Academic literature on the topic 'Church attendance decline'
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Journal articles on the topic "Church attendance decline"
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HILLIS, PETER. "Church and Society in Aberdeen and Glasgow, c. 1800–c. 2000." Journal of Ecclesiastical History 53, no. 4 (October 2002): 707–34. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s002204690200475x.
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This article discusses the relationship between Church and society in Aberdeen and Glasgow, c. 1800–c. 2000, with specific reference to levels of church attendance and membership, alongside the social and gender composition of church membership. Despite contrasts in economic development, both cities experienced a sharp decline in levels of church attendance. However, this decline was partly offset by an expanding membership in suburban areas such as Bearsden and Cults. The article confirms previous analyses of religion and social class, but further reinforces more recent research which highlights the important role of women in the Church.
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Gerber, Alan S., Jonathan Gruber, and Daniel M. Hungerman. "Does Church Attendance Cause People to Vote? Using Blue Laws’ Repeal to Estimate the Effect of Religiosity on Voter Turnout." British Journal of Political Science 46, no. 3 (January 20, 2015): 481–500. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0007123414000416.
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Regular church attendance is strongly associated with a higher probability of voting. It is an open question as to whether this association, which has been confirmed in numerous surveys, is causal. The repeal of the laws restricting Sunday retail activity (‘blue laws’) is used to measure the effects of church-going on political participation. Blue laws’ repeal caused a 5 percent decrease in church attendance. Its effect on political participation was measured and it was found that, following the repeal, turnout fell by approximately 1 percentage point. This decline in turnout is consistent with the large effect of church attendance on turnout reported in the literature, and suggests that church attendance may have a significant causal effect on voter turnout.
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Berman, Eli, Laurence R. Iannaccone, and Giuseppe Ragusa. "FROM EMPTY PEWS TO EMPTY CRADLES: FERTILITY DECLINE AMONG EUROPEAN CATHOLICS." Journal of Demographic Economics 84, no. 2 (May 14, 2018): 149–87. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/dem.2017.22.
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Abstract:Total fertility in the Catholic countries of Southern Europe has dropped to remarkably low rates (=1.4) despite continuing low rates female labor force participation and high historic fertility. We model three ways in whichreligionaffects the demand for children – through norms, market wages, and childrearing costs. We estimate these effects using new panel data on church attendance and clergy employment for 13 European countries from 1960 to 2000, spanning the Second Vatican Council (1962–65). Using nuns per capita as a proxy for service provision, we estimate fertility effects on the order of 300 to 400 children per nun. Moreover, nuns outperform priests as a predictor of fertility, suggesting that changes in childrearing costs dominate changes in theology and norms. Reduced church attendance also predicts fertility decline, but only for Catholics, not for Protestants. Service provision and attendance complement each other, a finding consistent with club models of religion.
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Machin, G. I. T. "Marriage and the Churches in the 1930s: Royal Abdication and Divorce Reform, 1936–7." Journal of Ecclesiastical History 42, no. 1 (January 1991): 68–81. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s002204690000258x.
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In a general history of modern England A. J. P. Taylor stated that by the 1920s England ‘had ceased to be, in any real sense, a Christian nation’. He was no doubt referring to declining membership and attendance figures in most Protestant Churches (not the Roman Catholic Church), and may have been implying that there had been substantial abandonment of traditional belief. In regard to traditional morality, based on Christian precepts, he found greater laxity but no very noticeable decline; and this conclusion seems to be generally supported by Church experience in trying to uphold established morality in the inter-war years. Church assembly records and church newspapers show constant concern with familiar moral enemies such as drunkenness and gambling, and possible new dangers in the shape of films, broadcasting and information about birth control. Gambling was increasing because of the popularity of football pools and greyhound racing, but drunkenness appeared less common than before 1914, and the cinema was reasonably harmless (a Cinema Christian Council and other bodies striving to keep it so), as also was television when its broadcasts began in 1936. None the less, the general decline in church attendance was an indication of an increasingly secularised society in which the Churches, taken as a whole, had diminishing influence, and arguably this had a weakening effect on traditional morality.
