Americans say they are religious and that they value the Bible and its teachings.
Due to the fact that hard data do not exist, some of the numbers pertaining to church attendance in this article are estimates. Please feel free to submit your adjustments in the comment section.
Among developed countries, America is viewed as one of the most religious nations, and it seems that there is no end to its inhabitants’ appetite for Christianity in all its flavors. Americans tell pollsters that they go to church in immense numbers, and most of them name the Bible as their favorite book.
Church attendance as established by surveys is one of the main factors alleged to illustrate the depth of religious feeling in America. Depending on which poll you consult, between 33 percent and 43 percent of Americans claim to attend church weekly. Using the low end of that range, we get a figure of around a hundred million people. Even cursory crack research, however, reveals that this might not be true, for the simple reason that there might not be enough seats in all churches in America to hold nearly as many people.
According to the U.S. Churches Database, there exist 68,574 churches in the United States, of which 1,210 are megachurches (defined as having a seating capacity of over 2,000). We will assume, generously, that the average maximum occupancy of a megachurch is 10,000, for a total of 12,100,000 seats. Ignore for a moment the fact that a study conducted this year by the evangelical Christian Outreach Magazine tracking the biggest 100 churches in the U.S. puts their total weekly attendance at just 631,585. It is mathematically impossible for all 1,210 megachurches to have over 6,000,000 attendants per week, but, for the sake of erring on the side of caution, we’ll go with 12,100,000.
The remaining 67,364 churches are medium- and small-sized operations, which can hold no more than 2,000 people, or they would have been included in the megachurch category. To accurately establish the average seating capacity for these remaining churches would be hard, but a guess of 200 seats per church seems fair, and one of 300 bounteous. Make it 400, but keep in mind that small-town churches, which needfully must comprise the majority of these sixty-seven thousand, are much tinier than that. Even with these grossly inflated numbers, the total seating capacity of non-megachurch establishments clocks in at 26,945,600. Add to that the 12,100,000 seats of the megachurches and we arrive at 39,045,600.
Some large churches, though a minority, hold more than one weekly service; kindly insert 20,000,000 extra seats in our tally.
Readers have taken issue with my assertion that a minority of churches hold more than one weekly service. Additionally, others have e-mailed to suggest that the buffer number above be adjusted, as they believe it is either too large or too small. Some say that it is too small to account for all the churches which hold more than one weekly service, others maintain that it shoould not be included here at all, since none of our other figures account for the empty seats which they say are to be found at a majority of services. Please submit your suggestions in the comments section.
So, what is the maximum number of seats available at any given time in all of America’s churches? Assuming that all are filled to capacity, that even the smallest of them can accommodate at least 400 people, and liberally adding 20,000,000 extra seats, the total number of available seats in churches across America is 59,045,600. That is just little over a half of what would be necessary to accommodate all the people who claim to go to church weekly.
According to another survey, Duke’s National Congregations Study, the total number of churches in the U.S. is 300,000, but the total weekly number of worshipers remains in the vicinity of our 59 million total, at approximately 56,000,000.
Irrespective of methodology, corroborative calculations show that large numbers of Americans are lying to the polls.
According to a study conducted for the Catholic Biblical Federation in 2008, 93 percent of Americans have at least one copy of the Bible at home. Twenty-seven percent of Americans surveyed believe that the Bible is “the actual word of God, which must be taken literally, word for word,” and 78 percent view its contents as true. Almost half of American respondents agree–either somewhat or completely–with the statement “The Bible should be studied at school,” and 56 percent have given a Bible as a gift at least once. In addition, a Harris poll conducted the same year showed that Americans overwhelmingly name the Bible as their favorite book.
One might deduct from these numbers that the Americans’ knowledge of the Bible is at least somewhat satisfactory. Nobody could like the Bible, let alone maintain that its contents are true, give it as a gift, or recommend that it be taught in schools, without possessing at least an elementary awareness of its teachings. In order to agree that the Bible contains the unerring pronouncements of God, which are to be taken literally, word for word, from beginning to end, one must necessarily be acquainted with what these pronouncements are.
Not so. According to polls, a mere half of Americans are able to name a single Gospel, and a majority are unfamiliar with the fact that Genesis is the first book of the Bible. Thomas, according to 22 percent of Americans, wrote one of the books, and Sodom and Gomorrah were married, if we are to listen to half of American high school seniors.
