How Big Is The ‘Typical’ American Church?
(ANALYSIS) Way back in the early days of this newsletter, I wasn’t very good at titling my posts. I know it seems like something an academic shouldn’t think about, but it really does matter. Here’s an example.
On June 5, 2023, I published a bit of analysis titled “How Many Religious Congregations Are in Your County?”—descriptive, but not very punchy. I know the title isn’t great because I keep thinking about that post and want to pull it back up, but I can’t remember what it was called.
Here’s what I really should have called it: “What Parts of the Country Have Too Many Churches? And Which Ones Don’t Have Enough?” That’s the whole point of that data exercise. For instance, I found that in Arkansas there’s a church for every 407 people, but in Nevada it’s 2,042 people per house of worship. Generally speaking, the ratios are low in the South and much higher on the West Coast. It would be nice to move some of those houses of worship across the country to even things out, but that’s easier said than done.
I wanted to noodle around with that idea some more today. I’ve been thinking about a different kind of ratio—the number of adherents compared to the number of congregations. Or, more simply: how many people would be in the pews if every member showed up one weekend?
First Baptist Church of Mount Vernon, Illinois, had a total membership of about 30 folks when we decided to close in July 2024. Our average Sunday attendance hovered around 10–12 in the months leading up to our last service. When I attend Mass with my wife at St. Mary’s, I’m certain their congregation has a couple of thousand folks on the membership rolls.
Gathering this kind of information is really tough, for what it’s worth. It’s my strong belief that most religious groups don’t do a great job of data gathering. That problem is especially acute among the smallest religious traditions, which don’t have large organizational structures that lend themselves to accurate data collection and organization.
To mitigate that, I’ll focus on the traditions in the 2020 Religion Census with the largest number of reported congregations. I settled on the 40 largest religious groups.
You can read the rest of Ryan Burge’s post on Substack.
Ryan Burge is an assistant professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University, a pastor in the American Baptist Church and the co-founder and frequent contributor to Religion in Public, a forum for scholars of religion and politics to make their work accessible to a more general audience. His research focuses on the intersection of religiosity and political behavior, especially in the U.S. Follow him on X at @ryanburge.