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Awuku-Gyampoh, Ransford Kwabena, Justina Sarpong Akoto, Catherine Ocran, and Bah Formijang. "Empirical Research on the Downturn in Church Attendance in Australia: The youth without Religion." International Journal of Social Science and Economics 1, no. 2 (July 27, 2021): p6. http://dx.doi.org/10.22158/ijsse.v1n2p6.
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The church has played a significant role in the lives of Australia’s people since the European settlement. It used to provide several welfare services such as educational, health, and orphanages, even more than the government. Australian churches played a significant role in shaping the culture of Australians. Australia was the only country with no newspaper on Sunday as they kept Sunday as a regular holiday and kept everything closed. Indeed, for Australia’s farmers, religion was so important that they decided to remain clear of their religion and, in 1901, to lead up the Federation. As the years passed, church attendance reduced, and others chose no religion. Few considered religion as least important, resulting in an overall decline in Australia’s churches. The paper reiterated the downturn in church attendance in Australia, found reasons for the downturn, and how the youth can be driven to attend the church. Innovation, discipleship, evangelism, oneness, care, hospitality, service to the community, and social media presence were discovered to be strategies for motivating the younger generation, first-time worshippers and new converts to the church.
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Becker, Sascha O., and Ludger Woessmann. "Not the Opium of the People: Income and Secularization in a Panel of Prussian Counties." American Economic Review 103, no. 3 (May 1, 2013): 539–44. http://dx.doi.org/10.1257/aer.103.3.539.
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The interplay between religion and the economy has long occupied social scientists. We construct a unique panel of income and Protestant church attendance using 175 Prussian counties, presented in six waves from 1886 to 1911. The data reveal a marked decline in church attendance coinciding with increasing income. The cross-section also shows a negative association between income and church attendance. The associations disappear in panel analyses, including first-differenced models of the 1886 to 1911 change, panel models with county and time fixed effects, and panel Granger-causality tests. The results cast doubt on causal interpretations of the religion-economy nexus in Prussian secularization.
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Gershon, Sarah Allen, Adrian D. Pantoja, and J. Benjamin Taylor. "God in the Barrio?: The Determinants of Religiosity and Civic Engagement among Latinos in the United States." Politics and Religion 9, no. 1 (February 26, 2016): 84–110. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s175504831600002x.
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AbstractIt is often assumed that Latinos in the United States are deeply religious, and that this religious identity plays an important role in shaping their political beliefs and behaviors. A more controversial though unexplored proposition is that Latinos may not be as religious as is commonly believed and that forces beyond their religiosity play more prominent roles in shaping their political engagement. Relying on data from the 2006 Latino National Survey, we examine secularism — measured by church attendance — and civic engagement among Latinos. Our efforts are to analyze the social forces that shape levels of religiosity and find that generational status plays a significant role. Additionally, we further find that while church attendance declines among later generations, second and third generation Latinos have higher levels of civic engagement than their first generation peers, indicating that a decline in church participation does not depress political participation among later generations of Latinos.
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Phillips, Rick, and Ryan Cragun. "Contemporary Mormon Religiosity and the Legacy of “Gathering”." Nova Religio 16, no. 3 (February 1, 2013): 77–94. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/nr.2013.16.3.77.
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The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—the LDS, or Mormon church—has dominated the state of Utah both culturally and politically since joining the Union in 1896. Scholars note that LDS majorities in Utah and other parts of the Intermountain West foster a religious subculture that has promoted higher levels of Mormon church attendance and member retention than in other parts of the nation. However, after rising throughout most of the twentieth century, the percentage of Utah's population belonging to the church began declining in 1989. Some sources assert Utah is now less Mormon than at any time in the state's history. This article examines the degree to which this decline has affected LDS church activity and retention in Utah and adjacent environs. We find evidence suggesting church attendance rates may be falling, and clear evidence that rates of apostasy among Mormons have risen over the past decade.
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Awuku-Gyampoh, Ransford Kwabena, and Justina Sarpong-Akoto. "Strategic Youth Management: Returning the Youth to Church in Australia." Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal 8, no. 4 (April 13, 2021): 71–76. http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.84.9975.
