The Churching of America, 1776-2005: Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy

by Roger Finke

Before turning to this profile, however, we should briefly explain why our rates vary so dramatically from Bonomi and Eisenstadt's adherence estimate of 59 percent for 1780. We first checked to see if they had located more churches than Jernegan. The opposite was true. Their estimate for 1780 was based on 2,731 churches, 497 churches fewer than Jernegan's total despite being four years later. The source of the significant difference was that Bonomi and Eisenstadt estimated that each church had 480 adherents, compared to our estimate of 75 members (or about 106 adherents) per church. Relying primarily on the reports of Anglican clergy responding to the Bishop of London's queries in 1724, they assumed that each colonial congregation has an average of 80 active families, with an average of 6 members per family for a total of 480 adherents per church.