I took this survey, and I was really stumped by the religious service attendance question. I'm an atheist and secular humanist, and I am a leader with Sunday Assembly Atlanta, part of a network of communities that support and celebrate folks like me.
I even asked friends what they would say for that question and got various responses. I believe, but am not certain, I said Never (or the lowest option) and put my Sunday Assembly attendance in the question about hobby event attendance, even though that feels wrong.
I felt not especially seen by the survey in that moment. 🙁
Selfish me wants to see a chart for each of those coefficient variables with a bar for each city to see how they compare. Awesome post and view into cities!
One of the few Jewish lenses to peer through. And maybe a very useful one, as we are heavily dominated by being urban, white, prosperous professionals, and advanced university degrees that enabled lucrative employment in major cities. So for our subset of the population, we hold all the variables fixed except for age. For my orthodox congregation, on Saturday morning everyone is on Medicare. For the Reform congregation on Friday night, much less so, but still weighted to older people. However, our segment brings into the mix something else. Being of means, all our congregations, three in my county, have lots of people who never go to worship except on High Holidays yet are generous in support of the congregation. Mostly older, but it takes time to have wealth and no need to save for college. And we have young people who populate our Hebrew Schools and youth groups. Neither they nor their parents come to services on shabbos with any frequency. As a consequence, we have a huge number of people who have really personalized their religious practices. The Jewish Catalog which made a la carte Judaism popular celebrated its 50th publication year last year. If you measure attendance on shabbos you will exclude people who will have a Seder next month, light candles at home Friday nights, serve on Synagogue Boards and Committees, educate their children who they send to summer camps at great expense. This method certainly undercounts Jewish participation. It likely undercounts other religions as well.
One small correction: These are actually "metro areas" not cities, in the government report. The Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario metro area has a population of over 4.6 million people. It is the fastest growing area of California.
Ryan- Sent this to a couple people on my sphere because I live in Charlotte and found the data helpful. However they reported back that Charlotte did not appear and that looks to be correct. Can you share that data and/or why it was deleted? Thanks so much!
It seems as if the total proportion of non-attenders in the first graph is more than the average (and in some cases, more than the max) of the proportions in the sub-categories. Am I missing something?
The European Values Survey showed the same trends across countries, the more educated, wealthy, and white a country was, the lower the faith attendance.
It's a worry for me that the U.S. is now trending in that direction. As a country the U.S. was an outlier, with much higher church participation than would have been predicted by the trend line of country demographics and religiosity. Either we have now "returned to the mean", or even with the skews now matching Europe, perhaps our overall connection is higher.
But then I remember the Puritans, who decided attending services sactioned by the monarch was not moving their family faith forward so they opted for home churches before heading over to establish Rhode Island, Mass, and America.
Philadelphia is an interesting data point there for a number of reasons. The only three metros that rank higher in terms of "less than once/year" - SF, Boston, and Seattle - are deeply Silicon Valley-aligned metros, with huge numbers of transplants and wealthy tech/bio/pharma people whose culture is deeply hostile to religion. But Philadelphia is (was?) an enormously Catholic metro region, and played a huge part in the Mainline churches (the wealthiest of the western Philadelphia suburbs are literally called the "Main Line") before that. It's a region steeped in religiosity. With the ancestors of Irish and Italian immigrants still living in the area today, and plenty of more recent Mexican immigrants in the city and region (plus an enormous African-American population with a strong history of church attendance as well), you would certainly think there would be some amount of habitual church attendance that would go against the grain of church decline. Perhaps it's a shocking data point for just how much trouble the Catholic Church is, despite its ostensible numerical, institutional, and cultural advantage.
Is there anywhere we can download and play around with the data? Would love to take a look at results for Austin. My church is putting together an apologetics group and this could help inform some decisions.
The polling data on Asians is most likely not accurate as the predominant religion of Asians is Buddhism. Buddhist practices by Asians generally also doesn't require attending anything at temples. People practice the religion at home.
Would be super interested to see if Portland, Oregon would beat out S.F. And Seattle, as I imagine it would given your thesis on age and race (it’s the whitest major city in America).
I took this survey, and I was really stumped by the religious service attendance question. I'm an atheist and secular humanist, and I am a leader with Sunday Assembly Atlanta, part of a network of communities that support and celebrate folks like me.
