■ Recent church planting efforts tend to be near each other and are concentrated in Northeastern and West Coast areas as well as Florida and Texas, a new analysis finds. In his newsletter Graphs about Religion (July 25), Ryan Burge discusses the results of his study of two leading church planting networks, Acts 29 and the Association of Renewal Churches (ARC), whose mapping data he scraped from their websites. He found ARC to have a larger number of church plants on their website than Acts 29, with 1,244 churches compared to 393. This may be because ARC includes not only its own church plants but also churches that joined the network after planting. [ARC is largely charismatic while Acts 29 is Reformed; several large churches have left the latter in recent years]. Each planting network is concentrated in the eastern half of the United States, with a lot of plants in Florida, especially in places that are close to the ocean. But there are also heavy clusters around the major metropolitan areas in Texas (Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth, Austin, and San Antonio) and the West Coast.
Source: https://www.graphsaboutreligion.com/p/geographic-church-planting-strategies.
In many states there is not much difference in concentration between the two networks, with the gap being less than two percentage points. While in much of the Midwest there is no statistical difference in concentration, the ARC is more concentrated in the traditional Bible Belt (and it is based in Birmingham, Alabama). About a quarter of all ARC churches are in Arkansas, Tennessee, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana, while the region accounts for only 12 percent of Acts 29 churches. The two biggest states for both networks are Texas and Florida. Burge found that the majority of Acts 29 churches were planted in very close proximity to an ARC church, while the majority of ARC churches are not in close proximity to an Acts 29 church. This tendency may be due to ARC’s larger size, but it also shows how both church planting networks are focusing on the same parts of the United States. “It’s not like one has a strategy that is focused on reaching rural America, or the Northeast or the Great Plains,” Burge concludes. “Instead, planters are setting up shop in areas that are experiencing population growth.”
Source: Saint Mary Church
(https://www.stmarylatinmass.com/thetraditional-
latin-mass).
■ While those attending the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) have been seen as holding schismatic and negative attitudes about the pope and Vatican II, a new survey suggests that such devotees are more orthodox and conservative than the average Catholic but not necessarily on the verge of schism from the church. The study, which is preliminary and published on the blog What We Need Now (July 16), was conducted by sociologists Stephen Bullivant and Stephen Cranney, who surveyed 446 TLM attenders and interviewed an additional 20 respondents. They found that 77 percent of the respondents leaned Republican and 85 percent were very prolife, holding that abortion should be illegal in all cases. Yet though the TLM Catholics were orthodox, they were found to generally accept the Second Vatican Council. Pope Francis has targeted the Traditional Latin Mass as fostering a subculture of traditionalists opposed to the modern church. But when the researchers asked, “I accept the teachings of Vatican II,” 62 percent of the respondents agreed (and 15 percent somewhat agreed). It should be noted that Bullivant and Cranney found some ambivalence about Vatican II among their interviewees, who dissented from accepted interpretations of the council’s documents while formally accepting their validity.
The respondents also accepted the authority of Pope Francis, even if they were unhappy with his papacy. The survey did not ask a question about “sedevacantism,” which holds that the papal throne is vacant due to Francis’ alleged apostasy, because those holding such positions may be in separatist groups, such as the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX), which were not included in the sample. The respondents attended “licit” Latin Masses rather than those deemed “illicit” and practiced in such groups as the SSPX. Bullivant and Cranney conclude that their results suggest that members of the TLM community, while drawn to a different aesthetic than the typical parish experience, “hold onto the beliefs of the Catholic faith more consistently than the wider population of Catholics, including regular Novus Ordo Mass-goers. That is not to say there are not questions that can and should be asked about how TLM Catholics live their faith, but the caricature of the TLM community as near-schismatics threatening the authority of the papacy is itself questionable.”