While a majority of Americans maintain that they use the ten biblical commandments as a life guide, 60 percent are unable to name more than four. Among adult and teen believers, “God helps those who help themselves” is the most widely-known verse in the Bible; only 38 percent of respondents correctly said that this was not a Bible quotation, while 42 percent thought it was, and 20 percent did not hazard a guess.
Sixteen percent of American Christians believe that the Bible teaches that Jesus Christ was born in Jerusalem, 8 percent in Nazareth, 6 percent abstained from responding, while the rest got it right. Twelve percent also attribute to Jesus the writing of a book of the Bible.
America seems to not be the solid bastion of Christianity that many claim it is or wish it were. In large numbers, Americans from all walks of life shun church and reduce their Bibles to the status of objects of decoration, while they maintain, perhaps in a bout of wishful thinking, that God, churches and religion rule their lives. People who believe Joan of Arc to have been Noah’s wife, as one in 10 Americans do, can not be said to have even a fleeting interest in their scripture. Americans are indeed religious; just how religious is a question that still needs investigating. In private, religious apathy piles thick behind the screen of public piety, and the famously robust American religiosity–taken for granted by many–seems to become a delusion of biblical proportions.
“Some large churches, though a minority, hold more than one weekly service; kindly insert 20,000,000 extra seats in our tally”
I think you might be underselling this point with the phrase “though a minority.” My family is Roman Catholic, and just about every RC church I’ve been to has three services every Sunday. Many also have a Saturday evening service that “counts” toward your Sunday obligation. So Roman Catholic seating numbers need to be multiplied by 3 or 4.
An interesting discussion, however.
I was going to make the same comment as Tim…. and it is true for all the Southern Baptist churches around here, too. All of them have 2 or 3 services on Sunday, besides some evening services on other days.
More on the surveys (or doing more serveys) would probably be very interesting.
To Scott and Tom,
Yes, but I have NEVER been to a service where every seat was full. Survey’s only tell you what people want you to think. A good study would require a count at the door.
Interestingly all studies on religiosity struggle with a good definition. If you attend church religiously (ar ar) but hide little girls in your back yard, are you religious?
On the other hand I cannot remember the last time I saw a church filled to capacity.
Very interesting. Thanks.
I do wonder if the numbers reflect social/political/class group identification more than theologic belief?
Do people want religion taught in school so kids will be more religious or simply more like them?
It seems that many people do believe that the bible is the word of god, but also believe that it’s not necessary to read it.
while i will be one of the last people to support america’s feigned infatuation with christianity, i do enjoy joining my family (which is predominantly catholic) for the midnight mass at christmas.
every single year that i can remember, no matter where i am in the country, midnight mass (in fact, every christmas service) has people standing because there isn’t enough sitting room.
Weekly to some people likely means “yes, I consider myself a churchy person, even if weekly works out to going for Advent, Christmas, and Easter services.” OK, OK, they don’t go to ALL of the advent services. But they really mean to go more often. There’s just this thing that needed to get done this week (and last).
LDS chapels are generally shared with 3 or more congregations which have fixed meeting times. Having been a clerk for a congregation for a while, I can tell you that our average attendance was in the low 300s. Multiply that by 3 for each building, and then multiply that by the church buildings found about every 10 blocks through out utah and you get more than a million a week in utah alone (between 30 and 50% of the population of utah).
Add the rest of the memebers of the church elsewhere and I’d conservatively estimate that you have 5,000,000 attendees per week.
This does not count students who regularly take religious classes “outside” of school e.g. lds seminary for high-school students and lds institute for college aged students… those are either 3 or 5 days a week (though a much smaller proportion of the whole set attend them…)
I have never been to a church, even a relatively small one, that did not have at least 2 sunday services. The (several) Mega-Churches that I have been to have at least 3 on sunday (usually 4) and usually one on Saturday night. Millions also meet in “house-churches” that do not have a regular building. Additionally, at most larger churches, while the parents are in the main auditorium on sunday, their 2.4 kids are at the kids service (in another building), so go ahead and double whatever attendance you were showing for any church with a capacity of over 200.
