Attendance at Religious Services in U.S. Steady Since 1990

Monday, September 17, 2007

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Durham, NC -- Despite various claims that Americans are becoming either more or less religious, attendance at weekly religious services in the United States has been essentially constant since 1990, according to a recent study by a University of Maryland professor of sociology and a Duke University professor of sociology, religion and divinity.
 
In a study published in the September issue of Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Maryland professor Stanley Presser and Duke professor Mark Chaves write, “However one reads the evidence about trends between World War II and 1990, we currently live in a time of stability.”
 
Chaves said that short-term increases in attendance at religious services following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were not sustained, and that the proliferation of mega-churches has not led to overall gains in attendance.

“Some commentators say we’re in the midst of a religious revival,” he said. “Others say we’re experiencing religious decline. But the data show otherwise.”

This study is significant, Chaves said, because “it shows that we live in a time of neither religious revival nor dramatic decline. These results also suggest that the main pattern of religious change may be periods of stability punctuated by times of transition, not steady trends in one direction or the other.”