Religion census shows area evangelical population growing; Catholic population flat
Laura Legere
The Times-Tribune, Scranton, Pa.
4/5/2012
USA
The number of evangelical Protestants in the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre area surged in the past decade, accompanied by growth in both the local Muslim and Mormon populations, according to a national study of U.S. religious groups released this week.
The changes reflect an increasing diversity of religious affiliations tracked nationwide by the 2010 U.S. Religion Census, which gathers data once a decade on a county-by-county basis from 236 religious bodies. The study was released Tuesday by the Association of Religion Data Archives.
Evangelical Protestant churches added 10,000 members in Lackawanna, Luzerne and Wyoming counties in the past decade, with the largest growth at Assemblies of God, which added more regular members — 4,000 — than any other denomination in the region.
Islam had the second-largest gain in local adherents followed by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The growth in those groups mirrored the national trend, Dale E. Jones, data analyst for the 2010 U.S. Religious Census, said.
The population of Mormons had the largest growth nationwide followed by Muslims, members of Assemblies of God, and Seventh-day Adventists.
Christians are by far the largest religious group in the U.S., he said, but “in many states, Muslims are now the second-largest group after Christians.” In Pennsylvania and the Northeast, Judaism is the second largest after Christianity, he said.
The Rev. Terry Drost, lead pastor of the Peckville Assembly of God, said the growth at the church in the last decade has been remarkable.
“We never saw anything like this before,” he said. “My prayer is that every church in Lackawanna County and far beyond would experience what we have experienced here. Whether you are Catholic or Baptist or Assembly of God, our communities need good strong churches.”
No religious tradition comes close to the population of Roman Catholics in Lackawanna, Luzerne and Wyoming counties, which remained relatively flat between 2000 and 2010. About 43 percent of the total population in the three counties was Catholic in 2010.
Catholic church membership dropped 1.7 percent to 240,000 — a smaller decline than the national and state averages for the same period and dramatically smaller than the 21 percent decline in the Catholic population the researchers tracked in the three counties between 1990 and 2000.
Charles DeCelles, Ph.D., a professor of religious studies at Marywood University, said the slight decline in Catholic church membership locally is “not good news, but it is not as bad as it could be.”
The decline in church attendance is obvious at Sunday Mass, he said. “There has been a loss in the number of people that attend weekly, especially among youth.”
Between 2000 and 2010, Mainline Protestant and Orthodox Christian denominations in the metropolitan statistical area saw the largest declines in membership, according to the census. Both had about 24 percent fewer members at the end of the decade.
The United Methodist Church saw the largest local decline in adherents over the decade, with 8,900 fewer members in 2010 than 2000.
Not all faiths are easily tracked in the census. Some, like Hinduism, were added only in 2010. In 2000, all Jewish traditions were reported together, while in 2010, conservative, orthodox and reform Judaism were reported separately.
Although fewer people in the region are members of the 236 religious bodies tracked in the census, the three-county region remains more religiously active than both the state and the country.
Nearly 60 percent of the region’s total population belongs to one of the religious groups counted in the study compared to 49 percent nationally.
Contact the writer: llegere@timesshamrock.com
