In addition to being based upon the spirit of the Ten Commandments,[7] the importance of church attendance in Christian theology is delineated in Hebrews 10:25, which implores the believers: "Let us not neglect our church meetings, as some people do, but encourage and warn each other, especially now that the day of his coming back again is drawing near."[8][9][10] Certain early Christian saints emphasized the necessity of church attendance for the continuance of the faith, such as Saint John Climacus, who declared that "A sure sign of the deadening of the soul is the avoidance of church services."[11]
About two-thirds of Latin American Christians and 90% of African Christians (in Ghana, Nigeria, Rwanda and Zimbabwe), according to the World Values Survey, said they attended church regularly.[12]South Africa is the only African country where just 55% of Christians attend church regularly.[13] According to a 2018 study by the Pew Research Center, Christians in Africa and Latin America and the United States have high levels of commitment to their faith.[14] Data from the European Social Survey in 2012 showed that around a third of European Christians said they attend services once a month or more.[12] The Gallup International, a self-reporting survey conducted via telephone, indicates that 37% of Americans report that they attend religious services weekly or near-weekly in 2013.[15] The Pew Research Center stated, however, that there is a "sharp increase in church attendance around the two most significant Christian holidays, Christmas and Easter."[16] As such, on Christmas (a holy day of obligation in the Catholic Church, a Festival in the Lutheran Churches and a Principal Feast in the Anglican Communion), LifeWay Research found that "six out of 10 Americans typically attend church".[17] Countries that hold or have held a policy of state atheism have actively discouraged church attendance and church membership, often persecuting Christians who continued to worship.[18]
The holding of church services pertains to the observance of the Lord's Day in Christianity.[19] The Bible has a precedent for a pattern of morning and evening worship that has given rise to Sunday morning and Sunday evening services of worship held in the churches of many Christian denominations today, a "structure to help families sanctify the Lord’s Day."[19] In Numbers 28:1–10 and Exodus 29:38–39, "God commanded the daily offerings in the tabernacle to be made once in the morning and then again at twilight".[19] In Psalm 92, which is a prayer concerning the observance of the Sabbath, the prophet David writes "It is good to give thanks to the Lord, to sing praises to your name, O Most High; to declare your steadfast love in the morning, and your faithfulness by night" (cf. Psalm 134:1).[19] Church father Eusebius of Caesarea thus declared: "For it is surely no small sign of God’s power that throughout the whole world in the churches of God at the morning rising of the sun and at the evening hours, hymns, praises, and truly divine delights are offered to God. God’s delights are indeed the hymns sent up everywhere on earth in his Church at the times of morning and evening."[19] The early Christians attended two liturgies on the Lord's Day, worshipping communally in both a morning service and evening service, with the purpose of reading the Scriptures and celebrating the Eucharist.[20] Throughout the rest of the week, Christians assembled at the church every day for morning prayer (which became known as lauds) and evening prayer (which became known as vespers), while praying at the other fixed prayer times privately; Christian monastics came to gather together to corporately pray all of the seven canonical hours communally.[21][22][23]
In addition to being based upon the spirit of the Ten Commandments (which includes the injunction to "Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy"), the importance of church attendance in Christian theology is delineated in Hebrews 10:25, which implores the believers: "Let us not neglect our church meetings, as some people do, but encourage and warn each other, especially now that the day of his coming back again is drawing near."[8][9] Among Sunday Sabbatarians (First-day Sabbatarians), observance of the Lord's Day often takes the form of attending the Sunday morning service of worship, receiving catechesis through Sunday School, performing acts of mercy (such as evangelism, visiting prisoners in jails and seeing the sick at hospitals), and attending the Sunday evening service of worship, as well as refraining from Sunday shopping, servile work, playing sports, viewing the television, and dining at restaurants.[24][19][25]
The majority of Christian denominations hold church services on the Lord's Day (with many offering Sunday morning and Sunday evening services); a number of traditions have mid-week Wednesday evening services as well.[A][26] In some Christian denominations, church services are held daily, with these including those in which the canonical hours are prayed, as well as the offering of the Mass, among other forms of worship.[27] In addition to this, many Christians attend services of worship on holy days such as Christmas, Ash Wednesday, Good Friday, Ascension Thursday, among others depending on the Christian denomination.[28]