I even asked friends what they would say for that question and got various responses. I believe, but am not certain, I said Never (or the lowest option) and put my Sunday Assembly attendance in the question about hobby event attendance, even though that feels wrong.
I felt not especially seen by the survey in that moment. 🙁
Riverside doesn't surprise me -- that's where you can find a very concentrated hub of Seventh-day Adventists.
Selfish me wants to see a chart for each of those coefficient variables with a bar for each city to see how they compare. Awesome post and view into cities!
One of the few Jewish lenses to peer through. And maybe a very useful one, as we are heavily dominated by being urban, white, prosperous professionals, and advanced university degrees that enabled lucrative employment in major cities. So for our subset of the population, we hold all the variables fixed except for age. For my orthodox congregation, on Saturday morning everyone is on Medicare. For the Reform congregation on Friday night, much less so, but still weighted to older people. However, our segment brings into the mix something else. Being of means, all our congregations, three in my county, have lots of people who never go to worship except on High Holidays yet are generous in support of the congregation. Mostly older, but it takes time to have wealth and no need to save for college. And we have young people who populate our Hebrew Schools and youth groups. Neither they nor their parents come to services on shabbos with any frequency. As a consequence, we have a huge number of people who have really personalized their religious practices. The Jewish Catalog which made a la carte Judaism popular celebrated its 50th publication year last year. If you measure attendance on shabbos you will exclude people who will have a Seder next month, light candles at home Friday nights, serve on Synagogue Boards and Committees, educate their children who they send to summer camps at great expense. This method certainly undercounts Jewish participation. It likely undercounts other religions as well.
This piece reminds me of the Neal Brennan joke about white atheists (it’s easy to find on YouTube).
One small correction: These are actually "metro areas" not cities, in the government report. The Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario metro area has a population of over 4.6 million people. It is the fastest growing area of California.
Ryan- Sent this to a couple people on my sphere because I live in Charlotte and found the data helpful. However they reported back that Charlotte did not appear and that looks to be correct. Can you share that data and/or why it was deleted? Thanks so much!
It seems as if the total proportion of non-attenders in the first graph is more than the average (and in some cases, more than the max) of the proportions in the sub-categories. Am I missing something?
The European Values Survey showed the same trends across countries, the more educated, wealthy, and white a country was, the lower the faith attendance.
It's a worry for me that the U.S. is now trending in that direction. As a country the U.S. was an outlier, with much higher church participation than would have been predicted by the trend line of country demographics and religiosity. Either we have now "returned to the mean", or even with the skews now matching Europe, perhaps our overall connection is higher.
But then I remember the Puritans, who decided attending services sactioned by the monarch was not moving their family faith forward so they opted for home churches before heading over to establish Rhode Island, Mass, and America.
San Francisco and Seattle are a bunch of godless Commies. Who knew? ;)
So the government is trying to compel me to answer a question about religious attendance? I'm an atheist, and this creeps me out.
Why Riverside but not LA?
Philadelphia is an interesting data point there for a number of reasons. The only three metros that rank higher in terms of "less than once/year" - SF, Boston, and Seattle - are deeply Silicon Valley-aligned metros, with huge numbers of transplants and wealthy tech/bio/pharma people whose culture is deeply hostile to religion. But Philadelphia is (was?) an enormously Catholic metro region, and played a huge part in the Mainline churches (the wealthiest of the western Philadelphia suburbs are literally called the "Main Line") before that. It's a region steeped in religiosity. With the ancestors of Irish and Italian immigrants still living in the area today, and plenty of more recent Mexican immigrants in the city and region (plus an enormous African-American population with a strong history of church attendance as well), you would certainly think there would be some amount of habitual church attendance that would go against the grain of church decline. Perhaps it's a shocking data point for just how much trouble the Catholic Church is, despite its ostensible numerical, institutional, and cultural advantage.
Is there anywhere we can download and play around with the data? Would love to take a look at results for Austin. My church is putting together an apologetics group and this could help inform some decisions.
The polling data on Asians is most likely not accurate as the predominant religion of Asians is Buddhism. Buddhist practices by Asians generally also doesn't require attending anything at temples. People practice the religion at home.
Would be super interested to see if Portland, Oregon would beat out S.F. And Seattle, as I imagine it would given your thesis on age and race (it’s the whitest major city in America).