{"id":42275,"date":"2014-05-01T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2014-05-01T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermon-illustrations\/americans-claim-to-attend-church-much-more-than-they-do\/"},"modified":"2014-05-01T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2014-05-01T12:00:00","slug":"americans-claim-to-attend-church-much-more-than-they-do","status":"publish","type":"sermon-illustrations","link":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermon-illustrations\/americans-claim-to-attend-church-much-more-than-they-do\/","title":{"rendered":"Americans Claim to Attend Church Much More Than They Do"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>According to a study from the Public Religion Research Institute, Americans may not be telling the truth about church attendance. But the real story here isn&#39;t just the headline; it&#39;s where the exaggeration of church attendance comes from in the first place. For context: gauging exaggeration in a poll is notoriously difficult&mdash;after all, your numbers are only as good as people&#39;s honesty.<\/p>\n\n<p>So, to see how much exaggeration was present in people&#39;s reported church attendance, this study gathered data by using two platforms&mdash;a phone interview and an online survey. In the impersonal online survey, participants were less likely to exaggerate their church attendance &hellip; showing &quot;much lower levels of worship attendance.&quot; Why? Because of what sociologists call &quot;social desirability bias.&quot; We&#39;ve all felt it, it&#39;s the desire to exaggerate something about ourselves that we feel will impress others.<\/p>\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading is-style-article-subhead2\"><em>Possible Preaching Angle: <\/em><\/h2>\n\n<p><em>Here&#39;s the bottom line: we live in a culture where church attendance is dropping dramatically, but people still feel a strong bias to be perceived as attendees. Where does that hypocrisy come from? Is it positively or negatively motivated? If church is socially desirable, why aren&#39;t we attending it more? I guess we need another survey &hellip;<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"template":"","tax_ctp_audience":[],"tax_ctp_authors":[],"tax_ctp_categories":[165],"tax_ctp_format":[171],"tax_ctp_illustration_types":[411],"tax_ctp_multimedia":[],"tax_ctp_point_editor":[],"tax_publications":[140],"tax_ctp_tags":[3452,3601,3604,4281,4546],"tax_ctp_topics":[378,395,396],"class_list":["post-42275","sermon-illustrations","type-sermon-illustrations","status-publish","hentry","tax_publications-ct-pastors","tax_ctp_tags-attendance","tax_ctp_tags-church","tax_ctp_tags-church-attendance","tax_ctp_tags-involvement","tax_ctp_tags-news-that-illustrates"],"acf":{"scripture_references":[{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null}]},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Americans Claim to Attend Church Much More Than They Do - CT Pastors<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermon-illustrations\/americans-claim-to-attend-church-much-more-than-they-do\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Americans Claim to Attend Church Much More Than They Do - CT Pastors\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"According to a study from the Public Religion Research Institute, Americans may not be telling the truth about church attendance. But the real story here isn&#039;t just the headline; it&#039;s where the exaggeration of church attendance comes from in the first place. 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