If there is comfort in stability, then there is little doubt that Christianity in America is in the comfort zone. The annual tracking study of religious beliefs and behavior conducted by the Barna Research Group (Ventura, California) shows that there has been no change in nine of the ten factors the company follows in its yearly tracking survey.

Church Attendance

Four out of every ten adults (40%) attend a church service on a typical Sunday. That figure is a significant decline from the early Nineties, when close to half of all adults were found in churches on Sunday, but the figure is relatively unchanged since 1994. Baby Busters, who range from 18 to 34, are notably less likely than older adults to attend services (28% compared to 51% of adults 55 or older). Women remain more likely to attend church than are men, although the attendance of females is declining in recent years. (It has remained unchanged among men.) Adults who are conservative on social and political matters are almost twice as likely to attend church as are adults who describe themselves as liberal on such issues (53% vs. 28%, respectively). Attendance levels are still higher in the "Bible belt" areas - the South and Midwest - than in the Northeast and West. Born again Christians are more than twice as likely to attend church services as are adults who have not accepted Jesus Christ as their Savior.

Born Again Christians

Born again Christians - defined in the surveys as people who say they have made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ that is still important in their life today and who say they know they will go to Heaven after they die because they have confessed their sins and accepted Jesus Christ as their savior - still represent about four out of every ten adults (41%). (In the surveys people are not asked if they consider themselves to be "born again" - this is not a self-identification measure.) That figure has remained statistically unchanged since 1995. Women are more likely to be born again than are men - about half of all women and one-third of all men. Baby Busters are less likely to be born again than are older adults. Blacks are more likely to qualify than are whites, with Hispanics the least likely of all.

Six out of ten adults who attend a Protestant church are born again Christians, compared to one out of four Catholics. However, Catholics represent about one out of every eight born again adults (13%).

Conservatives are more than twice as likely to be born again as are liberals (57% vs. 22%, respectively). However, the delineation is not as clear cut in relation to political party registration: 53% of Republicans are born again, compared to 41% among Democrats. Forty percent of independents are born again. Just one-quarter of the adults who are not registered to vote are born again.

The proportion of born again Christians has remained consistent since 1995, hovering in the 39% to 43% range during that period. The current figure does appear to be an increase over the level measured in the early nineties (when born again Christians averaged 36%).

Evangelicals

This group, which is a subset of the born again population, is measured in relation to nine different belief measures. In addition to being born again, they have a traditional, biblical view of God; believe the Bible is accurate in all that it teaches; say that Satan is a real spiritual entity; contend that Jesus never committed a sin; and believe that salvation is by God's grace and cannot be earned by good behavior. They also say that their religious faith is very important in their life and that they have a personal responsibility to share their faith in Christ with non-believers. This niche represents 8% of the adult population - a level that has not changed since 1993, when it was at 11%.

The evangelicals, though small in number, are the most religiously active. They have the highest rates of church attendance (80% in a typical week), Bible reading (92% in a typical week), sharing their faith in Christ (81% in the past year), Sunday school attendance (60% in a typical week), donating money to their church (94% did so in the past month) and volunteering at the church (48% in a typical week).

Bible Reading

In the early Nineties, Bible reading was "in." From the mid-nineties to late Nineties, it was out of fashion. Bible reading appears to be making a comeback, reaching 40% of adults now reading the Bible in a typical week. The growth in Bible reading seems to be fueled by greater commitment among blacks, low-income individuals, and men. Despite the rising readership levels among men, though, women are still substantially more likely than men to read the Bible during a typical week. Bible reading is much more common in the South than in any of the other regions of the nation.

Protestant adults are much more likely than Catholic adults to read the Bible during the week (53% vs. 38%, respectively). Born again Christians are three times more likely than non-born again adults to read the Bible (65% vs. 23%), but not as likely as evangelicals (92%).

