the intersections of long country roads. It was here on Sundays that farming families would assemble from far away to worship and hear the Word of God preached by circuit ministers.

Fundamentally, the early Australian Methodists saw themselves as being part of a great tradition of revival. Conscious of their roots, they understood revival as the reason they existed in the first place and as the key to all future success. Like Wesley and his early followers, they believed faithfulness to the gospel meant reaching not just the respectable middle class, but farmers, miners and labourers as well. They worked and prayed for revival; indeed, they expected it — and that is what they got.

As a result, the Methodists became “the flagship of the evangelical fleet for more than half a century”. Census data reveals that between 1841 and 1871, while the Anglicans increased threefold and the Catholics fourfold, the Methodists multiplied themselves 10 times over.

For the Uniting Church in Australia, caught between the burden of costly building upkeep and a theological direction that appears to be driving members away, the challenge in this century is stark: how long will the decline continue before its presence — both spiritual and physical — fades from the Victorian landscape?

And — more importantly — could a recovery of its heritage turn the tide?

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Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.