To Verify

Total attendance at U.S. worship services in 1993: 5.6 billion. Total attendance at U.S. professional baseball, football, and basketball games combined: 103 million (less than 2 percent of the worship attendance)

Americans’ 1992 religious giving: $56.7 billion. Amount spent in 1992 on professional baseball, football, and basketball: 4 billion (7 percent of amount for religious causes)

Americans believed to have a sexually transmitted disease other than AIDS: 1 in 5

Percentage of Americans who say religion is “very important” to them: . Who said the same in 1987: 53

Percentage of Men’s Health readers who have had sex with a coworker: 68

Percentage of churched youth claiming a personal commitment to Christ: 86. Percentage of churched youth who admitted watching an X-rated movie within the past 3 months: 16

Ratio of American children who sleep in homes where their fathers do not live: 1:2

Americans now alive who will one day be murdered: 2,000,000

Percentage of adult deaths in the U.S. caused by heart disease: 33.5. Caused by HIV infection: 1.2

Longest sermon on record: 48 hours, 18 minutes. Number present at its conclusion: 8

Percentage of sales of U.S. Postage Christmas stamps that are “religious”: 44. That are “secular”: 56

RELIGION NO BUST FOR BUSTERS

When “baby busters”–the generation following the baby boomers and generally accused of disillusionment–are compared to their elders, they seem at first to be less religious. Until, that is, they are compared to boomers when they were 18 to 29 years old. A recent study by the Princeton Religion Research Center indicates that busters are not that far off the track of their predecessors.

Church membership among 18- to 29-year-olds has dropped slightly, from 60 percent in 1983 to 59 percent in 1993. But attendance has actually increased from 30 to 32 percent. And busters in 1993 gave the identical response that boomers gave in 1983 when 44 percent said religion was “very important” to them. (Ten years later, boomers have raised that to 54 percent.)

Whether or not the religious interests of busters will mature with age remains to be seen, but these numbers suggest that they are no more spiritually deficient than were the generations who preceded them.

GRIM TOLL

Nearly one in four pregnancies in the United States ends in abortion.

In The Index of Leading Cultural Indicators, William Bennett presents facts like these to illustrate the decline of moral values in America. About 1.7 million abortions are done annually, with nearly one-eighth during the second- or third-trimester. Ninety-three percent of the time, there is no “special case”–a mother whose life is threatened, a rape or incest victim, or a child with predictions of health problems.

– Reported in Ministry Advantage, 56/94.