The Canon to the Ordinary here Rhode Island, the Rev. Canon Dr. Dena Cleaver-Bartholemew pointed me to this post on Threads:
From my dissertation, “Kevin Kruse judiciously points out that in 1850 church attendance was a mere 16 percent and that in 1900 church attendance was at 36 percent. It was only at the end of the 1950s that church attendance skyrocketed to 69 percent after corporate interests had been pushing an ideology linking faith, freedom, and free enterprise.” What do you think? Has anyone else read about this? For those decrying decline of church attendance in U.S. 1850 & 1900 were far worse. (1)
(There’s more info and conversation at the link.)
I’ve seen that point made before. Essentially, Corporate America in the middle of the 20th Century decided that churches were a useful tool to boost productivity and reliability in the workforce. And that drove attendance levels way out of normal experience during that period.
As the churches began to question the existing order (taking sides in the Civil Rights era and protesting the Vietnam War etc) the alliance didn’t seem as useful to the bottom line and the structures supporting church and clergy in society were slowly removed. Blue Laws were repealed, clergy lost automatic access to power structures and commerce stopped making way for religiosity.
The net result was a decline to the previous levels of church attendance in the US. It’s not failure because we began to speak prophetically.
I’m a child of the 50’s and 60’s, and I entered the workforce in the early 70’s. As a student of public policy and politics (and former appointee of two presidents), I suppose that the corporate paternalism factor had some material effect. More likely, it seems to me (blissfully bereft of data) that as public trust in institutions began to weaken, more of the unchurched turned to what they perceived alternatives, such as evangelical meetings and services. My supposition is validated, at least to some extent, as some of those who trusted in such resources have begun to look elsewhere, resulting in steeper attendance declines than in “mainline” denomination churches.
One might exercise considerable and useful caution regarding statistics from 19th-century faith communities. They were very likely self-reported, and even now self-reported church statistics can be iffy. How many churches of almost all denominations do we all know with many more members reported than might appear to be active or involved in some non-trivial way? This is not to disparage the basic underlying realities of far greater church attendance in the mid-20th century period than probably all other times in U.S. history —only a caution that reliance on self-reported percentages might also involve some level of wishful thinking, no matter how earnest and admirable the intentions. Moreover, current self-reported attendance figures post-pandemic might or might not include online logins or views (even partial and very short), so the current situation can be baffling indeed. And then there are those groups such as Calvary Chapels which intentionally do not maintain membership lists. Among more institutionalized groups, apples-to-apples comparisons between groups or decades and centuries can be difficult to ascertain given varying levels of evidence necessary to define “attend” and “belong” and evolving standards or clarifications about what those terms even mean.
Thanks Dr. Ferriby. An important caution. (And what a delight to hear from you.)