Jasper County Democrat, Volume 6, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 January 1904 — CHURCHES GROW IN A YEAR. [ARTICLE]

CHURCHES GROW IN A YEAR.

Membership In Them Keep* Pace with the Popnlatlpn. '■> In even figures the membership of ail religious bodies in America at this time

la 29,000,000, or an increase last year of about 450,000, according to statistics compiled by the Church News Association of New York. Some churches reck* on actual communicants, some baptisms, some adherents, bat a large proportion of church officials jump at estimates and then forget to send their estimates to ths denominational statistician. The ecclesiastical years in different bodies ore not the same and hence it is impossible to say that a particular body increased in membership so many hundreds or thousands last year.' Roughly speaking, It appears that Christianity is just about keeping pace with population in the matter of growth. Certainly It grew none on the population last year. Always in prosperous financial times religious Interests suffer to some extent. The present times are no exception and returns for the year just ended show that ths world is paying marked attention to worldly affairs.

Three bodies about which much was heard in 1903 are the Dowieites, the Christian Scientists and the Jews. The first named have been credited by the religions statisticians with a membership of 40,000. They themselves admit that they know of only 23,500. The statisticians have uniformly given member : ship figures of Christian Scientists. Yet officials of Christian Scientist churches affirm that no records are compiled and that they themselves do not know their numbers.

The influx of Jews into America la enormous at this time and it is out of the question even to estimate their total. It is said that the number of Jews who are recorded ns belonging to a congregation is 150,000. If this be accurate, which is doubtful, it is less than onequarter of all the Jews resident in New York City alone, at present the great center of Jewish population in the World. A few years ago it was true that the larger religious bodies were growing larger and the small ones smaller. List year, if the statistics are accepted, the