CHURCH ATTENDANCE

~U. S. Church Attendance Statistics

 A poll interviewed 13,398 persons over age 17 in more than 300 localities during nine selected weeks. Forty-two percent said they had attended church or synagogue during the preceding seven days, an increase of 2 percent over the past five years.

 The study shows that 55 percent of Roman Catholics are in church in a typical week, 40 percent of Protestants. Women still make up a majority of those in the pews: 46 percent of the nation’s women attend, 37 percent of the men.

 Least likely attenders are people living in the West and people under age 30; those in the South and Middle West have the best attendance record.

—Christianity Today

~ Church Good For Your Health

 A Johns Hopkins University medical researcher has just discovered what the Presbyterian Ministers’ Life Insurance Fund has known for more than two centuries: attending church is good for your health.

 The risk of fatal heart diseases is almost twice as high for the non-church-goer than for men who attend once a week or more, according to a study made by Dr. George W. Comstock of the university’s Department of Epidemiology. The doctor also observed that the “clean life” associated with regular churchgoing appears to be statistically related to a lower incidence of other major diseases, adding that going to church is a very favorable input.

—Selected

~Nice Guys Finish Last

 Everyone knows about the old codger who lives to be 100 and cavalierly attributes his longevity to booze, black cigars, beautiful women—and never going to church.

 According to Dr. George W. Comstock of Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health, that kind of impious longevity may be the exception, not the rule. In studies of the relation of socioeconomic factors to disease in the population of Washington County, Md., Comstock and his colleagues made an incidental but fascinating discovery. Regular churchgoing, and the clean living that often goes with it, appear to help people avoid a whole bagful of dire ailments and disasters. Among them: heart disease, cirrhosis of the liver, tuberculosis, cancer of the cervix, chronic bronchitis, fatal one-car accidents and suicides.

 The most significant finding was that people who go to church regularly have less arteriosclerotic heart disease. The annual death rate from such disease was about 500 for every 100,000 persons among weekly churchgoers, nearly 900 per 100,000 among “less than weekly” attendees.

 As for bronchitis, Comstock is at a loss to explain the relationship. (Maybe all that hymn singing helps clear the tubes. ) In any case, he has a name—or at least a nickname—for the whole phenomenon, which he humorously calls the “Leo Durocher” syndrome. “Nice guys,” concludes the good doctor, “do seem to finish last.”

—Time

~Law Against “Wasting Time”

 Law No. 153/190, Article 1-D, forbids Rumanian citizens from “coming together to play cards, drink alcohol, or waste time.”

 By the widest stretch of the imagination, one finds it difficult to conceive of such a law having any effect upon Christian believers. And yet, it does! Under it, numbers are being arrested, fined, and even imprisoned. The charge: “wasting time.” For Rumanians to assemble for worship or prayer or Christian fellowship is, by atheistic Communist standards, “a waste of time.”

 It is not hard to understand why such a law must be resorted to in Rumania, because there, as in other Communist-dominated countries, the national constitution guarantees “religious freedom.”

~Our Courageous President

 On Sunday morning, September 27, 1959, President Eisenhower invited Khrushchev to accompany him to a worship service at Gettysburg Presbyterian Church. The Red leader declined and Eisenhower went without him.

~ Roosevelt’s Fixed Habit

 It was a fixed habit of Theodore Roosevelt to attend church on Sunday, and continued it all his years in Washington even as president of USA.

 The pastor of his church always received a letter or phone message from the president when he expected to be out of town, explaining his absence.

~Attending Church 88 Years

 “Aunt Effie” Linquist has attended the First Baptist Church in Keokuk, Iowa, regularly for the last 88 years. Since 1888, she hasn’t missed a Christmas or Easter service. During that time 15 different pastors have served her church. She has listened to over 8,000 sermons, attended more than 4,000 prayer meetings, and said over 29,000 bedtime prayers.

 Mrs. Linquist taught Sunday school for over 50 years, and several of her former Sunday school students are now in the ministry.

—Have a Good Day

~My Church

A room of quiet,

a temple of peace;

A home of faith—

where doubtings cease

A house of comfort,

where hope is given;

A source of strength

to help us to heaven;

A place of worship,

a place to pray—

I found all this

in my Church today.

—Owen W. Glassburn

~ The Perfect Church

I think that I shall never see

A Church that’s all it ought to be:

A Church whose members never stray

Beyond the Strait and Narrow Way:

A Church that has no empty pews,

Whose Pastor never has the blues,

A Church whose Deacons always deak,

And none is proud, and all are meek:

Where gossips never peddle lies,

Or make complaints or criticize;

Where all are always sweet and kind,

And all to other’s faults are blind.

Such perfect Churches there may be,

But none of them are known to me.

But still, we’ll work, and pray and plan,

To make our own the best we can.

—Selected

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