Other Forms of Involvement

The other major forms of religious activity measured showed no signs of change. Those activities include:

Donations to a church. Slightly more than half of all adults (54%) gives money to a church in a typical month. Baby Busters are substantially less likely to give (36%) than are adults 35 and older (61%).
Small group participation. The incidence of participation in a small group or cell group that meets during the week has not changed since first measured in 1993. Currently, 17% of all adults - including 30% of born again Christians and 55% of evangelicals - are involved. Blacks are twice as likely as other adults to participate.
Adult Sunday school. Attendance by adults in a Sunday school class averages about 19% in a typical week. This is down slightly from the levels of the early Nineties. Women represent 62% of those in an average Sunday school class - and are 63% more likely to attend than are men.
Volunteering at a church. This number has declined slightly since the early Nineties, from one out of four adults to the current one out of five level (21%). Baby Busters remain the least likely to volunteer (just 11% help out during a typical week). Catholics are much less likely to pitch in than are Protestants (15% compared to 28%). Political conservatives are nearly twice as likely as liberals to help at a church.

Other Interesting Facts

The annual survey produced some other intriguing results, according to George Barna, president of the company that conducts the survey. "In a typical week, about four out of every ten people sitting in the pews of Christian churches are not born again. Although the figures are substantially different in Protestant churches than Catholic churches, more than one-third of the Protestant attenders are not born again. They certainly represent an accessible and fertile mission field for churches that have a desire to introduce people to the notion of salvation by grace."

Barna also pointed out that Catholics are much more likely to attend megachurches - defined as churches that have more than 1000 adults attending their weekend services - than are Protestants. "Catholics are 22% of the adult population, but they constitute 47% of those who attend a megachurch. Even though megachurches are seen as a Protestant phenomenon, barely half (53%) of the adults attending megachurches go to a Protestant church. That represents about one out of every ten adults attending a Protestant church and projects to about 5 million of the 53 million adults attending a Protestant church in a typical week."

Addressing some of the current thinking in religious circles, Barna referred to some of those perspectives as "myths." "There does not seem to be revival taking place in America. Whether that is measured by church attendance, born again status, or theological purity, the statistics simply do not reflect a surge of any noticeable proportions. The increase in Bible reading may be setting the stage for such a revival, but it does not appear to be occurring at the moment."

Barna, who has been tracking religious beliefs and behavior in national surveys since 1981, also addressed the notion of a Christian men's movement. "There is reason to believe that America experienced a small increase in the proportion of men who are born again between 1990 and 2000. However, the proportion is not quite beyond the range that can be explained by sampling error alone. We also find that the increase in the proportion of women who are born again was double that of men during the past decade. Church attendance among men has dropped in the past decade, as has Bible reading, Sunday school attendance and church volunteerism. Some good things have happened among men during the Nineties, but it does not appear that there has been a massive reawakening of the male soul in the last ten years."

The researcher also added a note of encouragement to church leaders. "It is important to realize that there are some signs of continued interest and growth. The level of importance assigned by people to their religious faith is very high - two-thirds say their faith is very important to them. More than four out of five people pray during the week. Bible reading is on the increase. Half of all adults claim to have a devotional or quiet time at least once during a typical week. And the fact that church attendance has remained stable while participation in virtually every other form of traditional activity - including the frequency of watching television, exercising, reading for pleasure, and spending time with the family - has declined in recent years. Spirituality remains important to people, but we're still in a shake-up period where people are trying to discover how to fit it into their increasingly fragmented, busy and changing lives. Few people are seeking to remove God from their life. They're just not sure when and how often they will pencil Him into their schedule."

Survey Methodology

The data described above are from telephone interviews with a nationwide random sample of 1002 adults. The maximum margin of sampling error associated with the aggregate sample is ±3 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. The data for previous years' surveys was conducted in the same manner, using the same sampling techniques and survey questions, and also based on samples of 1000 or more randomly selected adults. All of the interviews were conducted from the Barna Research Group telephone interviewing facility in Ventura, CA. Adults in the 48 continental states were eligible to be interviewed and the distribution coincided with the geographic dispersion of the U.S. adult population. Multiple callbacks were used to increase the probability of including a reliable distribution of adults.