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In a brief review of scholarship, this paper presents the general assessment of Church decline among the Youth in Australia. Journals, books, magazines, and websites information were the resources employed in the analyses. It was discovered that the spiritual and personal growth, discipleship role, and mission life/work determine the young adult's understanding of the church and environment. Lack of interest, busy life schedule, political issues, and people-pleasing were found to have triggered why the young ones have declined in their church attendance. The review recommended that effective youth ministry is possible if there is a specific and time slot for busy life schedule people; pastors adopt strategic ministry to the youth and focus on enhancing the youth's philosophical thoughts. The findings would help appropriate youth ministry in the contemporary context. Future researchers may consider the explanatory or exploratory mixed-methods design.
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CHAPMAN, ALISTER. "Secularisation and the Ministry of John R. W. Stott at All Souls, Langham Place, 1950–1970." Journal of Ecclesiastical History 56, no. 3 (July 2005): 496–513. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0022046905004288.
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This article uses the parish ministry of John R. W. Stott as a case study of the resilience of evangelical churches in England in the postwar period. It situates Stott's experience at All Souls in the context of the debates over the reasons for the resilience of conservative Protestantism in the western world, and argues that closer attention to particular historical facts is necessary in order to understand this phenomenon properly. The article suggests that in England in the 1960s secularisation theory became a part of the story it was trying to tell, as it generated anxiety among Christian leaders, like Stott, who were committed to reversing the decline in church attendance in England.
Dissertations / Theses on the topic "Church attendance decline"
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Chambers, Paul. "Factors in church growth and decline : with reference to the secularization thesis." Thesis, Swansea University, 1999. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.530099.
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Bassey, George. "Relationship between the Emotional Intelligence of the Lead Clergy and Church Growth in North America." Diss., Piedmont International University, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/83775.
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Followers expect leaders to provide clarity and assurance in uncertain times. These expectations apply to church leaders as well. American churches are in crisis regarding growth in worship attendance. According to Eymann (2012) and Shattuck (2014), more than 85% of churches in the United States are either stagnant or in decline. In addition, Redfern (2015) posited that about 4,000 churches in America are closed down each year. However, the good news is that a few churches in the United States are experiencing consistent growth in weekly worship attendance. If the pastoral leadership in those growing churches has anything to do with the growth, the researcher wondered what leadership qualities those pastoral leaders possessed that could be lacking in the pastoral leaders of churches that are not growing. Keen interest in whether or not the Emotional Intelligence competencies of the lead clergy of growing churches have any relationship with the growth, served as the impetus for this research study. This quantitative study was intended to investigate what relationship, if any, existed between the Emotional Intelligence competences of the lead clergy and church growth in the selected congregations within the Wesleyan Church North America. The Genos Emotional Intelligence Inventory Concise instrument was utilized to assess and to determine the scoring pattern in the Emotional Intelligence competencies of the selected lead clergy within the Wesleyan Church North America. The conclusion of the study was that, of the seven competencies of Emotional Intelligence, only Emotional Reasoning was significantly higher among the lead clergy of growing Wesleyan churches than those of the lead clergy in the Wesleyan churches that were not growing. Other Emotional Intelligent competencies showed no significant differences.Ph.D. in Leadership
A quantitative study on the relationship between the emotional intelligence of the lead clergy and growth in church worship attendance.
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Chase, Jessica. "Why They Stop Attending Church: An Exploratory Study of Religious Participation Decline Among Millennials from Conservative Christian Backgrounds." Master's thesis, University of Central Florida, 2013. http://digital.library.ucf.edu/cdm/ref/collection/ETD/id/5781.
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Using a grounded theory approach, this study examines the reasons why Millennials from conservative Christian backgrounds stop attending church. The purpose is to understand why attendance attrition is at an all time high for those in the Millennial generation, ages 18 to 29. Data from 18 semi-structured interviews with former attendees demonstrate that this phenomenon is not due to a simplistic list of reasons but is actually a result of a complex development involving varying interrelated processes. The primary processes at work are cognitive and spiritual disconnection and disengagement for personal wellbeing.M.A.
Masters
Sociology
Sciences
Applied Sociology
Books on the topic "Church attendance decline"
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Crockett, Alasdair. Variations in churchgoing rates in England in 1851: Supply-side deficiency or demand-led decline? Oxford: University of Oxford, 2000.
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Facing Decline, Finding Hope: New Possibilities for Faithful Churches. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Incorporated, 2015.
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Facing Decline, Finding Hope: New Possibilities for Faithful Churches. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Incorporated, 2015.
