More Than Weekly: Understanding America’s Most Devout Religious Attenders
(ANALYSIS) OK, so there’s this response option to a single survey question that has intrigued me for a very long time. It’s about religious attendance. Across different surveys, the number of response options can vary. The standard is typically six increments, but others — like the General Social Survey — use eight.
Still, the top and bottom of the scale are always the same: “never” and “more than once a week.” I’ve written about the never attenders several times, but I’ve never gone in depth on the people who say they’re at a house of worship multiple times per week.
Before digging into this small group of Americans who seem to be in church every time the doors are open, let me take a quick aside on measurement. I think people on social media often misunderstand what a question about religious attendance is actually measuring. They tend to think of it in terms of “tally marks.” Someone reads the question and starts doing a mental calculation of how often they go. If it’s 45 times a year, they respond “weekly.”
But that’s not how this question works. Instead, people read it and ask themselves, “How do I see myself in relation to this?” Choosing something like “seldom” doesn’t mean the person attends once every three years. What it actually signals is this: I do go to a worship service sometimes — more than “never.”
“Never” is the clear line in the sand: I despise religion, and I never take part in it. “Seldom,” on the other hand, means, “I really don’t go much, but I might under the right circumstances.” That’s a subtle but important difference.
Now, when someone says they attend a house of worship multiple times per week, are they literally counting 75–100 visits a year? I don’t think so. What they’re likely doing in their head is something more like: “I go to corporate worship most weeks, plus I attend a small group or midweek Bible study about half the time.” If you actually add it up, it may come out to 60 visits a year, but what matters is that they see themselves as very religiously active. And that self-perception is what matters most in survey data.
So, what percentage of Americans fall into the top category of religious attendance?
According to the General Social Survey (GSS), which has tracked religious attendance since 1972, the percentage of Americans attending religious services multiple times per week has been fairly stable for most of the last 50 years.
From the late 1970s through the early 2000s, this figure hovered around 7.5% to 8%, despite some minor fluctuations in the data points.
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.