Statistics
Ash Wednesday and Good Friday are two days within the Christian penitential season of Lent that are popular days for churchgoing. The image on the left depicts a LutheranDivine Service on Ash Wednesday while the image on the right depicts a Roman Catholic Good Friday service.[29]
The Gallup International, a self-reporting survey conducted via telephone, indicates that 37% of Americans report that they attend religious services weekly or near-weekly in 2013.[15] Self-reporting surveys conducted online indicate substantially lower weekly attendance rates,[30] and methods of measurement that do not rely on self-reporting estimate even lower rates; for instance, a 2005 study published in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion found that just 22% of Americans attend services weekly.[31] This compares to other countries' claims such as 15% of French citizens, 10% of British citizens,[32] 8.8% of Australian citizens and 5.6% of Dutch citizens.[33] In the U.K., in 2011, an average once-a-week attendance in Anglican churches went down by 0.3% compared with 2012, thus exhibiting a stabilizing trend.[34] Previously, starting from 2000, an average rate of weekly church attendance in Britain was dropping down 1% annually. In 2013, the Pew Research Center reported that 37% of all Americans attended church on a weekly basis.[35] In its turn, Gallup estimated the once-a-week church attendance of the Americans in 2013 as 39%.[36]
Based on 1990–1991 data, it was estimated that the country with the highest rate of church attendance in the world was Nigeria (89%) and with the lowest – the Soviet Union (2%).[37] Nigeria's data was notable, as Nigeria is very religiously diverse – the population is 50.1% Muslim and 48.2% Christian. The state authorities in the USSR, which dissolved in 1991, discouraged church construction; they had a hostile relationship with traditional organized religions and instead promoted Marxist-Leninist ideology, which espoused state atheism.[38][39]
A survey commissioned by the Época Magazine in 2005 showed that 29% of Brazilians attend church weekly, and indicated that it is lesser than in the United States but higher than in Western Europe and Japan, indeed showing that contrary to the local popular belief, Brazilians of the time could indeed be regarded as a religious people even in practice (though it is ponderable that the growth of the population declaring to be solely irreligious in nationwide censuses grew about 100% between 2000 and 2010, and 200% between 2000 and 2013, from 4% to 12%, and general secularization also grew among the portion of the population that remained religious).[40]
A 2006 Financial Times (FT)/Harris Poll conducted online surveyed 12,507 adults over 16 years old in the United States (2,010 U.S. adults were surveyed) and five European countries (France, Italy, Germany, Great Britain and Spain). The survey found that only 26% of those polled attended religious services "every week or more often", 9% went "once or twice a month", 21% went "a few times a year", 3% went "once a year", 22% went "less than once a year", and 18% never attend religious services. Harris Interactive stated that the magnitude of errors cannot be estimated due to sampling errors and non-response bias.[41] A previous nearly identical survey by Harris in 2003 found that only 26% of those surveyed attended religious services "every week or more often", 11% went "once or twice a month" 19% went "a few times a year", 4% went "once a year", 16% went "less than once a year", and 25% never attend religious services.
Calculating the church's average weekend attendance is important since it determines the size of a given church. For example, in the U.S., an average weekend attendance of more than 2,000 people separates a mega church from a large church, and an average weekend attendance between 51 and 300 people defines the large church; while a small church is the church with an attendance lower than 50 people.[42] (Alternative definitions, such as house church, simple church, intentional community, were proposed by the Barna Group, an American private consulting firm).[43] A narrow definition of a regular church attendee can be viewed as a synonym for a Sunday service visitation, while a broad definition, names as a regular attendee a person who comes to church during three out of eight weekends.[44]
The frequency with which Christians attend church services varies greatly around the world. In some countries weekly attendance at religious services is common among Christians, while in others weekly attendance is rare. The following attendance statistics are mostly based on self-reporting surveys and may not accurately reflect real attendance figures.