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Decline of Established Christianity in the Western World: Interpretations and Responses. Taylor & Francis Group, 2017.
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Peter, Cruchley-Jones, ed. God at ground level: Reappraising church decline in the UK through the experience of grass roots communities and situations. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2008.
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Bruce, Steve. British Gods. Oxford University Press, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198854111.001.0001.
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The product of a forty-year career of sociological research, British Gods is a comprehensive survey of contemporary Britain’s faith climate. Bruce has returned to a number of towns and villages that were the subject of detailed community studies in the 1950s and 1960s to see how the status, nature, and popularity of religion have changed. Those restudies—supported by a large body of survey data and statistical evidence on such measures of religious interest as baptisms, church weddings, church membership, and church attendance—provide a springboard for exploring such general issues as the status of the clergy, the churches’ attempts to find new roles, the growth of non-Christian religions, the changing nature of superstition, links between religion and violence, the impact of the charismatic movement, the ordination of women, New Age spirituality, arguments over moral issues such as abortion and gay rights, the effect of social class on belief, the impact of religion on British politics, and the ways that local social structures strengthen or weaken religion. The final chapter considers the obstacles to any religious revival and concludes that the current stock of religious knowledge is so depleted, religion so unpopular, and committed believers so scarce that any significant reversal of religion’s decline in Britain is unlikely.
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Bullivant, Stephen. Mass Exodus. Oxford University Press, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198837947.001.0001.
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In 1962, Pope John XXIII opened the Second Vatican Council with the prophecy that ‘a new day is dawning on the Church, bathing her in radiant splendour’. Desiring ‘to impart an ever increasing vigour to the Christian life of the faithful’, the Council Fathers devoted particular attention to the laity, and set in motion a series of sweeping reforms. The most significant of these centred on refashioning the Church’s liturgy. Over fifty years on, however, the statistics speak for themselves—or seem to. In America, only 15% of cradle Catholics say that they attend Mass on a weekly basis; meanwhile, 35% no longer even tick the ‘Catholic box’ on surveys. In Britain, of those raised Catholic, just 13% still attend Mass weekly, and 37% say they have ‘no religion’. But is this all the fault of Vatican II, and its runaway reforms? Or are wider social, cultural, and moral forces primarily to blame? Catholicism is not the only Christian group to have suffered serious declines since the 1960s. If anything Catholics exhibit higher church attendance, and better retention, than most Protestant churches do. If Vatican II is not the cause of Catholicism’s crisis, might it instead be the secret to its (comparative) success? Mass Exodus is the first serious historical and sociological study of Catholic lapsation and disaffiliation. Drawing on a wide range of theological, historical, and sociological sources, it also offers a comparative study of secularization across two famously contrasting religious cultures: Britain and the USA.
Book chapters on the topic "Church attendance decline"
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Inglehart, Ronald F. "The Secularization Debate." In Religion's Sudden Decline, 37–45. Oxford University Press, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197547045.003.0003.
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Well into the 20th century, leading social thinkers argued that religious beliefs reflected a prescientific worldview that would disappear as scientific rationality spread throughout the world. Though the creationism of traditional religion did give way to evolutionary worldviews, this failed to discredit religion among the general public. Religious markets theory argues that the key to flourishing religiosity is strong religious competition, but recent research found no relationship between religious pluralism and religious attendance. The individualization thesis claims that declining church attendance does not reflect declining religiosity; subjective forms of religion are simply replacing institutionalized ones. But empirical evidence indicates that individual religious belief is declining even more rapidly than church attendance. Secularization’s opponents hold that humans will always need religion. This claim seems true if it is broadened to hold that humans will always need a belief system. Norris and Inglehart argue that as survival becomes more secure, it reduces the demand for religion.
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Field, Clive D. "1939–45—Puzzled People?" In Periodizing Secularization, 215–44. Oxford University Press, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198848806.003.0008.