Tim,
Do you believe that my assumption that a minority of them have more than one weekly service is incorrect? The bulk of U.S. churches are, I think, small-time outfits. I do see larger churches where I live advertising multiple weekly services, but for each 300-seater city church with five weekly services, there must be many rural ones which can’t fill one Sunday run. Do you not think that the twenty-million buffer I added, albeit arbitrarily, compensates adequately for multiple services?
Scott,
Yes, more accurate numbers than those I came up with would be great. All we all can do for now is advance more-or-less educated guesses, and I’m very curious about all the ways in which my numbers can be disputed. I hope to be able to refine the article in the future based on these objections.
FC,
Do you mean five million attendees weekly for the LDS? I believe 1.7 percent or so of Americans are Mormon, which means that what you’re saying is that almost every single LSD Church member attends weekly. As devout as Mormons might be, I doubt that that is the case, but maybe I am misunderstanding you.
According to wikianswers there are 6.3 million mormons
in the US. If we just don’t include them, the conclusions of this report remain about the same.
I cannot stand religion, but I have to echo what many others here have said… your logic is…. flawed. Many, many, many small and medium churches hold MULTIPLE services a week… Wed nights, Saturday evening, several on Sunday. Even with your statement about small outfits that can barely fill on Sunday, they will often have Wed night church. We have a 2,000 seat operation where I live that has Wed night, Sat night and 3 on Sunday. I have friends that attend some of the services and every session is at least half full…. 2 of the Sunday services are completely full. Before I completely rid myself of religion, my wife and I attended a small church (200 members) that did 1 Wed and 1 Sun… both had about 100 attendees with some overlap but some only attending one or the other.
Chris S. ‘Weekly to some people likely means “yes, I consider myself a churchy person, even if weekly works out to going for Advent, Christmas, and Easter services.”‘
Perhaps it’s all just a mis-understanding, and they hear “Do you attend church WEAKLY?”
Perhaps a more accurate way of determining how many people attend church weekly would be to poll a percentage, say 5-10% of those 68,574 churches and ask what their average weekly attendance is across all services. All churches I know of keep these numbers. I’d be surprised if somebody hasn’t already done this and released the numbers somewhere.
I do agree, many churches in the south have multiple services during the week, weather it is on wed or sunday.I also believe that CHURCH is the new pimp game in america. In these troubling economic times I have been witness to people giving their last few dollars to the church, only to watch the reverend fly off to another service across town, with your checking account number in his laptop autodeducting 10 percent of what goes in. To ask me religion is something I honestly think we can live without. If somebody came up to you and said, dont murder or rape, all mighty Zues will punish you by banishing you to Hades for all eternity, you would more than likely look at the person like he or she was Crazy. IT IS THE SAME THING people. Go to church on sunday ask for forgiveness of sin, turn around on monday and continue the same sinfull way of life. If JESUS came back to the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA today 1 of 2 things would happen. 1.he’s got to be a Crazy. 2. we kill him. Whose to say he hasnt been back already, nobody knows what he looks like. Im not trying to church bash, but I do think people shouldnt just assume we are all so religous when we really arent.
I attend church twice weekly, on Wednesday evening and on Sunday mornings. Most of the churches in my area hold two services a week, some three…BUT, it is generally the same people attending both (or all three) services, not another whole congregation at each service.
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Jason and others,
There is an arbitrary buffer of twenty million added in for multiple weekly services. Do you not believe that to be enough? And if so, what would you think the right number would be and why?
Though a minotrity? almost every church I’ve ever been to holds at least 2 or three services on Sunday… and sometimes a wednesday service. My current church is bursting at the seems with 800+ in both services. But that I account to it being strictly from the Bible. god blesses those who obey and do his will.
But agreed… like the church of LAODICEA (which I believe is also a parallel to the modern day church) they were neither hot nor cold and Jesus threatened to spit them out. American Christians do not … confront the sin of this community… even within the Christain community. As a result… it is rampant with half-hearted, luke-warm Christians who think they can do anything they want.
On top of that, surveys can be skewed any which way. I drive sme nuts when results from a survey are used as fact.
I think the numbers quoted in this article are, probably, on the whole fair. Few if any congregations will ever see a full house outside of Christmas or Easter. On the other hand most places of worship hold multiple services, and from experience most Roman Catholic churches hold daily service. However, a vast majority of these services are very sparsely attended. If you looked at the total theoretical capacity of the churches and compared that to the actual total attendance at all services I think, with no numbers to back this up, that generously you’d see most houses of worship operating at something like 30% capacity.