Percentage of Christians who attend church at least once a week
The following church attendance statistics are taken from the 2004 Gallup report, based on self-reporting telephone surveys. However, it is unclear whether the survey was solely of Christians in the respective country or the entire population (including non-Christians).
A study by the European Social Survey conducted in 2008 found these rates of respondents never attending religious service (excluding special occasions):[71]
Respondents never attending religious services
Percentage
Countries
<10%
Cyprus, Greece, Poland, Bosnia-Herzegovina
10–20%
Croatia, Italy, Ukraine
20–30%
Turkey, Portugal, Russia
30–40%
Estonia, Germany, Sweden
40–50%
Israel, Spain, Netherlands
50–60%
Belgium, United Kingdom, France
>60%
Czech Republic
Attendance by U.S. state
The frequency by which adults attend church services also vary on a state-by-state basis in the United States.
Percentage of adults who attend church at least once a week (2014):[72]
The Pew Research Center studied the effects of gender on religiosity throughout the world, finding that women are generally more religious than men, yet the gender gap is greater for Christians than Muslims. Pew Research Center data in 53 countries, found that 53% of Christian women and 46% of Christian men say they attend services at least once a week. While Christians of both genders in African countries are equally likely to regularly attend services.[73]
Church attendance remains stronger among older demographics, and more common for women in the West.[74][75][76] There is evidence that links church attendance with health benefits. The Pew Research Center, which conducts the extensive research and information program Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, has linked regular church attendance with happiness.[77] Several studies associated church attendance with decreased risk of Alzheimer's disease.[78] Research by Rita W. Law and David A. Sbarra demonstrated that "church attendance was found to have a protective effect against the emergence of mood problems among older adults."[79] Graham et al. discovered that "consistent pattern of lower systolic and diastolic blood pressures among frequent church attenders was found compared to that of infrequent attenders which was not due to the effects of age, obesity, cigarette smoking, or socioeconomic status."[80] Oman D et al. found that "infrequent (never or less than weekly) attenders had significantly higher rates of circulatory, cancer, digestive, and respiratory mortality (p < 0.05), but not mortality due to external causes."[81] With respect to students, Glanville et al. found "that religious attendance promotes higher intergenerational closure, friendship networks with higher educational resources and norms, and extracurricular participation."[82] Research conducted at the Harvard School of Public Health found "that regularly attending church services together reduces a couple’s risk of divorce by 47 percent".[83]
A 2018 sociological survey found that in the United States, "Donald Trump voters who attend church regularly are more likely than nonreligious Trump voters to have warmer feelings toward racial and religious minorities, to be more supportive of immigration and trade, and to be more concerned about poverty."[84][85] A 2005 European Union survey found that religious belief increased with age and was higher among women, those who were leaning towards right-wing politics, and those reflecting more upon philosophical and ethical issues.[86] In particular, the Iona Institute documented increasing church attendance in Ireland, despite sex-abuse scandals that plagued the Catholic Church.[87] Some suggest[who?] the rise is due to the effects of the economic recession.
Research shows that there is a correlation between church attendance and the level of education. For instance, in a Pew Research study from 1996, approximately 34% of high school dropouts went to church on a typical Sunday, while 44% of those with a college degree or higher did.[88] 48% of married individuals attended church on a typical Sunday, compared with 29% of divorced and 31% of never-married individuals. While it is likely that the well-educated and married might over-report their church attendance more often, these findings nevertheless demonstrate that they have maintained a stronger church-going identity than other Americans. In the United Kingdom, research in 2018 demonstrated that "Students at Oxford, Cambridge and Durham are twice as likely to worship on a Sunday as the general population"—colleges at these universities maintain approximately fifty-six chapels for worship.[89]
According to a 2017 study by the Pew Research Center, overall, American Christians are more likely to have college degrees than the general population.[90] The study found that highly educated Christians in the United States are more likely to attend church than those with lower education levels.[90] On a scale measuring levels of religious commitment, over 70% of Christians in the United States who are educated demonstrate high levels of religiosity.[90]
Influence of parents
Several research studies in the USA and Europe found that church attendance practices of parents, especially fathers, can be highly influential in forming the future church attendance practices of their children.
