Every ten years or so, an organization of sociologists of religion prepares a study on religious denominations and their membership. Catholic data was gathered by the Glenmary Research Center, and their web site includes an overview of the findings.
The good folks at the Church of the Nazarene took part in the project too, and organized the data into a handy web site where you can find the figures on your city. For a data junkie such as myself, it’ll be hours of fun.
And it contains some surprises: little Massachusetts would seem to be a relatively religious place, with 64% of the population having some (at least nominal) religious affiliation.
Here are data on the Boston metro. They confirm some things that are obvious: this isn’t a hot town for Evangelicals: sorry, brethren; but still they’re growing while the “oldline” communities are shrinking, with strong declines among the denominations most identified with moral and doctrinal liberalism. Cynically, it’s more or less good news for the future of the culture and the politics here. It doesn’t look like it would be in a public official’s interest to hitch his star to the agenda of — well, I won’t name names.
I’ll leave it to others to comment on greater Washington.
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I love the map that someone (it may be Glenmary) publishes periodically of county-by-county breakdowns — it makes the regional differences really clear. More Muslims than Episcopalians in Washington!!
I love Jesus! Who’s with me?
Dear JL,
Well I’m with you in that.
As for Massachusetts being relatively religious, that stat (64% religious affiliation) is of course because the largest two groups are Catholics and Jews. Catholics are counted if they’ve been baptized (no need to sign up) and Jews are similarly included. As these two groups well over 60% of the population in the Bay State, that’s why the affiliation percentage is so high.
Of course, only 15% of Catholics in the Archdiocese of Boston (Catholic population: 2 million) go to Mass on Sunday. I don’t doubt that Jewish attendance at Friday and Saturday synagogue services aren’t much better. It’s entirely possible that affiliation and practice are closer in other locales.
For example, I often hear it bandied about that the national USA Catholic Mass attendance rate is 25 to 30%. If that’s the case, and we have dioceses like Boston (and a large one at that) at only 15%, then some of the other dioceses must have much larger percentages of folk attending divine worship…in which case, affiliation may mean something.
Which is likely why in the Dakotas a law can be passed to eliminate abortion and criminalize it as soon as Roe v Wade is overturned, while in Massachusetts the dominant Democratic party (dominated by [sic] Catholics) is about to write support for gay marriage into its party platform.
IOW, the stats from Glenmary and the Nazarene site are interesting, but don’t really tell us all that much about the religious life of our fellow citizens.
Where’s the 15% figure from, Steve? The last figure I’d heard was 24%.