Conservative churches growing in U.S.

joanna bujes joanna.bujes at ebay.sun.com
Wed Sep 18 11:07:33 PDT 2002


Chuck (G), you raised the issue of the mullahs' victory in Iran. My own memory of it, is that after the Shah had (with the help of the CIA and the same mullahs) wiped out the socialist opposition in Iran, the only organized body to step in after the Shah was overthrown...were the mullahs.

We're not in a much different situation in the U.S. As all state social supports fall away and we are all left dangling in the free-market hurricane, the only organized body of social support are the churches. Not surprisingly, they are growing, especially the most conservative ones: the following is from today's SF Chronicle.

As for the left, hell they don't have to worry about the left. We're all busily shoring up our radical identities somewhere, well out of harm's way.

Joanna

"Socially conservative churches that demand high commitment from their members grew faster than other religious denominations in the past decade, according to a study released Tuesday by statisticians who take a count of American religious affiliation every 10 years."

For more, see

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2002/09/18/MN236322.DTL

The study, "Religious Congregations & Membership:

2000," found that the fastest-growing religious

denomination in the past 10 years was the Church of

Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which enlists

thousands of young Mormon missionaries to recruit

door-to-door and boosted its U.S. membership by

19.3 percent to a total of 4.2 million.

The church bodies that recorded the next-highest

growth rates were the conservative Christian

Churches and Churches of Christ, with 18.6 percent,

the Assemblies of God, a major Pentecostal

denomination, with 18.5 percent, and the Roman

Catholic Church, with 16.2 percent.

Since the U.S. census does not ask about religion,

some scholars regard this study, first done in 1971,

as the most comprehensive assessment available of

the changes in American religious affiliation. The

study is based on self- reporting by religious groups,

a method that the study's authors acknowledge is

imprecise because religious groups could inflate their

numbers. The study was conducted by Glenmary

Research Center and sponsored by the Association

of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies.

"I was astounded to see that by and large, the

growing churches are those that we ordinarily call

conservative," said Ken Sanchagrin, director of the

Glenmary Research Center, and a professor and

chairman of the department of sociology at Mars Hill

College, in Mars Hill, North Carolina. "And when I

looked at those that were declining, most were

moderate or liberal churches. And the more liberal

the denomination, by most people's definition, the

more they were losing."

The churches that lost the highest percentage of

members were the Presbyterian Church USA (11.6

percent) and the United Church of Christ (14.8

percent).

The Catholic Church is still the nation's largest, with

more than 62 million adherents, about a quarter of

the population. Large numbers of Roman Catholics

have moved in the past decade from the Northeast

and the Midwest to the South and Southwest, the

survey found. The next largest denomination is the

Southern Baptists, with nearly 20 million members.

Taken together, Protestant churches report 66 million

members.

About half of Americans belong to one of the 149

religious groups included in the study. Utah, North

Dakota and Washington, D.C., have the highest

percentages of religious adherents. Oregon and

Washington state have the least,

the researchers found.

The 2000 study is the first to include information on

religious groups other than Christians and Jews. But

Sanchagrin acknowledged Tuesday that the numbers

of Muslims and Jews reported in the survey could be

misleading. The estimate of Jews was 6.1 million, but

the count included Jews who are unaffiliated with

synagogues -- the only group in the survey to use

identity and not membership as its criteria in the

count.

The estimate of Muslims was 1.5 million, derived by

counting the members reported by a third of the

nation's 1,200 mosques, which often do not maintain

membership rolls. Since some Muslims are new

immigrants and others are new converts, reliable

estimates are difficult. But this study's conclusion is

far lower than the 7 million claimed by most

American Muslim organizations. v

The Catholic church is the largest in the United States. Denominations

within the Protestant churches collectively have 66 million adherents with

Southern Baptists being the largest group.

-- Top 15 faiths in United States by number of adherents

Faith Adherents

1. Catholic 62,035,045

2. Southern Baptist Convention 19,881,467

3. United Methodist 10,350,629

4. Jewish 6,141,325

5. Evangelical Lutheran Church in America 5,113,418

6. The Church of Jesus-Christ of Latter-day Saints 4,224,026

7. Presbyterian 3,141,566

8. Assemblies of God 2,561,998

9. Lutheran Missouri Synod 2,521,062

10. Episcopal 2,314,756

11. American Baptist 1,767,462

12. United Church of Christ 1,698,918

13. Churches of Christ 1,645,584

14. Muslim (estimate) 1,559,294

15. Christian Churches 1,439,253

Source: Glenmary Research Center

.

KEY STATISTICS

-- Fastest-growing church: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

-- County with the most people in a congregation: Los Angeles County

reported 5.5 million people in 4,044 congregations.

-- . . . with the least: Loving County, Texas, reported none in any

congregation

-- State with the highest percent-age of Catholics: Rhode Island, 52%

-- Most widespread religious group: United Methodist congregations are

present in 96% of counties

Associated Press Graphic



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