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Analysis of the Second World War’s impact on religious allegiance is affected by data gaps and doubts about the accuracy of opinion polling and the rigour of membership roll revision. But the Church of England lost some market share, the Free Churches slid further towards nominalism, and the number of ‘nones’ grew, absolutely and relatively, more than in the First World War. Church membership losses were greatest in 1939–42. There were 1 million fewer Sunday scholars. Unlike the First World War, there was no temporary revival of churchgoing at the start of the Second World War, only continuous decline in Protestantism, with the index of attendance at ordinary services often reduced to ten or less, half of adults never attending or solely for rites of passage. The decrease is partly explained by wartime disruptions but churchgoing also faced competition from Sunday cinema and the BBC’s enhanced portfolio of religious broadcasts.
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Wilson, Bryan R., and Eileen Barker. "What are the New Religious Movements Doing in a Secular Society?" In Understanding Social Change. British Academy, 2005. http://dx.doi.org/10.5871/bacad/9780197263143.003.0011.
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This chapter discusses one of the major social changes that have taken place in late twentieth-century Britain — secularisation — the process whereby religion loses its social significance. In the second half of the twentieth century there was a major decline in Britain in formal church membership and attendance, although the decline in religious belief is less well established. The chapter also discusses the emergence of new religions in the secular society. They derive from a wide variety of sources: some such as the Jesus Army from the Baptist tradition of Protestant Christianity, others such as the New Jerusalem claim to represent the true Orthodox tradition; many others have a non-Christian character, the International Society for Krishna Consciousness and the Brahma Kumaris have their roots in Hinduism, while Buddhism has given rise to Soka Gakkai and Shinto to Konkokyo; and also Paganism, Wicca, Satanism and traditions deriving from science fiction. The most important point to be made about these new religious movements is that because of their diversity, any generalisation concerning them can almost certainly be shown to be untrue for one or another of their number.
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Stanley, Brian. "Contrasting Patterns of Belonging and Believing." In Christianity in the Twentieth Century, 102–26. Princeton University Press, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.23943/princeton/9780691196848.003.0006.
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This chapter analyzes the strikingly divergent trajectories of Christian belief and practice in Scandinavia and the United States. All Scandinavian countries in the twentieth century experienced a decline in regular church attendance that appears to have been consistent throughout the century, and that may have begun as soon as religious compulsion was lifted in the nineteenth century. This protracted decline mirrored the slow waning of orthodox Christian belief, but this was not a decline from a previous golden age of faith; rather there seems every likelihood that the adherence of many Scandinavian people to Christian faith had been quite tenuous ever since the region was first evangelized. Yet the Scandinavian countries also illustrate in a pointed way the possibility that in certain conditions, stable patterns of religious belonging can exist almost independently of personal religious belief. Meanwhile, the United States in the twentieth century was by some criteria a more “secular” nation than Sweden or Denmark. The American state from its inception has refused to give any religious body privileged status before the law. In consequence, religion in the United States has always been divorced from the apparatus of government and public institutions to a much greater extent than in the Scandinavian nations, and in the course of the twentieth century, that divorce became more absolute in certain spheres, notably in the universities, public education, and the media.
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Field, Clive D. "Before 1880—The Long Prelude." In Periodizing Secularization, 24–43. Oxford University Press, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198848806.003.0002.
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This chapter summarizes what is known about religious allegiance and churchgoing during the long eighteenth century and the early Victorian era, with reference to statistics (noting methodological difficulties, especially affecting the 1851 religious census). There are separate analyses for England and Wales and Scotland. The dominant trend in religious allegiance was towards voluntaryism and pluralism, the established Churches of England and Scotland losing their near-monopoly of religious affiliation in the face of Dissent’s rapid advance. The nineteenth century witnessed sustained church growth, absolute and relative, in members and Sunday scholars. Despite the continued existence of legislation requiring churchgoing, its enforcement was infrequent and often ineffective. Absenteeism was a growing problem from the eighteenth century. It remains unclear whether there was any general rise in attendance during the early nineteenth century. By 1851, two-fifths of Britons may have worshipped, Wales being the most devout of the home nations, but churchgoing declined thereafter.
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Field, Clive D. "1914–18—Keeping the Spiritual Home Fires Burning." In Periodizing Secularization, 141–74. Oxford University Press, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198848806.003.0006.
