Religion: Babson & Dead Men

This year 1.33% more people belong to U. S. churches than last year, reported the Christian Herald in releasing its annual church statistics last summer (TIME, July 12). But Statistician Roger Ward Babson, Moderator of the National Council of the Congregational-Christian Church, has long believed, from a study he made of 1,000 churches, that church attendance is decreasing. Last month, in a sermon such as he delivers annually to Congregationalists at Isles of Shoals, N. H., Moderator Babson impugned the Christian, Herald figures, said that church rolls "contain not only the names...

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