(What We Need Now, https://whatweneednow.substack.com/p/data-and-the-traditional-latin-mass?r=5c98f&utm_medium=ios&triedRedirect=true)
■ Since the Covid pandemic, there has been a notable increase in the number of converts to Eastern Orthodoxy in the U.S., a new study finds.The research, conducted by a team at the Orthodox Studies Institute at Saint Constantine College in Houston, and described in the report, “Converts to Orthodoxy: Statistics and Trends from the Past Decade” (July), gathered data through interviews and information collected from Orthodox clergy in 20 parishes across 6 different jurisdictions in 15 states. During the period from 2013 to 2019, the variation in the total number of converts to the Orthodox Church per year was not found to be statistically significant. There was then a significant decline in the number of conversions in 2020, undoubtedly due to the pandemic, followed by a notable increase in 2022 compared with the previous period. From 2013 to 2020, the proportions of male and female converts were very similar, with some variations, but since 2022 there have been more male converts. It remains to be seen if this latter trend will continue and can be extrapolated to other U.S. Orthodox parishes.
Source: https://catalog.obitel-minsk.com/blog/2017/12/reasons-why-you-should-not-convert-to.
The data also showed that the majority of converts (62 percent) since 2013 were under the age of 40 at the time of their conversion, and an even larger proportion (73 percent) were joining the church without minor children, which was consistent with the average age range. The researchers found that 65 percent of the converts came from a Protestant background and 15 percent from a Catholic one. Sixty percent cited theological reasons for converting, nearly 7 percent felt attracted to Orthodox spirituality, and 12 percent converted for the purpose of marriage. In a companion report analyzing the same data to examine converts’ participation in the faith, “Converts to Orthodoxy: Statistics on Engagement” (July), the same team (Matthew Namee, Fr. Nicholas Metrakos, Cassidy Irwin, Nathanael Morgan, and Paisios Hensersky) notes that “those who converted in recent years are more likely to be engaged than their peers.” As expected, those who reported converting for theological reasons were the most likely to be engaged (81 percent).
(The reports can be downloaded from: https://www.orthodoxstudies.com/fs/resource-manager/view/a0625708-8584-40fb-8b4d-043aa97d4db9; https://www.orthodoxstudies.com/fs/resource-manager/view/1f353b2b-1039-464c-89fe-feb6266d2684)
■ A study of congregational finances after the Covid pandemic by the Hartford Institute for Religion Research finds that congregational income has not been keeping pace with inflation, even though there has been a surge in online giving since the pandemic. The research, described in the report, “Finance and Faith: A Look at Financial Health Among Congregations in a Post-Pandemic Reality,” was based on nationally representative survey data from 2020 and 2023. It found that the median congregational income reached a 15-year high of $165,000 in 2023, which, however, fell short of keeping pace with inflation. At the same time, there has been a surge in online giving, with nearly 70 percent of congregations now using digital platforms. This development is associated with higher per capita income, suggesting a positive impact on congregational financial health. It was noted that a majority of religious leaders (61 percent) reported their congregation to be in excellent or good financial health, which was a significant increase from 2020.
(The report can be downloaded at: https://www.covidreligionresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/FinanceReport2024.pdf)
■ The recently elected House of Commons in the UK is the most “openly non-religious” in the history of that body, according to research cited in the newsletter Counting Religion in Britain (July). The newsletter cites a recent analysis by Humanists UK describing the proportion of the 2024 intake of Ministers of Parliament (MPs) who, during their swearing-in ceremony, chose to make a secular affirmation instead of the traditional religious oath to God. Not counting the 18 MPs who had yet to be sworn in at the time of the analysis, 40 percent of the parliamentarians were found to have made a secular affirmation—16 points higher than after the 2019 general elections. Broken down by party affiliation, 47 percent of the Liberal Democrat MPs, 47 percent of the Labour MPs (which party includes the newly elected Prime Minister Keir Starmer and half his cabinet), and 9 percent of the Conservative MPs made secular affirmations. Humanists UK added that a large number of those swearing on the Bible were also non-religious, with some being public about it.
Source: Associated Press / Huffington Post (https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/what-happens-when-an-mpis-pregnant-or-ill-during-a-crucial-parliamentary-vote_uk_5c3dbf12e4b0922a21d87f01).
(Counting Religion in Britain, https://www.brin.ac.uk/counting-religion-in-britain-july-2024/)
