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What is church attendance like in your area? Are there many churches? Do they seem to have active memberships?

Readers talk about the religious climates in their countries

I’ve been looking for an excuse to re-run this post, since it took me a looooong time to put it together, and it generated a fascinating discussion. As I get everything back in order from filming week, I thought this would be the perfect time to run it again. It was originally published on February 14, 2011.
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In February of 2011 I asked readers to tell me about the religious climate in their countries by answering a series of seven questions. Below is a distillation of the 100+ comments that I received from readers all over the world, sorted by question.

What is church attendance like in your area? Are there many churches? Do they seem to have active memberships?

  • Ciska in Belgium: The part where I live is probably the most Catholic part of the country…Most people consider themselves Catholic, but they don’t attend church…We also have an active beguinage and several convents. It’s not unusual to see a sister walking through town.
  • Cheryl in Western Alsace, France: My husband is a Lutheran pastor. I don’t think…traditional churches would have what we as Americans consider “active memberships.” Some practice (mostly women). Many more do not, but have been baptized, confirmed, married in the church. My husband typically leads two services on Sunday morning for a total of maybe 30 people (two different villages/church locations). Sometimes there’s only 3 or 4 people present.
  • B. in Southwestern Germany: There is both a protestant and a catholic Church in every village or suburb. Church attendance is almost nonexistant in both. Only people over 80 years of age attend church. If I go to my local parish, there is not one single person of my age (~30) attending.
  • Julie in Portugal: Church attendance is still mainly Catholic and is becoming less and less. The average age of attendees is very old.
  • Respectful Reader in Norway: On any given Sunday no more than 2% of Norwegians attend church services.
  • Rebekka in Copenhagen, Denmark: Around 80% of the population belongs to the Danish Folk Church (Lutheran) and pays church tax. There are churches all over the place, but only a very small fraction of members actually go to church and they are typically the elderly…The Catholic churches are typically filled up on Sundays. The one I go to is standing room only every Sunday.
  • Kmo in Western Norway: Not very good. There were many very old, small Lutheran churches, but no Norwegians I knew attended church…There are also Islamic mosques, as Norway has a large Muslim immigrant population. I have no idea about the attendance at those mosques.
  • Rosenkranz-Atelier in Luxembourg : Very low, about 5 to 10 Percent…Almost every village has its own catholic church. Do they seem to have active memberships? Most have only small attendances and mostly elderly people.
  • The Bookworm in Bedfordshire, UK (northwest of London): In our town (population 35,000) there are [nine churches]…Most active are the Catholic, Church of England, larger Baptist and New Life churches. I’d guess church attendance is about 5%, but a larger number attend occasionally, and the role of the churches in the local community is greater than the numbers attending would suggest.b
  • Puffin Hen in Wales, UK: I personally know only 1 other person my age (38) or younger who goes to church. On average, the local church (Anglican) and the local chapels are attended by those over 60. And not many of them.
  • Lauren in Manchester, England: I would say maybe 2% most of the time. Very very few people. Sundays here are for shopping, not for church.
  • Emily in East London, UK: There are plenty of churches in our area, but they tend to be of the Pentecostal, Evangelical, one-off variety. There are also a couple of mosques and a Sikh temple. My family (me, husband and toddler) go to the local Catholic church around the corner. Most Masses are probably a third full…I would say about 150 on a good day. That said, I am a convert from the Church of England, and we would have been amazed to get that many people in the one service we had on a Sunday, let alone for four Masses.
  • Sarah in Lancashire, UK: Our church (non-denominational) is considered large at 150 members…My mother in law’s church (pentecostal) in a nearby town is mostly attended by immigrants from Africa and not a huge amount of English born people. Our local town’s Catholic church usually looks busy.
  • Andrei in New Zealand: Presbyterian Church at the bottom of my street recently demolished, unused in years. In our town many Churches have been converted to profane use, restaurants etc, one a once thriving Baptist congregation is now a Night Club.
  • Tami in Al Ain, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates: We are members of the church of Christ. There are many Christian denominations near where we live, but we have not found a church of Christ. So, we travel a little over an hour away to Dubia to worship with the church there…The Sunday worship service has about 100 people, mostly an expat population of men from India.
  • RI in East Africa: About 80% people attend church of some sort though it is a predominantly catholic society. there are many churches with active membership – think people filling the church and spilling over onto the road.
  • Ana Paula in Minas Gerais, Brazil: I live in the biggest Catholic Country in the world. So the religiousness is strong, is in the blood of the Brazilians. We pray a lot and we go to the church a lot. Each neighborhood here has a church and people attend.
  • Maria in Manila, Philippines: Churches are virtually everywhere in my country, especially in the city. They’re always packed during Sundays and certain feast days. The best part is that the age-range of mass-goers is pretty broad. This is because it’s traditional for all members of the family to go to Mass together–from newborn infants to aging grandparents.
  • Marl in the Philippines: There are churches everywhere and Masses are held pretty close to every hour. The church down the street from our house had mass every 1.5 hours from 8AM to 6PM. Sunday mass is usually packed with people cramming the parking lot (there are speakers out there) and sometimes the street. Membership is very active with entire families usually going. There are certainly no shortages of choir members, eucharistic ministers, etc. for every mass.
  • Eunice in Singapore: Church attendance is actually high in all churches here in Singapore. My parish is always full on Sundays, and this is more or less the same for the other 30 parishes in Singapore. There are also a few dominant megachurches (charismatic protestant churches) which attract a lot of the young people, accounting close to 100,000 church attendees each Sunday.
  • Elisa in Egypt (from 2006-2008): Egypt is predominantly Muslim, but Coptic Christians make up 9% of the population. Copts are treated very poorly (many around Cairo are garbage collectors and live in “garbage city” which is what it sounds like). Converting religions is very dangerous, particularly converting from Islam. Religion is by birth and is recorded on government documents. Conversion is dangerous both for the person leaving Islam and for anyone who encourages/enables such a move. Egyptian jails are deeply unpleasant. There are a few protestant expatriate churches, with 50 or so nations represented at any given service, though Egyptians were noticeably absent. There was also a small Catholic church in our suburb, catering to expatriates.
  • Nzie in Moscow, Russia: I think church attendance is quite low, but there are many restored Orthodox churches. They don’t seem to have active memberships in Moscow, but there are still several monasteries, and any tourist coming to Russia would see basically see church after church after church…My friend who is Presbyterian, however, can’t go to a Presbyterian church here – they’re banned I think. So she goes to a Baptist church, and to be Baptist in Russia is hard…She said she was Baptist when a student asked, and the student was shocked, and asked her why she didn’t believe in God.
  • Erin in New South Wales, Australia: Attendance varies from church to Church. The charismatic churches tend to have lots of young people. Some Evangelicals have a mixture of age groups, some are simply dying out. The Catholic Church we attend is predominately the over 60 set…The other Catholic Church does have more younger people.
  • Judy in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada: Many churches, very active, lots of young families. Archdiocese is building secondary schools, rebuilding old ones. Decades of immigration mean we have a very multicultural church here. People say if it was just the previous white Anglo-Saxon population, we’d be dying, but fortunately for those who are devout, that is not the case. I volunteer in RCIA [The Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults] and most of our recent inquirers have been Chinese.
  • Anne in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada: I live in Kanata (west suburb of Ottawa), and there are ~23 churches here. The ones I know of have active memberships.

Date: 2015-02-28; view: 815


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