POLLS: FEWER AMERICANS JOINING AND ATTENDING CHURCH
by Stan Griffin

According to two recent polls, fewer Americans belong to a formal religion and attend church regularly. During the period 1960-2000, church attendance numbers had been holding firm at about 55%.

Polls conducted last year showed that 29.4 million citizens skip church (14% of the population) compared to a 1990 survey placing those numbers at 14.3 million and 8%, an increase of 50 percent. An interesting potential statistic: if you classify the "church skippers" as a denomination, it would place third behind Catholics (almost 60 million) and Baptists (nearly 34 million)!

Two other sets of poll numbers are attention-getters: the percentage of the population calling themselves Christians dropped over the past ten years from 86% to 77% and those claiming membership in non-Christian groups increased from 3.3% to 3.7%.

On the plus side for Christians, a recent Gallup poll found that over 90% of the U.S. people believe in God (over 240 million). Atheists (non-believers) are counted at 902,000 (less than 1/2 of 1%).

When reading and trying to interpret polls, we must remember that results can be skewed by variations such as wording of questions asked. One question in 1990: "What is your religion?" The 2001 query: "What is your religion, if any?" The second one implies that it's all right NOT to have one.