Practice of religion according to practice of parents (%)
Practice of parents
Practice of children
Father
Mother
Regular
Irregular
Non-practicing
Regular
Regular
32.8
41.4
25.8
Regular
Irregular
37.7
37.6
24.7
Regular
Non-practicing
44.2
22.4
33.4
Irregular
Regular
3.4
58.6
38.0
Irregular
Irregular
7.8
60.8
31.4
Irregular
Non-practicing
25.4
22.8
51.8
Non-practicing
Regular
1.5
37.4
61.1
Non-practicing
Irregular
2.3
37.8
59.9
Non-practicing
Non-practicing
4.6
14.7
80.7
A non-practicing mother with a regular father will see a minimum of two-thirds of her children ending up at church. In contrast, a non-practicing father with a regular mother will see two-thirds of his children not attending church. If his wife is similarly non-practicing that figure rises to 80 percent.[92][93]
An American study found similar results on the impact of fathers:[94]
When both parents attend Sunday school, 72% of the children attend Sunday school when grown.
When only the father attends Sunday school, 55% of the children attend when grown.
When only the mother attends Sunday school, 15% of the children attend when grown.
When neither parent attends Sunday school, only 6% of the children attend when grown.
Research on individuals residing in the United States and Canada concluded that "Ninety-six percent of the unchurched are at least somewhat likely to attend church if they are invited."[95] In July 2018, LifeWay Research found that "Nearly two-thirds of Protestant churchgoers say they’ve invited at least one person to visit their church in the past six months".[96]
Trends
The Christian season of Lent begins on Ash Wednesday, most notably by the public imposition of ashes. In this photograph, a woman receives a cross of ashes on Ash Wednesday at an Episcopal Christian church.
Church attendance in advanced industrial societies is in gradual general decline with people shifting from weekly to monthly or holiday attendance. Sociologists have attributed this trend to a number of reasons, starting from a simple boredom during services and lack of motivation, to generational incompatibility of belief systems and social changes attributed to modernity.[97] Research across 65 different nations showed that out of 20 advanced industrial countries, 16 demonstrated a declining rate of monthly church attendance.[98]
An article published in the Christianity Today Magazine in 2007 suggested that in America, church attendance since the 1990s had remained stable.[99]
The percent of Americans who regularly attend religious services has fluctuated over time, but presently is at a low point.[100] In Gallup Poll surveys, the yearly aggregate of those who answer "yes" to the question "Did you, yourself, happen to attend church or synagogue in the last seven days, or not?" was 36% in 2014, 2015, and 2016.[101] This is a very long-running Gallup question: "In 1939, when Gallup first asked this question, 41% said 'yes.' That percentage dropped to 37% in 1940 and rose to 39% in 1950. It continued to climb, reaching as high as 49% at multiple points in the 1950s. Attendance then settled down to figures around 40% for decades, before dropping to 36%" beginning in 2014.[100]
The decline in church attendance is more pronounced in developed European countries, where it is suggested that the secular culture overrides interest in religion. In Poland, church attendance has declined from more than 50% in 1979 to 40% in 2012.[102]
Disparity between self reported and actual attendance
In the early 1990s, American sociologists Kirk Hadaway, Penny Marler, and Mark Chaves found that weekly attendance at Protestant and Catholic churches in one rural county in Ohio was only about 20%, whereas self-reported church attendance was 36%.[103] The following studies confirmed a long-suspected gap between actual and self-reporting church attendance.[104][105] The researchers have been wary of accusing over-reporters of dishonesty, as they found in the study that those who over-report do so mainly to maintain perceptions of themselves as "churched" Americans, not because they are afraid to reveal to the interviewer that they are "bad Christians."[106] The findings point to a bigger issue as many people in the world may be over-reporting church attendance because of their self-perception and identity as churchgoing people, indicating a certain psychological aspect to the over-reporting of church attendance. Although surveys of church attendance are aimed to study religious behavior, many respondents view them as questions about their identity. This is especially true among Americans who consider themselves "regular churchgoers."[107][108]
^The majority of Christian denominations teach that Sunday is the Lord's Day on which all the faithful must assemble to offer worship to God (cf. first-day Sabbatarianism). A minority of Christian denominations that follow seventh-day Sabbatarianism organize worship on Saturdays.[24]
Citations
^Jespersen, Knud J. V. (21 June 2011). A History of Denmark. Macmillan International Higher Education. p. 91. ISBN9780230344174. It is quite normal to go to church on Christmas Eve, and many people like to celebrate a christening or wedding in church. The Church is especially important at the end of a life; by far the majority of funerals are still conducted in a church by a minister.