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The First World War has traditionally been thought to have had a catastrophic and long-standing impact on organized religion in Britain, but this bleak picture has been qualified in recent historiography. By seriously disrupting the Churches’ work and Sunday observance, and broadening the range and affordability of secular leisure opportunities, the war proved an ‘accelerant’ rather than a novel agent of secularization. Religious allegiance held fairly steady, although the Free Churches continued to lose ground, there was (speculatively) some increase in religious ‘nones’, and growth in Spiritualism. One million Sunday scholars were permanently lost during the war, partly as a consequence of the falling birth rate. In Protestant Churches, there was a short-lived surge in attendance at the start of the war, fuelling hopes of religious revival, but it quickly gave way to ongoing decline, which was not reversed after the conflict. There were modest rises in Catholic and Jewish populations.
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Bullivant, Stephen. "The Morning After." In Mass Exodus, 189–222. Oxford University Press, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198837947.003.0006.
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In the wake of the ‘Catholic sixties’, the 1970s and 1980s were a period of uncertainty and crisis. Alongside other worrying trends—falling numbers of converts’ vocations, the departure of large numbers of clergy and religious, existential crises for many religious orders and other Catholic institutions—Mass attendance began falling and falling. As Paul VI put it in 1972, ‘It was believed that after the Council would come a sunny day in the history of the Church. Instead, a day of clouds, storms, gloom, searching, and uncertainty has arrived.’ Using new data, this chapter quantifies the declines in practice and affiliation among British and American Catholics. It also examines the related trends of ‘religious switching’ in the USA—fuelled by the advent of Evangelical megachurches from the mid-1970s onwards—and the mainstreaming of nonreligiosity in Britain.
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Erickson, Donald A. "Choice and Private Schools: Dynamics of Supply and Demand." In Private Education. Oxford University Press, 1986. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780195037104.003.0010.
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In this chapter an attempt is made, in the light of evidence from the United States and Canada, to explain in general terms the ebb and flow of private school options. Both public and private school growth and decline are affected by demography. Thus, a massive drop in Catholic school enrollment from 1966 to 1981 reflects, in part, a birthrate decline and a migration of Catholics from central cities, where many Catholic schools existed, to suburbs, where there were few Catholic schools. But unlike public school attendance, which rarely involves user fees and is considered normal if not laudatory in the United States and parts of Canada, private school attendance generally occurs when parents decide to depart from normal practice, incurring extra cost, extra effort (many private school patrons must drive their children considerable distances to school), disruption of their children’s friendships (many private school students are not in the schools which most of their neighborhood friends attend), and sometimes social disapproval. To a far greater extent than public school enrollment, then, private school enrollment depends on patron motivations. To return to the Catholic example: Even if the Catholic birthrate were high and Catholic schools were universally accessible, those schools would soon collapse unless many Catholic parents considered them worth extra expense and effort. Also, while public schools are everywhere available, parents often cannot find the private schools they prefer. Some schools exist primarily for certain religious and ethnic groups. Schools of some types are available only in a few major cities. Some schools are beyond the fiscal reach of most people. It is no accident, in this regard, that religious options are more plentiful in private schools than curricular or pedagogical options. Most religiously oriented schools enjoy subsidies from religious groups. Many schools open in the facilities of churches and synagogues, thus avoiding major expense. Sometimes churches and other denominational agencies directly sponsor schools. Even when they do not, they often assist by taking special collections, or their members provide free labor. Many Jewish day schools are subsidized through Jewish community funds.
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Field, Clive D. "1901–14—‘The Faith Society’?" In Periodizing Secularization, 109–40. Oxford University Press, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198848806.003.0005.
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Most contemporaries and several historians have assessed the religious state of Edwardian Britain pessimistically, but Callum Brown has recently contended it was ‘the faith society’. The picture is actually mixed. Relative to population, religious allegiance was reasonably stable, apart from the Free and Presbyterian Churches, which lost ground in terms of both members (whose numbers mostly peaked around 1906) and adherents. Sunday scholars, already in relative decline since the fin de siècle, peaked in 1904–10. Churchgoing also continued its relative decrease and sometimes fell absolutely. This reduction in attendances was across the board, affecting all three home nations, rural districts as well as towns and cities, and all social classes. Adjusting for twicing, weather extremities, and undercounts of Catholic Masses, perhaps one-quarter of adults worshipped weekly and two-fifths at least monthly. Attenders were disproportionately female. Observance of rites of passage remained strong, albeit the minority preference for civil marriage grew.