THE CHURCH IN AMERICA.

New Zealand Tablet, 4 July 1918, Page 17

THE CHURCH IN AMERICA.

Authoritative statements from the Census Bureau at Washington disclose some interesting facts concerning religion and religion-professing people in this country (states the Ave Maria). We are told that the total church membership of the United States increased in the ten-year period ending in 1916 from 35 to 42 millions. Of these two score and two millions no fewer than fifteen and (about) three-quarter millions are Catholics. We have so long been accustomed to hearing that the adherents of our Church number in this republic one-seventh, one-sixth, or one-fifth of the entire population that it is worth while, if only for a change, to emphasise the fact that we constitute more than 37 per cent, (considerably more than a third) of the church-going population. That more than twothirds- of the American people go to no church is a distressing truth : but in view of the fact that religious instruction is excluded from the public schools it is not surprising.