So if you take the inflated one time numbers given in this article, and merge that with the numbers you’d actually see from multiple services per church I think you’d probably still be looking at no more than 60,000,000 people who attend religiously.
At any rate, I don’t think the numbers are really the interesting point in this article. Even if we grant that these numbers are grossly underreporting actual attendance, even if we, impossibly, assume actual attendance is say 200,000,000, how do we reconcile these visible manifestations of belief with the survey figures showing a disturbing lack of understanding of the religion’s tenants and beliefs? I’m pretty sure there’s something in the bible about this. Matthew 6: 5-6 anyone?
Of course, if you stop to consider how the most religious developed nation is also the most warlike, then maybe our professed religiosity makes more sense.
Something I’ve noticed about church-goers is that there is a non-trivial amount of people who attend every service a church has to offer. In my local area, the Baptists (all flavors, including the ones who don’t call themselves Baptists) have a core group of people at the church that goes to every service. Some of them are church volunteers, a few are employees of course, but there are the church ‘groupies’ as well, not to mention the poor children of these people.
You have to also consider that yes, there may be multiple services at a church but that doesn’t mean each service has different people in it. There may be multiple morning services, but in my experience the Sunday and Wednesday evening service are populated by people who already go to one of the Sunday morning services.
Churches with Saturday evening services don’t necessarily have more people going either. Those are normally attended by the late-nighters that don’t want to roll out of bed early on a Sunday.
It should be noted that a percentage of American Christians are “home church” fundamentalists. These are Christians who go to bible studies and churches that are essentially converted meeting space in warehouses, living rooms and other makeshift locations. These would likely not be represented in the database you cite.
Whether these home church folk make up the 50 to 70 million person difference can not be known – though I personally doubt it.
The only times I’ve ever seen a church more than half full are: Christmas and Easter services; where church attendance was mandatory (when I was in school); and when going to church meant you didn’t have to do something even worse (when I was in the military). In those cases, church was always packed.
Another question to ask would be whether people who watch televised broadcasts of church services weekly answered “yes” to the “do you attend church weekly” question.
To Clarify, my numbers are based on “informal” stats that suggest that about half the ‘on the books’ members of the LDS church actually attend regular church meetings at least monthly. I dont know what percentage of the members of the church are in the US, but I seem to remember that it’s like 50%-ish. The ‘on the books’ membership is around 14 million… so, 7 million in the US, 3.5 million in seats on Sunday. cut that by another 50% to pessimize the estimates… and you still have a bit under 2 mil.
The only actual number I have any certainty on is the total, world-wide at:
http://lds.org/ldsorg/v/index.jsp?hideNav=1&locale=0&sourceId=5d26230bac7f0210VgnVCM100000176f620a____&vgnextoid=f318118dd536c010VgnVCM1000004d82620aRCRD
The most recent conference (bi-anual) had higher numbers but I can’t find them online (yet).
I also remember hearing in some statitical report recently (last 5 years?) that there are now more members outside the US than in, but I coudn’t find it with 2 minutes of google…
For the 50% estimate – heard it in a leadership training meeting…. didn’t see the study or know the details… Shrug.
dont get me wrong… I like the examination – it is definitely an interesting perspective to consider things from…
The numbers may be off by a factor of 50% either way
. My estimate is probably optimistic and perhaps yours is pessimistic. Doesn’t change the the conclusions you draw though – people outside the US may have a distorted view of the (non?)pervasiveness of religion.
I suspect there is a lot of sampling bias too – the people outside the US that see US residents may encounter an unusually high amount of religious US residents. That would be interesting to try to estimate
You have a flaw at the very beginning of your post. In all the research that I’ve seen, “megachurch” is defined as a church that has *attendance* of over 2,000 per week, not *seating capacity.* The number of seats in an average megachurch is nowhere near 10,000. More typical is a church with seating for 1 to 2 thousand, holding two or 3 services per weekend. The largest church I have ever been in, Southeast Christian Church in Louisville, KY, which is one of the 10 largest churches in the US, averages over 17,000 per week in attendance; the main sanctuary’s seating is about 8,500.
