Crunching the Numbers on Church Membership Rolls

Dale Jones, chairman of the 2000 Religious Congregations and Membership Study, which draws from 149 religious groups, said statisticians are wary of membership numbers ending in several zeros, though he declined to cite examples.

"There are groups that we just question: 'Where did they come up with those figures?' " he said.

Theology. Often, a church's understanding of membership -- how it is started, how it is maintained and how it can be revoked -- influences counts.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, with 13 million members worldwide, is often reported to be one of the "fastest-growing" churches in the United States. Mormons start enrolling children as members through baptism at age 8. Members stay on the rolls -- even if they move to another church -- unless they ask to be removed or are excommunicated.

"Baptism is a very sacred thing, and it's a very personal thing, and far be it for us to take someone off the church membership except if they have asked," spokeswoman Kim Farah said.

Ascol, the Southern Baptist, takes issue with some churches that enroll people after they answer an altar call and commit themselves to following Jesus. He says it's a superficial means of joining the church and requires no real commitment. Even after those members disappear, the denomination counts them, he said.

"Just because you call yourself Southern Baptist doesn't make you Christian. Just because you go to church doesn't make you Christian," he said.

Active Membership. Roman Catholics, the largest U.S. church with a reported 69 million members, start counting baptized infants as members and often don't remove people until they die. Most membership surveys don't actually count the people in the pews on Sunday.

To be disenrolled, Catholics must write a bishop to ask that their baptisms be revoked, said Mary L. Gautier, senior research associate for the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, a research center affiliated with Georgetown University.

That means it is possible, for example, to be born Catholic, married Methodist, die Lutheran and still be listed as a member of the Catholic Church.

"The Catholic understanding of membership is that a person becomes a member upon baptism and remains a member for life," Gautier said. "Whether you show up at church or not is not what determines whether you're a member."

Institutional Honesty. Mainline Protestant churches -- Lutherans, Presbyterians, Episcopalians and others -- have been hemorrhaging members for 40 years. And those churches are often the first to cleanse their rolls of the inactive to produce a more accurate figure.

The 15 million-member Seventh-day Adventists saw their U.S. numbers drop in recent years in part because a church audit found duplicates on membership rolls, said Kathleen Jones, an assistant for general statistics for the denomination. Those duplicates are being purged.

Often, new pastors want up-to-date numbers because they don't want to be blamed for any drops, said Lindner of the NCC. And some denominations assess fees to congregations based on membership, so the smaller the numbers, the smaller the fees.

Survey Guilt. When asked about voting habits, belief in God or their feelings toward race or gender, Americans are notorious for answering what they think pollsters want to hear. Church demographers say the same rings true for church attendance.

Some studies show more Americans consider themselves Southern Baptist than are accounted for by the denomination's own numbers, said Roger Finke, director of the Association of Religion Data Archives at Penn State.

The same is true of Catholics and Presbyterians, Finke said. And while an estimated 53 percent of Americans consider themselves Protestant, "surveys of denominational membership find that only 35 percent are estimated to be members of a local congregation," he said.

"Many people who are not members of a local church still view themselves as being Protestant, Catholic or some other religion, even though they're not actively involved in a church," Finke said.