Catholics Trail Protestants in Church Attendance

George Gallup Jr. is the Chairman of the George H. Gallup International Institute and is recognized internationally for his research and study on youth, health, religion, and urban problems.

After dipping to an all-time low in the wake of the recent sex abuse scandals afflicting the Catholic Church, weekly church attendance among Catholics appears to be on the rebound. However, historical Gallup Poll data show that Protestants have now clearly overtaken Catholics in church attendance, for the first time in Gallup polling history.

Between March 2002, when the news of the scandals broke, and February 2003, weekly church attendance among Catholics fell nine percentage points to 35%, the lowest measurement since Gallup began asking the question in 1955. By November 2003*, however, the figure had climbed 10 percentage points to 45%. Protestants' levels of church attendance, meanwhile, remained fairly stable during this same period.

While it is up from earlier this year, that 45% figure among Catholics is 29 percentage points lower than the 74% recorded when this question was first asked in 1955. Comparatively, Protestants' church attendance is actually slightly higher in November 2003 (48%) than it was in 1955 (42%).

Although religious convictions and beliefs tend to change little over the years, religious behavior reflects the tenor of the times to some degree, as a brief review of the last half-century reveals.

Expanding business and industry, accompanied by tremendous growth in the cities and suburbs, defined the 1950s. The post-World War II decade was also full of religious vitality, with rapid growth in church membership, especially in the booming new suburbs. Weekly church attendance was at 74% among Catholics and 42% among Protestants.

In the 1960s, Americans experienced major change and upheaval: rapid technological advances, the full emergence of the civil rights movement, urban riots, the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and Robert Kennedy, war protests, the beginnings of the women's liberation movement, and strong anti-establishment feelings.

That anti-establishment sentiment may have carried over to organized religion, as weekly church attendance started to slide among both Protestants and Catholics. By 1969, church attendance was down 11 points from 1955 among Catholics, and 5 points among Protestants.

The Second Vatican Council, which began in 1962, ushered in an age of reform in the Roman Catholic Church. But despite the reforms offered in Vatican II, Pope Paul VI's 1968 encyclical on birth control reaffirmed the church's strict stance on the issue. Many Catholics, particularly young adults, may have felt that they could not oppose the pope's encyclical and remain good Catholics, and therefore began to attend mass less frequently.

The activism of the 1960s gave way to disillusionment and cynicism in the 1970s. Americans were growing more pessimistic about the economy, the prospects for peace in the world, social institutions, and their own futures. Catholic attendance at Mass continued to slip during this decade -- from 60% in 1970 to 52% in 1979 -- but Protestants' weekly attendance showed little statistical change.

The public mood of discouragement, apparent during most of the 1970s, gave way to a far more upbeat frame of mind in the 1980s. Economic optimism increased during this period, and while concern over many problems confronting society -- such as crime, unemployment, and the nuclear threat -- remained, Americans were far less apprehensive about the immediate future than they had been in the previous decade. Catholic church attendance seemed to change very little during this decade, hovering between 51% and 53%.

Catholic church attendance has experienced some rises and dips during the 1990s and the first few years of the 21^st century, but nowhere near the decline that occurred between the 1950s and the 1980s. In March 2002, Protestants reported attending church more frequently on average than Catholics for the first time in nearly a half-century of Gallup Poll data collection. Protestants' levels of church attendance have remained higher than that of Catholics since then.

Protestants pulled into a clear lead over Catholics in weekly church attendance after the sex scandals that rocked the Catholic Church in early 2002 -- but the decline in Catholic church attendance began long before the scandals. The latest November figure shows a decided rebound in attendance at Mass, but Catholics still trail Protestants by a small margin.

*Results are based on telephone interviews with 1,004 national adults, aged 18 and older, conducted Nov. 10-12, 2003. For results based on the total sample of national adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the margin of sampling error is ±3 percentage points.

Church grows when pastor helps people find God's love. (Nation).(Brief Article)
National Catholic Reporter, Dec 21, 2001, by Patricia Lefevere

They came. They saw. They heard. They left too soon.

That has been the pattern in many churches and synagogues since the Sept. 11 terror attacks dropped people to their knees and sent them scrambling to houses of worship nationwide.

Research by the Gallup Organization indicates that the crowded churches and synagogues of early autumn had by early November returned to their pre-Sept. 11 attendance levels.

Paul Baard, a motivational psychologist who teaches at Fordham University's Graduate School of Business, thinks churches have blown an opportunity.

After Sept. 11, it was "extrinsic motivation" that drove people to churches, Baard told NCR Nov. 29, during the week that Gallup released its study. They came to have their fears quelled or to have profound questions answered, he said.

But many found the church was the "same old, same old," he said. "There was the same lack of relevance to their needs as that which they left years before." He called that sense of futility "amotivational." Baard, who teaches communications and management at Fordham, is not surprised that this group didn't return.

Still other non-churched people came and discovered that the church's ministers and its services offered them an opportunity to connect with God and his people. So they stayed.

The reason some congregations -- largely mega-churches with more than 2,000 members -- retained their post-Sept. 11 visitors is due to motivation, said Baard, who has done empirical research on motivation and who co-authored Motivating Your Church (Crossroad Publishing, 2001).

Baard calls motivation "the energy behind our doing." It is intrinsic or self-motivation -- the "I-really-want-to-be-here-doing-this" kind -- that stimulates higher levels of attendance, of giving and volunteering, he said.

The reason mega-churches such as Willow Creek in Illinois and Saddlebrook in California, both evangelical Protestant congregations, became "mega" is because they met certain psychological needs in people, the researcher-psychologist said.

The need for autonomy -- to have influence, and to be free of pressure from a member of the clergy or a church worker -- is a key factor in building intrinsic motivation, Baard said.

People want to learn new things about God. Their attitude is, "I'm either growing or I'm going," he said.

Overall the need for feeling related is what keeps people coming back. Without a sense of mutual caring among parishioners, few will stay. "It's like in `Cheers,'" Baard said. "I want to go where everybody knows my name."

Baard, who was raised Catholic, is an evangelical lay leader of a Protestant church in Manhasset, N.Y. The church has 300 registered members, 49 percent of them reared as Catholics. The church counts 500 to 600 weekly attendees.

Baard's research has shown that to the degree that churches meet basic motivational needs, people attend more frequently, give at higher levels, offer their services more often and even in some cases go on to full-time ministries. His studies have also shown that church size, denomination and the personality of a congregation are not significant factors. Across the Christian spectrum, he has found growing, thriving churches from storefronts to great cathedrals.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.