Church Membership and Penitentiaries
The Rev. Alexander Jackson has an article in the Independent, on "The Relation of the Classes to the Church." A census has just been taken of the Protestant Churches of Pittsburg and Alleghany, Penn., and from that he takes his figures. Part of his conclusions are found in the following paragraph, which needs no comment:— "There are more males than females in Pittsburg; but there are only 37.15 per cent. of Protestant church-members males, while 72.85 are females. Of the 47,838 members of evangelical churches in the two cities, 17,772 are males and 30,066 females. This unsatisfactory fact is more than offset by another: One Alleghany minister preaches to a congregation in which males are in the majority; he is chaplain of the penitentiary! More than nine-tenths of the prisoners in Pennsylvania are males. It is safe to say that if there were more men in our Protestant churches there would be fewer in our penitentiaries."