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The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America saw a slight drop in membership in 2006, continuing a trend of decline since the 1990s. The total of baptized members at the end of last year was 4,774,203—a 1.6 percent decrease from the 2005 total of 4,850,776, denominational officials said.

The denomination has lost about 466,000 baptized members in the past 16 years, said Lowell G. Almen, ELCA secretary. In 1990, there were 5,240,739 members.

The Mormon Church claims to have some 5.7 million members in the United States, which would make the Utah-based denomination the fourth largest church body in the nation after the Roman Catholic Church, the Southern Baptist Convention and the United Methodist Church. Often cited as one of the fastest-growing churches, with a clean-cut image and a focus on family values, the Mormon Church would seem poised to rival within a decade the size of the UMC, which has suffered declines in recent years and now has just below 8 million members.