Conservative Churches Grew Fastest in 1990's, Report Says 

By LAURIE GOODSTEIN 

September 18, 2002 New York Times

Socially conservative churches that demand high commitment from their members grew faster than other religious denominations in the last decade, according to a study released yesterday by statisticians who count American religious affiliations every 10 years.

The study, "Religious Congregations and Membership: 2000," found that the fastest-growing religious denomination in the last 10 years was the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which enlists thousands of young Mormon missionaries to recruit door to door and boosted its membership in the United States by 19.3 percent to a total of 4.2 million since the last survey in 1990.

The denominations that recorded the next highest growth were the conservative Christian Churches and Churches of Christ, with 18.6 percent; the Assemblies of God, a major Pentecostal denomination, with 18.5 percent; and the Roman Catholic Church, with 16.2 percent.

Because the Census Bureau does not ask about religion, some scholars regard this study, first done in 1971, as the most comprehensive assessment available of the changes in American religious affiliation. The study is based on self-reporting by religious groups, a method that the study's authors acknowledge is imprecise because religious groups can inflate their numbers. The study was conducted by Glenmary Research Center and sponsored by the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies.

"I was astounded to see that by and large the growing churches are those that we ordinarily call conservative," said Ken Sanchagrin, director of the Glenmary Research Center and a professor and chairman of the department of sociology at Mars Hill College in Mars Hill, N.C. "And when I looked at those that were declining, most were moderate or liberal churches. And the more liberal the denomination, by most people's definition, the more they were losing."

The churches that lost the highest percentages of members were the Presbyterian Church USA (11.6 percent) and the United Church of Christ (14.8 percent).

The Catholic Church is still the nation's largest, with more than 62 million adherents, about a quarter of the population. Many Catholics have moved in the last decade from the Northeast and the Midwest to the South and Southwest, the survey found.

The next largest denomination is the Southern Baptists, with nearly 20 million members. Protestant churches all together reported 66 million members.

About half of Americans belong to one of the 149 religious groups included in the study. Utah, North Dakota and the District of Columbia, have the highest percentages of religious adherents, it found; Oregon and Washington have the lowest.

The 2000 study is the first to include information on religious groups other than Christians and Jews. But Mr. Sanchagrin acknowledged yesterday that the numbers of Muslims and Jews reported in the survey could be misleading. The estimate of Jews was 6.1 million, but the count included Jews who are unaffiliated with synagogues — the only group in the survey to use identity and not membership as its criteria in the count.