Leadership Journal

Gallup's numbers, showing steady U.S. church attendance over five decades, may be artificially high, new research shows.

The Gallup Poll has asked the question, "Did you go to church or synagogue in the past seven days?" and received a 40 percent affirmative response since 1939. But researchers noticed that did not translate into 118 million Americans filling the pews each week.

According to The Barna Group, 76 million adults regularly do not go to church. In fact, about one-third of the population surveyed has not attended any type of church gathering, outside of weddings and funerals, in the past six months.

To answer the discrepancy, researchers Kirk Hadaway and Penny Marler developed a "count-based" estimate of church attendance, using the number of churches in the United States and determining the average attendance at these churches. They arrived at an attendance figure of about 20 percent of U.S. adults.

While other researchers doubt Hadaway and Marler's research methods, most conclude that fewer Americans are attending church than was previously thought. That's because many adults do not consider church attendance to be essential to their faith.

Six out of ten unchurched people consider themselves to be Christian. Out of this group, the largest number are Catholic (29%), while 18 percent identify themselves as Baptist. Of the remaining unchurched, 77 percent say they are "absolutely or moderately" committed to Christianity.

A separate Barna survey indicates that only 17 percent of adults believe that "a person's faith is meant to be developed mainly by involvement in a local church."

Even among adults with a biblical worldview, only about one quarter embraced the importance of church attendance in a person's spiritual life.

People also tend to be easier on themselves when they miss church due to vacation or other scheduling conflicts. They may answer pollsters according to what they "usually do," rather than their actual actions the previous week.

Numbers vary, but whatever way you look at it, it adds up to fewer people in church.