(Part 4 in an 8 post series on Christian church attendance)
Just as the analyses in Part 3 looked at changes in attendance over time for all Christians, we can also do so separately for each of these three denominational groups.
As shown in the tables above, there has been a slight upswing in attendance rates among Evangelicals, fairly stable attendance among Mainline Protestants, and a fair decrease among Catholics. That is, members of Evangelical Churches are more likely to attend church services on a weekly basis now than 30 years ago. Not so for Catholics.
4 comments:
I'm surprised not to see a similar dip in the Mainline Protestant camp. It seems like I hear a lot about is "dying" Mainline churches. Perhaps more perception than reality?
I believe that the attendance numbers for mainline churches are down.
This stat gets is more of a measure of commitment, i.e., if someone affiliates with a mainline church, how often do they go to church.
(This is different than how many people affliate with the church).
Good questions.. The data that I use here don't go back past the 1970s, so I can't use them to address the "earlier" question. My friend David Weakliem tells me that similar Gallop data go back further, so some day I might poke around with them.
As for why the relative differences... these graphs probably raise more questions than they answer. It certainly could be that the "types" on mainline churches are cancelling each other out.
I note that this is all about rates... so the analysis pertains to rates of attendance among those assigning themselves an identity subsequently parsed into your three categories.
I probably missed the post about numbers of folks placed in each category over time - which I need to know in order to understand the meaning of the rates of attendance.
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