The Bad News: Attendance still at a record low
The thirty percent attendance figure ties a record low. From the article:
“Gallup has measured Americans’ attendance at religious services since 1939, when 41% said they had been to a place of worship in the previous week. By 1955, the annual average for the measure in the U.S. had risen to a record-high 49%. After a slight decline in 1967, each yearly average hovered near 40% until 2014’s 36% reading. In 2019, before COVID-19 affected the U.S., the annual average was 34%.”
The women are back. Where are the men?
These numbers would suggest a churchwide adult population that’s at least 60% female. From the article:
Women were only slightly more likely than men to report attending a religious service in 2019, but when the pandemic hit, that gap grew as men’s participation dropped more than women’s. While women’s attendance has since recovered completely, men’s is significantly lower than it was pre-pandemic.
Here are the numbers:
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Before the shutdowns (in 2019) 36 percent of women and 33 percent of men said they’d gone to church.
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As of May 2022, 36 percent of women again said they went to church, but only 24 percent of men said the same.
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In other words, about a quarter of the men who attended church prior to the pandemic shutdowns no longer participate in a weekly service (either in person or online).
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In raw numbers, that’s about 11 million missing men. (In reality, the number of missing men is probably in the 5-6 million range, since people tend to over-report their church attendance by a factor of 2)
