August 17, 1998
Faith flourishes in face of competition, study of Catholic dioceses shows
Competition makes faith grow stronger and encourages church innovation, according to a new study exploring the composition of all 171 Roman Catholic dioceses in the contiguous 48 states.
“The myth that religion thrives in monopoly situations is just that, a myth,” says Rodney Stark, a professor of sociology and comparative religion at the University of Washington. His study, which appeared in a recent issue of the journal The Review of Religious Research, shows that individual dioceses exhibit more commitment and innovation in areas where Catholics are a distinct minority and face strong competition from other denominations and religions.
Stark based his work on an analysis of statistics from recent editions of the Official Catholic Directory, an annual publication that gleans information from all Catholic dioceses in the United States. He found that the dioceses that produced the highest number of new priests, for example, were situated in areas where Catholics are distinct minorities.
In 1994-95, the highest rate of ordinations of new priests per 100,000 Catholics was in Knoxville, Tenn. Catholics only make up 2 percent of the population in that area. The other dioceses with the highest ordination rates — Mobile, Ala.; Amarillo, Tex.; Lincoln, Neb., and Fargo, N.D. — also are regions with small Catholic numbers, ranging from roughly 3 percent to 25 percent of the population. By contrast, some of the smallest ordination rates were found in the Northeast — Boston, New York and Providence, R.I. — where Catholics are a majority or near-majority of the population.
Stark found similar results surrounding the number of deacons and nuns in parish leadership positions; in the subscription rates for the magazine Catholic Digest, and in the number of reported Marian Apparitions, or encounters with apparitions of the Virgin Mary.
The Catholic Church, says Stark, has a long track record of successfully competing for members in America. It began with a sudden, huge influx of immigrants in the mid 19th century as a result of the Irish potato famine and continued with waves of Catholic immigrants from eastern Europe and Italy.
“The historical view has always been that all the church had to do was tap these people on the shoulder as they got off the boat and show them where the local church was,” he explains. “But these were European Catholics who weren’t used to going to church and weren’t used to giving any money to the church. They were people who got married and buried in the church and that was it.
“The Roman Catholic church had to face the realities of the American marketplace where it didn’t have tax subsidies or church lands and where the Baptists and other denominations were out there trying to get people to come to their churches. The American Catholic church adjusted remarkably well to the circumstances and made good Catholics out of those immigrants by working at it just as the Baptists did.”
So why does the myth that religion thrives when there is a monopoly persist?
“It’s because churches do their best to convince everybody that it is true,” says Stark. “They say that if you don’t keep us in business, everything will go to hell. The clergy likes monopolies, other things being equal. As long as they are employed they have an easier deal.
“During the 19th century everyone believed the United States was more religious than Europe was because of competition. But somehow for a good part of the 20th century this has been forgotten as part of a general bias against competition and free markets.
“But data from the 1920s show that the more churches there were in town the higher church attendance was, and as new churches moved into communities attendance would go up. And when I was a kid growing up in North Dakota, most people were sure they were going to the best church in town. That’s because they had visited some of the others. Back then, it was as easy to switch churches as it was to switch automobile brands.”
But the fact of the matter, he says, was most people thought about their choices and were convinced they made the right one.
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For more information, contact Stark at (425) 881-1417 or socstark@aol.com
