Religious Statistics by Dr. A. C. Ames

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 6, 1910

Religious Statistics

By Dr. A. C. Ames

DR. A. C. AMES

The Census Bureau at Washington has published a bulletin on the religious bodies in the United States, which may be had free by addressing the director of the census, Washington, D. C., and asking for Bulletin No. 103 on Religious Bodies. It contains a mass of statistics which are very interesting to church workers, from which we glean the following:—

There were in the United States, in 1906, a total of 212,230 church organizations, of one hundred eighty-six different denominations; of which one hundred fifty-four are grouped into twenty-seven family groups, and thirty-two are classed separately.

Seven denominations are grouped under the name of Adventists. They are Seventh-day Adventists, Evangelical Adventists, Advent Christians (or, as we know them, First-day Adventists), the Church of God, and Churches of God (unattached congregations, two bodies split from the one that left the Seventh-day Adventists in a factional movement in the early days), Life and Advent Union, and Churches of God in Christ Jesus. These bodies have church organizations as follows: Evangelical Adventists, 18; Advent Christians, 555; Seventh-day Adventists, 1,889; Church of God, 10; Churches of God (unattached congregations), 10; Life and Advent Union, 12; Churches of God in Christ Jesus, 62.

To these we may add the Seventh-day Baptists, classified with thirteen other kinds of Baptists, who had 77 church organizations. These numbers are all small, compared with our own membership. But ours, in turn, is small when compared with the following: Fourteen Baptist bodies, with 54,880 church organizations; two bodies of Disciples, or Christians, with 10,942; twenty-four Lutheran bodies, with 12,703; fifteen Methodist bodies, with 64,701; twelve Presbyterian bodies, with 15,506; or the Roman Catholic, with 12,482 church organizations.

Every denomination given above has made marked growth since the last statistics in 1890, except the small denominations more closely related to ours; and these have all fallen off very decidedly, while ours has grown more in proportion than any of the others given.

Mountain Grove, Mo.