Who Goes to Church ?
WHO GOES TO CHURCH? STATISTICS really do not deserve their bad repuK~' tation. Honestly collected and sorted out, they have nothing whatever in common with Falstaff or a half-dozen recently...
...Relatively speaking, therefore, the Catholic body constitutes 30 percent of the churchgoing public...
...We may add incidentally that owing to racial and other divergencies the Catholic body is nowhere so strongly identified with one political party or tradition as evangelical Protestantism is in the South...
...But Mr...
...and if one adds the increased taxation burden imposed upon Catholics as a result of this system, the total expenditure for religious purposes grows much larger...
...Catholics wont to complain about collections should notice the fact that the amount per adult member invested in his church buildings is comparatively small, although the average cost of a Catholic church—$52,000—is relatively high...
...Allowing for minor and unavoidable mistakes at this point, the reader may proceed to get the benefit of an extraordinarily interesting survey...
...Much of this is to be accounted for by the school system...
...Fry lists 212 separate denominations, but declares that the trend is away from further division...
...The recent defeat of Senator Simmons in North Carolina is, perhaps, a better commentary on this fact than upon any other political matter...
...It will tell him uncommonly much about the strength and appeal of Christian belief in an era in which, it is often assumed, the charms of materialism captivate many...
...Only a very small percentage of priests are neither college nor seminary graduates, while fully 70 percent of rural Protestant pastors in the east south-central states are without higher education...
...Such figures show a close relationship with membership ratios...
...Meanwhile, of course, the heart of anyone who loves the things of God must ache at the thought that if the Christian denominations now existing here were united in one fold they could undoubtedly win over millions of others...
...This saving is effected by having fewer edifices and larger memberships...
...Honestly collected and sorted out, they have nothing whatever in common with Falstaff or a half-dozen recently quizzed New York magistrates...
...Fry's statistics, Catholic increase has been more marked after 1916 than after 1906—a fact attributable, no doubt, to the greater efforts made to protect the faith of such new immigrant groups as the Italians and the Mexicans...
...One might go on adducing other interesting considerations advanced by Mr...
...The Catholic share of this membership is given as 13,300,000, a figure made to conform with standard Protestant tabulations which do not include children...
...In those states where the suicide rate tends to be high the proportion of the population in church tends to be low...
...Fry's book...
...More than 80 percent of practising Catholic adults live in cities...
...There are," he says, "only two dozen denominations with more than 200,000 adult members each, and these twenty-four bodies include 91 percent of 206 THE COMMONWEAL June 25, 1930 the country's adult membership...
...These must suffice to show that, regardless of certain vaguenesses in the fundamental figures of population and church membership, it is an exceedingly useful study...
...for instance the circumstance that almost as many men as women go to church in New England, while the males of the Kentucky-Tennessee district are notably lax...
...According to Mr...
...Matters like this are indifferent to praise or blame...
...Our author declines to stress a relationship of cause and effect at this point, but one may say incidentally that the findings conform with the results of an inquiry made in Germany a year or so ago...
...It follows, therefore, that seven out of every ten adult Americans who attend divine service are nonCatholics, and that only three out of every nineteen adult Americans is a son or daughter of the Church...
...Fry even argues that the Protestant percentage given is probably too low, since Jewish figures do not distinguish between those who attend a synagogue and those who do not...
...On the other hand the reported Catholic expenditure during 1926 was $204,500,000, a quarter of the national total...
...Fry's object seems to have been to set forth "the social significance of the churches...
...Fry eliminates a good deal of the doubt by isolating the church membership above thirteen years in a manner which seems to us approximately correct...
...Father Edwin O'Hara and those associated with him have been discussing the problem for years and devising ways for correcting it...
...This would mean that fifty-five out of every 100 citizens more than thirteen years old go to church—an estimate which can be verified by taking into consideration other inquiries...
...There is, then, no reason for complaining about Catholic generosity...
...Indeed, in North Carolina the adult membership of Protestant churches equals nearly three-quarters of the total population over thirteen years of age...
...Of all churches in all country regions in the United States, 93 percent are Protestant...
...Nevertheless "it becomes clear that since 1906 the increases in the membership figures reported by the churches have kept pace almost exactly with the growth of the population...
...On the other hand, the weakness of Catholicism in rural districts—a matter frequently commented upon—is again made evident in this survey...
...What is the relative strength of the various churches...
...Those who are overanxious to raise a hue and a cry should remember the evident fact that incomparable sacrifices have been made by thousands of priests, religious and lay folk to enable throngs of newcomers to this country to adjust themselves to new conditions without suffering spiritual shipwreck...
...Women outnumber men, constituting as they do sixtythree out of 100 church members even though the male citizenry is larger...
...and, indeed, it is warmly admired by all foreign observers who come to the United States...
...But there are nine southern states in which the Protestants constitute a majority of the population...
...Catholics in the United States have at least as much religious fervor and apostolic zeal as the Catholics of any other country...
...Some aspects of the survey are favorable, some are unfavorable, to Catholic optimism...
...Just how far this estimate deviates from the precise truth it would be impossible to say, but we feel that it is as nearly correct as available data permit...
...All the denominations report some growth, but the only ones to have made phenomenal headway are the Mormons and the Christian Scientists...
...Fry says: "The proportion of adult population that belongs to the church is correlated with basic social conditions...
...This work should never be lost sight of—should, indeed, be honored in perpetuo...
...Fry correctly stresses the importance of property investments now identified with religious purposes...
...Again, Mr...
...This is, of course, no longer news...
...Here is the numerical basis from which one can proceed to discuss any of those questions which touch upon the social implications of religion...
...Among the bright facts is the intellectual status of the Catholic priesthood...
...In 1926 adult church membership was, roughly speaking, 44,380,000, while the country's total adult population was about 80,000,000...
...Other curious facts emerge here...
...The Roman Catholic Church has a far lower proportion, and the three Negro denominations a far higher proportion, of untrained men than have the seventeen white Protestant bodies," says Mr...
...And seldom have they blossomed out more neatly than in a recent study of "organized religion" in this country—The United States Looks at Its Churches, written for the Rockefeller Institute of Social and Religious Research by C. Luther Fry...
...It seems reasonable to conclude," he avers, "that the total value of church property in the United States is in all probability at least $7,000,000,000...
...That there are other and possibly more important corollaries is obvious...
...Geographically regarded, the country seems to be most religious in the South and East, less so in the Middle-West, and least faithful in the mountain states where Mormon Utah constitutes the only exception to a rather bad record...
...It is true that the government census figures for 1926 serve as a basis, and that many persons have questioned the accuracy of those figures...
...Indeed, Mr...
...Official statistics make it possible to compute the 1926 suicide rate for all but three of the forty-eight states in the union...
...Other non-Protestant groups, including the Jews, form only 8.5 percent of the total, so that 65.5 percent of all Americans who profess a religious faith go to Protestant churches...
...During the two decades which followed 1926, church structures increased fairly rapidly in number and adult membership followed suit...
...Take, for instance, the matter of membership growth...
...There is not a single state in which either Jews or Roman Catholics constitute a majority of the total population, although Rhode Island and New Mexico come close to it with slightly more than forty-seven out of each 100 adult inhabitants on the rolls of a Roman Catholic church...
...Fry considers one: "The numerical strength of the different religious groups in relation to the total adult population throws light upon the potential voting strength of these groups...
Vol. 12 • June 1930 • No. 8