^Wigley, John (1980). The Rise and Fall of the Victorian Sunday. Manchester University Press. p. 800. ISBN9780719007941. Following the formulation of the Westminster Confession, fully fledged Sabbatarianism quickly took root too, being embodied in an Act of 1661, then spreading northwards and westwards as the Highlands were opened up after the '46, during which time the doctrine lost its original force and vigour in the Lowlands.
^Abraham, William J.; Kirby, James E. (24 September 2009). The Oxford Handbook of Methodist Studies. OUP Oxford. p. 253. ISBN9780191607431.
^Day, Cathy (26 September 2014). Wiltshire Marriage Patterns 1754-1914: Geographical Mobility, Cousin Marriage and Illegitimacy. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. p. 198. ISBN9781443867924. Attendance at an Anglican church service at least twice a year was a legal requirement for all people until 1791 and some parishioners endured the minimum church attendance requirement in order to avoid a fine.
^McKim, Donald K. (2011). More Presbyterian Questions, More Presbyterian Answers: Exploring Christian Faith. Westminster John Knox Press. p. 72. ISBN9780664503086. The Westminster Confession urges a strict observance of the Lord's Day as a day of rest and worship, away from "works, words, and thoughts" about "worldly employments and recreations." The whole time is to be devoted to "public and private exercises of [God's) worship, and in duties of necessity and mercy" (BC 6.119). In the United States, many "blue laws" relating to Sunday originated from this general prescription observed by American Puritans of the Reformed tradition.
^ abO’Hare, Terrence D. (1 December 2011). The Sabbath Complete: And the Ascendency of First-Day Worship. Wipf and Stock Publishers. p. 228-229. ISBN978-1-62189-134-5.
^ abBrattston, David W. T. (2014). Traditional Christian Ethics 4. WestBow Press. p. 33. ISBN978-1-4908-0205-3.
^Richardson, John R. (1966). Christian Economics: Studies in the Christian Message to the Market Place. St. Thomas Press. p. 91.
^Athena Magazine, Issues 41-55. International Studies Association. 1991. p. 86. It has also shrunk through the trial, 'as by fire', of decades of totalitarian state atheism, in which simply to profess the Christian Faith automatically ranked one as a dissident and church attendance was not infrequently the first step towards martyrdom.
^Bradshaw, Paul F. (1 October 2008). Daily Prayer in the Early Church: A Study of the Origin and Early Development of the Divine Office. Wipf and Stock Publishers. p. 42. ISBN978-1-60608-105-1.
^González, Justo L. (30 June 2020). Teach Us to Pray: The Lord's Prayer in the Early Church and Today. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. ISBN978-1-4674-5958-7. These words make it clear that Hippolytus is dealing both with prayers that are to take place at home or during the day's business and with the prayers and times of study that take place in the community of the church. The prayers upon rising, on the third hour either at home or away from it, and before going to bed at night are sometimes held in private and sometimes in the company of other believers in the same household. But Hippolytus refers to other gatherings which offer, besides prayer, an opportunity for instruction and inspiration. Thus, we see here the beginning of the practice of setting aside certain times for private prayer as well as others for communal prayer.
^Bercot, David W. (28 December 2021). Dictionary of Early Christian Beliefs: A Reference Guide to More Than 700 Topics Discussed by the Early Church Fathers. Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. ISBN978-1-61970-168-7. Morning and Evening Prayer were liturgical services held each day at the local church, during which psalms were sung and prayers were offered to God.
