apmom wrote:
Which "teachings" are you talking about? The newer versions of today or the versions of the 1600th century or the origional versions? See, like all other organized religions they change their tunes to meet the times or to satisfy their religious leaders. This is why people have stopped going. The hyprocracy in all of them is astounding.
Perhaps this is true for the folks you hang around with, but not for the country as a whole.

Americans' Church Attendance Inches Up in 2010

by Frank Newport

PRINCETON, NJ -- Americans' self-reported church attendance has continued to inch up in 2010, with 43.1% of Americans reporting weekly or almost weekly attendance. This is up slightly from 42.8% in 2009 and 42.1% in 2008. The increase comes as Americans' economic confidence has also risen, suggesting that, instead of church attendance rising when economic times get bad, as some theorize, the opposite pattern may be occurring.

Frequent Church Attendance + Economic Confidence Index, Yearly Averages

Gallup's measure of church attendance is based on more than 800,000 interviews collected as part of Gallup Daily tracking between February 2008 and May 2010. The measure asks respondents to report their church, synagogue, or mosque attendance in one of five categories of frequency. (Detailed month-by-month data are presented on page 2.)

How Often Do You Attend Church, Synagogue, or Mosque?

There has been well-publicized speculation about the possibility that church attendance has risen over the past two years as Americans became more despondent and worried as a result of the economic recession. However, trends in Gallup's Economic Confidence Index, an ongoing measure of perceived economic confidence, reflect just the opposite pattern, with both church attendance and economic confidence increasing from 2008 to 2009, and now into 2010.

Such correlations do not prove causality, and it is possible that despite the more positive economic confidence, other economic realities such as unemployment could be related to the increase in church attendance. Still, these particular population-level data do little to directly support the theory that people seek out the solace of religion, as measured in religious service participation, when economic times turn tough.

Church Attendance Among Subgroups

Gallup Daily tracking also documents the extent to which church attendance varies significantly across subgroups of the U.S. adult population.

Frequent Church Attendance, January-May 2010, by Demographic Group

Major correlates of church attendance include politics (with Republicans and conservatives more likely than others to attend), race (with blacks more likely to attend), age (with older Americans more likely to attend), region (highest in the South), marital status (married adults more likely to attend), and gender (women more likely than men to attend).



"Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves." -- Ronald Reagan