There are over 35,000 registered Protestant Churches in the USA.
That is just not true. In fact, it is an extremely laughable and ridiculous number. Here is why I say that:
First, a denomination is defined in the American Heritage dictionary as: A large group of religious congregations united under a common faith and name and organized under a single administrative and legal hierarchy.
If there are 35,000 denominations, then by definition, one would find all of them in each of the 50 states. But we will be much kinder than that. Giving the benefit of the doubt, and using just 10%, that would be 3,500 in each state. That seems reasonable, right? That still would not be what I would consider a LARGE group of congregations, but, just to give even MORE benefit of the doubt to this figure, let's use a figure of 2% of these denominations in each state, so we just divide 35,000 by 50.
So, we will say there are 700 of these "denominations" in each state. That of course would mean that NONE of the denominations cross state borders or that only 2% of these "denominations" cross state borders. Of course that is a unrealistically low number according to the definition, but we will use that number anyone. So, here is some math:
. Since Indianapolis is supposed to be a fairly decent cross section because most companies do their market research in the midwest, particularly Indianapolis, I chose that city to work with (plus I live there and looked up some stuff in the phone book!). The population of Indiana is roughly 6,3000,000 and has about 650 cities and towns where Indianapolis is the largest and has a population of 785,000, or 12%. According to an article in crosswalk, about 50% are protestant. There are about 720 protestant churches in Indianapolis listed under 35 denominations. Assuming then that everyone who calls thems protestant goes to church regularly, there are 545 people who attend each of these churches each week. You could also then say that there are an average of 20 congregations or churches per denomination.
If there are only 35 denominations in Indianapolis, which is about 12% of the state population, then according to the number of denominations and the low estimate we are going to use, then that means there are 665 other denominations in the rest of the state that are NOT represented in Indianapolis, which, of course, is just as a ridiculous assumption as the low numbers we have been using. So then, for the rest of Indiana, or 649 cities and towns, we have 665 denominations, or roughly 1 different denomination per city or town. If those towns DO have the 35 that are in Indianapolis, then each OTHER city or town must have 36 different denominations, BUT, each other town MUST have a different one besides the 35 found in Indianapolis.
Now lets take a small city, Anderson, which has a population of about 72,000 and is about the 6th or 7th largest. That would give it a protestant population of 36,000. It would have to have about 36 different denominations which would mean about 1000 people per denomination. And of course, in order to have a LARGE group, we could, again, using a low number, call that 10 congregations. That would leave 100 people in each congregation each week.
The average population per city in Indiana, rounded UP is 10,000. Again, using the figure of 36 denominations (each having the 35 of Indianapolis, plus one unique one of their own), for the 5,000 protestants, would be 138 people per denomination per town. Divide that by just 5, even a more ridiculus small number for a large group, give you 28 people in each congregation!
Don't like those numbers? Lets do some more. Just taking the US population to be about 302 million (151 million protestants) in those 35,000 denominations. Assuming a denomination, a LARGE group of congregations averages 20 congregations, then you have 8600 (rounded UP) people per denomination. If there are only 20 congregations per denomination, then at the most, each state could only have 40% of the denominations. Then, each state would have an average of 215 per denomination in the entire state! If Indiana is a thumbnail average of 650 cites, then each denomination has 0.33 persons per town or city. Remember that is if only 20% of the denominations are in each state. If they all were, it would be .02 persons! Yikes!
The number of 35,000 Protestant denominations is so easily found to be ridiculous. Anyone who doe any math can easily see that number is thoroughly debunked. And anyone who quotes that number, obviously does not corroborate or research their article. It is a patently false arguement. Even if the often used number of 20,000 denominations in the US increases the number to only 376 per person per denomination per state). If they use it for the entire world, multiply by a factor of 20, or just 7500 per state and that is just as silly at best. At worst, it is a deliberate out and out lie by twisting of facts and definitions aimed at evoking an emotional response and a fear factor. And anyone who quotes that number deserves to be rebuked.
I agree.
What would be a reasonable number?