To develop these membership estimates, the first step was estimating the average size of congregations in 1776, for then membership rates required nothing but simple multiplication. We began by looking at the
1890 census. Here the average Protestant congregation in the nation had 91.5 members. Surely they would have been smaller than this in 1776, because population density was commonly cited by religious leaders of the time as a primary barrier to sustaining churches. But if churches were smaller in 1776, how much smaller were they? This question caused us to search for any membership
...more
