How to confuse with statistics WAS Re: US Episcopalian Church question

bluesqueak pipdowns at etchells0.demon.co.uk
Tue Aug 5 19:07:08 UTC 2003


> Now, the above are from 1990 - so will have changed a bit. But the 
> relative sizes won't have changed that much. And it should also be 
noted 
> that not all groups count their numbers in the same way - the 
> Roman Catholic Church considers a person a member from the moment 
> of  baptism, unless they choose to leave the faith. Many of the  
> Protestant churches only count adult members in their numbers - so 
> you can't really get a fair comparison.

If they use the same method as the Anglican Church in England, then 
they count their membership as adults over 16 who are regular church 
attenders. The usual method is to ask adults who worship reasonably 
regularly if they want to go on the 'electoral roll' (people who can 
vote on church matters) and then use that one as the basis 
for 'total church membership'.

It gets very confusing, because there are several sets of 
statistics. We almost never count numbers baptized, because the 
Anglican Church is the 'default', Established, church in England. 
Probably a quarter of the population has been baptised Anglican 
(Over 10 million). Average Sunday attendence is 1 million in 
England, but average attendence per week is 1.2 million, and the 
total number of people who attend at least once a month is 1.7 
million. 

At Christmas, an extra million people decide to turn up [grin], and 
we could claim 2.7 million. And in times of crisis, the place is 
packed.

Really, it's 'please select your statistic'.  If you want to show 
that the church is dying, use Sunday attendance (falling). If you 
want to show that the church is growing, use weekly or monthly 
attendance, or total membership (rising). If you want to show a 
truly catastrophic fall, use Christmas week followed by the first 
Sunday in January [big, evil grin].

So the 1% of the U.S. population membership is probably correct, but 
may well not be the same figure as the percentage of the population 
who would say 'Episcopalian' if asked what Church they belonged to. 
Or even the same figure as the percentage of the U.S. population who 
attend an Episcopalian church.

Pip





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