Insights from the recent National Congregations Study

The latest report of the National Congregations Study holds some interesting insights about worship life in U.S. congregations.  In fact, there is a category “worship” in the study.  Some of the highlights:  Greater informality is creeping in (e.g., in dress, prayer styles, and behavior patterns) as the wider culture is growing more informal. 56% of Americans worship in congregations were organs are played, down from 70% in the last study in 2006-07. Behaviors associated with evangelical worship styles are on the rise (e.g., hands raised in prayer and praise).  Choirs are down.  Congregational leadership is still overwhelmingly male; only about 5% of worshipers are in congregations led by women. Attitudes toward LGBT persons are shifting slowly, and unevenly.

There are many more intriguing insights, so go and read!

Teresa Berger

Teresa Berger is Professor of Liturgical Studies at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music and Yale Divinity School in New Haven, CT, USA, where she also serves as the Thomas E. Golden Jr. Professor of Catholic Theology. She holds doctorates in both theology and in liturgical studies. Recent publications include an edited volume, Full of Your Glory: Liturgy, Cosmos, Creation (2019), and a monograph titled @ Worship: Liturgical Practices in Digital Worlds (2018). Earlier publications include Gender Differences and the Making of Liturgical History (2011), Fragments of Real Presence (2005), and a video documentary, Worship in Women’s Hands (2007).

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9 responses to “Insights from the recent National Congregations Study”

  1. Karl Liam Saur

    After an initial scan of this document, I would flag one important dimension of the report before people read too much into the percentages: for most of the sexy stats, the denominator unit is a congregation, not a congregant. This makes a huge difference for Catholics. Why? Because it gives equal weight to an small Evangelical congregation of, say, 100 people, with a Catholic parish that might well have many times that number of people worship over the course of a Saturday evening through Sunday evening. In a sense, for Catholics, it would make more sense if each Mass time were treated as an individual congregation to relate better to many/most of the other congregations included in this study.

    This is not a criticism of the study at all. It’s about clarifying its saliency for Catholics who read it from a Catholic perspective.

    Reply
  2. Karl Liam Saur

    PS: Note the following stat:

    Only 9% of congregations describe themselves as theologically liberal; it’s 6% for Catholic congregations (not individual Catholics, per my first comment).

    Reply
  3. John Mann

    The study also cites figures for attendees, not just congregations. The numbers quoted are for attendees.

    The study also notes that for Catholics, the only things that changed where the increased use of projectors and drums. The decline in structured liturgy and rise of evangelical-style worship is an almost entirely Protestant phenomenon.

    Reply
    1. Karl Liam Saur

      @John Mann – comment #3:
      That’s why I said “most”.

      Reply
  4. Scott Pluff

    Has anyone studied the use of projectors in Catholic liturgy? I don’t know of any Catholic parishes in the St. Louis area making regular use of video screens, but I’ve heard anecdotally that video projection is becoming commonplace on the west coast. I believe some use it to project song lyrics, announcements before and after Mass, powerpoint-style outlines and visual images for the homily, and even live footage/closeups of the action at the altar, ambo, font, etc.

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  5. John Mann

    The only times I’ve seen projectors is at non-English Masses and abroad. I don’t think ICEL permits projection of the missal. Decor aside, I don’t see a problem with projecting hymns. While projectors can potentially be useful during homilies, in my experience, homilists can sometimes fall victim to the PowerPoint Problem, i.e., the gratuitous use of slides just to make a presentation appear more substantial. It’s worth noting that Protestant communities with no qualms about the use of projectors still rarely use them during sermons.

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  6. Fred Crouch

    I’ve seen projectors used for hymn lyrics in a couple of Newman Center chapels in Missouri.

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  7. Jim Pauwels

    I would love to be able to project images during a homily.

    What interests me most, though, is this item: “Greater informality is creeping in (e.g., in dress, prayer styles, and behavior patterns) as the wider culture is growing more informal. ” Isn’t this something we should worry about? I sometimes wonder if the public aspects of our culture aren’t deteriorating. College students show up to lectures in their pajamas (do they do the same for campus liturgies?) whereas a couple of generations ago, it was thought proper to dress up for an airline flight. The American workforce used to be a good deal more uniformed than is now the case; compare what a nurse in a hospital wears now to what one wore 50 or 60 years ago. I now work from home full-time, and typically don’t even shave and shower until I get a free block of time in the afternoon; shorts and a t shirt, or jeans and a sweatshirt, are the daily uniform for my profession as practiced these days.

    What interests me about this isn’t the informal/formal distinction; it’s the private/public distinction. The notion that I dress up for worship, dinner, work, the theater or an airline flight seems rooted in a consciousness that I have a public persona, a communal identity. Perhaps I’m overstating things, but the ‘privatization’ of our communal living seems to pose a challenge to the nature of our worship, which is intrinsically public.

    Reply
  8. Karl Liam Saur

    I would flee any church that used projectors during Mass. And use of PowerPoint should be classified presumptively as a grave delict, the remedy for which would be several semesters of study under Edward Tufte. More people know how to use firearms than to use PowerPoint properly (its use should be safe, legal and rare – and outside Mass).

    Reply

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