^The Korean Repository, Volume 3. Trilingual Press. 21 August 1896. p. 361. The Sunday morning service has been well attended, as have also the Sunday evening and Wednesday evening services.
^"Times of Worship". Saint Paul's Free Methodist Church. Retrieved 5 August 2021.
^Morgan, Bonnie (19 December 2019). Ordinary Saints: Women, Work, and Faith in Newfoundland. McGill-Queen's Press. ISBN978-0-2280-0028-0. Starting with Shrove Tuesday (locally known as Pancake Day), and proceeding through Ash Wednesday to Good Friday, families increased their church attendance and, especially, engaged in the embodies practices of fasting and/or "giving up something for Lent."
^The Living Church, Volume 138. Morehouse-Gorham Company. 1959. p. 221. Case after case was noted where parish church attendance had doubled, tripled, and in some cases, quadrupled at all services on Ash Wednesday. As the weeks of Lent rolled along, reports continued to come in mentioning that attendance at all services during Lent was far greater than at any other period during many of the churches' histories.
^Bourdeaux, Michael (2002). Eastern Europe, Russia and Central Asia 2003. Taylor & Francis. p. 46. ISBN9781857431377. The experiment forcibly to impose gosateizm (state atheism) in the USSR lasted just 70 years. Until Lenin--Vladimir Ilych Ulyanov's first Decree on the Separation of Church and State of January 1918, no government in history had sought to enforce a system that rejected all forms of religion.
^Brugger, Winfried (2007). "On the Relationship between Structural Norms and Constitutional Rights in Church-State-Relations". In Brugger, Winfried; Karayanni, Michael (eds.). Religion in the Public Sphere: A Comparative Analysis of German, Israeli, American and International Law. Beiträge zum ausländischen öffentlichen Recht und Völkerrecht. Vol. 190. pp. 21–86. doi:10.1007/978-3-540-73357-7_2. ISBN978-3-540-73355-3.
^Rasmusse, Morten (10 June 2008). "Kun 2,4 procent går i kirke hver uge" [Only 2.4 percent attend church each week]. kristeligt-dagblad.dk (in Danish). Retrieved 12 April 2020.
^Law, R. W.; Sbarra, D. A. (2009). "The Effects of Church Attendance and Marital Status on the Longitudinal Trajectories of Depressed Mood Among Older Adults". Journal of Aging and Health. 21 (6): 803–23. doi:10.1177/0898264309338300. PMID19535821. S2CID24049609.
^Graham, T. W.; Kaplan, B. H.; Cornoni-Huntley, J. C.; James, S. A.; Becker, C; Hames, C. G.; Heyden, S (1978). "Frequency of church attendance and blood pressure elevation". Journal of Behavioral Medicine. 1 (1): 37–43. doi:10.1007/bf00846585. PMID556112. S2CID9777385.
^Oman, D; Kurata, J. H.; Strawbridge, W. J.; Cohen, R. D. (2002). "Religious attendance and cause of death over 31 years". International Journal of Psychiatry in Medicine. 32 (1): 69–89. doi:10.2190/rjy7-crr1-hcw5-xveg. PMID12075917. S2CID12521030.
^Glanville, Jennifer L.; Sikkink, David; Hernández, Edwin I. (2008). "Religious involvement and educational outcomes: The role of social capital and extracurricular participation". Sociological Quarterly. 49 (1): 105–37. doi:10.1111/j.1533-8525.2007.00108.x. JSTOR40220059. S2CID143311606.
^Stanton, Glenn (22 March 2018). "Does Faith Reduce Divorce Risk?". The Witherspoon Institute. Retrieved 1 April 2018. Most recently, research conducted at Harvard's School of Public Health reveals that regularly attending church services together reduces a couple's risk of divorce by a remarkable 47 percent. Many studies, they report, have similar results ranging from 30 to 50 percent reduction in divorce risk. Happily, this holds largely true for white, black, Asian and Latino couples.
^Marler, Penny Long; Hadaway, C. Kirk (1999). "Testing the Attendance Gap in a Conservative Church". Sociology of Religion. 60 (2): 175–86. doi:10.2307/3711747. JSTOR3711747.
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