Do Americans like to say they are more religious than they really are? Yes – I have seen numerous articles about this very topic, usually from Christians concerned about the large of “cultural Christians” in the US who “talk the talk” but don’t “walk the walk,” so to speak. Researchers (Christian and secular) have often observed the discrepancy between reported and actual religiosity. It’s pretty old news, and I’m not sure it means anything more than that we need better research.
You have to add the C & E somewhere in the calculations. These are the Christmas and Easter attenders. The people that show up twice a year to get their bi-annual inoculation of religion. These people crowd the churches so they can feel religious, but spend the rest of the year sleeping in or reading the news paper Sunday morning. These people fully believe that they are religious, but are probably the ones who are giving the funny answers to the bible questions.
There are significant differences between “cultural Christians” who attend church rarely if ever, and Christians who attend weekly – I’m sure the same differences appear in other religions. I have a friend who teaches the psychology of religion. He tells me that Americans who claim to be religious really aren’t any different from the American average – and even have slightly higher divorce rates, domestic abuse rates, etc. Once the data is segregated by how often individuals attend church (not claim to attend, but actually attend, as best as the researchers can tell), then clear differences appear. Americans who attend church weekly have much lower divorce rates, lower crime rates, higher rates of volunteering and charitable giving, and so on, than average Americans.
Any story like this should really have numbers from the Barna group. They are the foremost group of researchers studying and polling this very question. They’ve been at it for years. http://www.barna.org/
They see their mission as something supporting the church, but their analysis is straightforward and scientific. Check it.
“Among developed countries, America is viewed as one of the most religious nations”
I laughed out loud!
Coming from a developed country that is NOT America… I don’t know many people who think that America is ‘one of the most religious’.
Perhaps some atheist organization should, in conjunction with ecumenical organizations,
0. Openly declare the intent to measure church attendance to give occasional attendants the chance to show up when they need to, in order to be counted.
1. Round up a number of volunteers needed from both religious and atheist camps
3. Pick a week in the year, say first week in February, and publish that.
4. At every church door, place one atheist and one Christian to count the number of people entering the church for service. Each individual volunteer’s count becomes a matter of public record.
5. Collate the results on a web site (including church names, seating capacity, and times and dates of all services, both counted and not counted, both atheist and religious volunteers.
6. Extrapolate from covered services to all services in all churches.
7. Publish results in both secular and faith media.
My point is that this requires a grassroots/viral effort in order to give decent data. it’s hard for minor research groups to get fair numbers with good coverage given their personnel and budget constraints.
[...] Are Americans Faking Religiosity is from an atheist site, but their numbers are very interesting. related to Tim’s post. [...]
No one who has, even partly, read the bible can believe that God wrote it. Chapter after chapter tells you quite specifically who the author was. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, then the Prophet books, etc. – leaving God, maybe, to take the blame for the anonymous Revelations. Anonymous also wrote Genesis, and since only Adam, Eve and an illiterate snake were there… Maybe he wrote that. But for whom?
everyone seems to be hung up on actual church attendance. i think the more telling argument is biblical knowledge. for a nation that prides itself in religious belief, it’s somewhat embarrassing and telling that 60 percent can’t name more than 4 commandments…despite a hollywood film and a powerful performance by charlton heston. i’ve been in a church maybe a dozen times and even i can tell you where jesus was born…there’s more than a few christmas carols about that very topic. i personally don’t care about the seating capacity of american churches or about how many people are filling those seats. my concern is that a nation is using a theology to discriminate against other people when they clearly don’t know or understand it themselves. shame on you america for discriminating against homosexuals and non-christians based on a belief system that you don’t even know…and wasn’t jesus about love and understanding anyway?
and peter p…i can’t think of one developed nation that is more religious than the US. france, germany, uk, denmark, finland, sweden, switzerland, canada, australia, new zealand, norway, russia, iceland are all pretty secular. maybe italy? anyone?
Yes, to me, Peter P’s comment was one of the more perplexing.
hope it’s ok to put a link
http://www.usatoday.com/graphics/news/gra/gnoreligion/flash.htm
He that lives by numbers can be sure that the last number of days in their life will be the day before they die, This is a fact, all the rest is just guess work. Worry about your numbers because of what you did during them is what you will have to answer for.
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