Christians significantly exaggerate their attendance at Sunday services, study finds
A trailblazing study using geodata from smartphones has revealed U.S. Protestants eclipsing Catholics at weekly church attendance, even though the Catholic Church obliges the faithful to attend Sunday Mass on the pain of mortal sin.
Americans also significantly exaggerate their rate of church attendance, leading to skewed statistics in surveys the study, published in April by a University of Chicago business school professor, has found.
While 73% of Americans step into a place of worship at least once a year, only 5% attend worship weekly, which is far fewer than the 22% who report doing so in surveys, Dr. Devin G. Pope, author of the study and researcher at the Booth School of Business, writes.
Adherents to a religion often overstate their attendance at places of worship “due to misremembering or social desirability bias,” Pope explains, thus demonstrating the unreliability of surveys in a manner that resembles inaccurate reports of voting behavior.
A key finding of Pope’s research is that the frequency of religious attendance varies significantly by religion, with the vast majority (85%) of weekly-attending worshippers being Protestants.
Pope compares data compiled by surveys with his own findings using cell phone data. According to surveys, 14.95% of Protestants attend Sunday services every week, while only 4.56% Catholics attend Sunday Mass on a weekly basis.
However, according to Pope’s cell phone data research, only 3.90% of Protestants attend Sunday services week by week, while a tiny percentage of Catholics numbering 0.26% attend Sunday Mass each week.
Numerically, around 38 million Protestants, compared to only 6 million Catholics, attend church for Sunday worship, the study finds.
Pope lists data for adherents of other religions, which finds weekly attendance for Mormons at 2 million, Jehovah’s Witnesses at 400,000, Eastern Orthodox Christians at 220,000, Jews at 400,000, and Muslims at 220,000.
The research also finds significant differences between the amount of time Catholics, Protestants, and Eastern Orthodox Christians spend in church at weekly services.
While, in general, Orthodox Christians spend the most time at a place of worship every Sunday (116 minutes), and Protestants rank second (102 minutes), Catholics come last (66 minutes). Even Jews (92 minutes) spend more time at a weekly service than Catholics.
Interestingly, Pope’s study also uses cell phone data to analyze how often adherents from different religions visit strip clubs, liquor stores, casinos, tobacco stores, and fitness centers.
While only 2% of Catholics and around 1.8% Protestants frequent strip clubs, Catholics (43%) outpace Protestants (38%) in visiting casinos. Catholics (43%) also surpass Protestants (38%) in attending fitness centers.
Pope’s study follows a September 2023 survey conducted by Georgetown University which found that COVID-19 resulted in a significant drop of Catholics attending weekly Mass.
In 2019, before the pandemic, 24% of Catholics attended Mass weekly. However, the number has dropped to 17% percent of adult Catholics attending Mass at least once a week, with an additional 5% currently watching Mass on television or online, the survey found.
The survey also found that 49% percent of adult Catholics always receive Communion when attending Mass, 18% do so frequently or usually, 18% seldom receive the Eucharist at Mass, and 15% percent never receive Communion at Mass.
Respondents said that the most important aspects of Mass were “feeling the presence of God” (61%), “prayer and reflection” (56%), “feeling welcomed at Mass” (51%), and “receiving Holy Communion” (50%). “Hearing the homily” ranked at 36% while “hearing the readings and the Gospel” ranked at 43%.
Most of those surveyed (62%) said they are “not involved at all” with their parish outside of attending Sunday Mass, while only 3% said they were “very involved” with the life of the parish church.
According to the survey, 49% correctly believe that the Church teaches, “Jesus Christ is truly present under the appearance of bread and wine,” while 51% incorrectly believe the Church teaches, “Bread and wine are symbols of Jesus’ actions at the Last Supper, meaning that Jesus is only symbolically present in the consecrated bread and wine.”
“Results of this question indicate that there is substantial confusion about what the church teaches about the Eucharist with slightly more adult Catholics not knowing this correctly than those correctly identifying the teachings,” the report stated.
The survey noted the data indicated “most who do not believe in the Real Presence are not rejecting the teaching, as they do not know this is what the church teaches.”
Dr. Jules Gomes, (BA, BD, MTh, PhD), has a doctorate in biblical studies from the University of Cambridge. Currently a Vatican-accredited journalist based in Rome, he is the author of five books and several academic articles. Gomes lectured at Catholic and Protestant seminaries and universities and was canon theologian and artistic director at Liverpool Cathedral.
To support articles like this, please consider a donation to Souls and Liberty.