Decline in US Church Membership

[jbseth]

Hi All,

I know that we've talked about this on several occasions. Attached is an electronic article from US News and World Report where they mention that, as per a new Gallup poll, in the US, membership in religious institutions is at an all time low.

"The decline in church membership is steepest among Catholics."

https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2019-04-18/gallup-poll-finds-us-membership-in-religious-institutions-is-at-an-all-time-low


-jbseth

[Deb]

Thanks, I'm actually surprised (and glad) to hear that. I live in an area where what I call "church factories" continue to be built and survive. But my thought now is that while Catholic churches may finally be suffering because of the unrelenting onslaught of abuse revelations the past couple of years or so, members may be moving over to non-denominational Christian churches. I would suspect that other religions are not as affected. The times they are a changin'...

I saw a Facebook post yesterday where someone was outraged that so many wealthy pledged mind-numbing amounts of money to rebuild Notre Dame. The sentiment was that the Catholic Church as a whole is wealthy beyond belief, so why not let the CC deal with restoration and potential donors send money to other more humanitarian causes.

I thought that was brilliant.

[jbseth]

Hi Deb, Hi All,

This article about US religious institution attendance, does draw the following 2 conclusions. This is consistent with what I've heard from various ministers and preachers of various churches in the US.

1) In regards to the decline in religious institutions, it's not just the Catholics, and it's not just the Christians, it's across all religious institutions.

"A Gallup poll published Thursday found that the amount of people belonging to a church, synagogue or mosque was at a low of an average of 50% in 2018."



2) Furthermore, it's even more common in the younger generations, the Millenniels.

"Between 2016 and 2018, people born before 1945 were most likely to be members of a religious institution, down 9 percentage points from 1998 to 2000. Millennials, defined in this case as people born between 1980 and 2000, were the least likely to be members during the last three years, at 42%."


- jbseth