Are American Catholics in Decline?
P rofessors Rodney Stark and Roger Finke, who teach sociology at the University of Washington and Purdue University respectively, think the Catholic Church will suffer membership reverses characteristic of mainline Protestant denominations. The two professors offered the following observations on the present situation of the American Catholic Church in their analysis, published in 1992, of the development of American religions entitled The Churching of America: 1776-1990: We think it unlikely that the American Catholic Church will be able to halt its transformation from an energetic sect into a sedate mainline body…. What we do expect is that the American Catholic Church will behave like a member of the mainline. No longer in tension with the surrounding culture, the church will generate less commitment from its membership and will gradually fail to compete with a new generation of upstart sects. We believe that, as has been true for the Methodists and many other bodies, its contribu
