Declining Church Attendance
By A. Carter
Is religion ceasing to have its former power over human lives? In a recent paper published in Elgin, Illinois, the statement is made that sixteen thousand places of worship in the South are vacant. In another paper—Current Opinion—appears an article on "The Desperate Plight of the Country Church," which refers to a report made by C. O. Gill and Gifford Pinchot. These writers tell of the result of their investigation into the religious conditions as they found them in the states of Vermont and New York. Church attendance had fallen off from thirty-one to fifty-three per cent. In a very large part of the churches of two counties, "the congregations have been decreasing so rapidly and are now so small as to make the conditions and prospects most disheartening to the church-going people." Do facts of this character have any bearing on Christ’s question, "Nevertheless when the Son of man cometh, shall He find faith on the earth?" Luke 18:8.