Most Americans believe going to church is a positive thing, but they don't always plan to attend a religious service personally, according to a new survey from LifeWay Research.
“Americans have a much more optimistic view of the people and practice of attending church than they do of the health of the church,” said Scott McConnell, vice president of LifeWay Research, in a press release. “Church attendance is much like regular exercise and driving the speed limit. People do not live out everything they admire.”
Survey participants were asked to finish the statements "Church attendance is ..." and "In America, the church is ..." They were allowed to select more than one answer.
In this first chart, you can see that Americans overwhelmingly see church attendance as a positive quality. About 88 percent of Americans find church attendance to be acceptable, and 65 percent believe it is admirable. Only 11 percent see church attendance as useless, with 17 percent seeing it as unusual.
So it looks like an overwhelming amount of Americans feel going to church is a good quality. But they also understand that less people are heading to the pews.
The chart below shows that 55 percent of Americans believe church overall is declining in the country and 43 percent see church as a dying trend. The chart also shows that about half of Americans believe the church has a stable future in the United States.
Thirty-eight percent of Americans believe church attendance is actually thriving, and 36 percent believe that church attendance will continue to grow in the United States, according to the chart above.
“The longevity of the Christian church proves it is not a fad,” McConnell said in the press release. “Some Americans feel cultural expectations to attend church, but our recent research shows that those who actually do attend hold more closely to the teachings of Jesus Christ.”
Herb Scribner is a writer for Deseret News National. Send him an email at hscribner@deseretdigital.com or follow him on Twitter @herbscribner.