Religion: Churchgoing

Last year set a new record for church-going in the U.S., and the churchgoingest part of the country was the Midwest, the Gallup Poll reports. During an average 1958 week, more than 50 million U.S. adults went to church—nearly a million more than at the previous peak in 1955. This represents 54% of the population in the Midwest, 52% of the East, 51% of the South, and only 35% of the Far West. Women attended more faithfully than men (55% to 45%). Roman Catholics, for whom weekly Mass is obligatory, were more regular than Protestants by 74% to 44%. But the Protestant showing compares favorably with Britain (nearly 80% Protestant), where only 14% of the adults said they had attended church on the Sunday preceding the survey.

The latest analysis of the religious composition of New York's metropolitan area, published this week by the city's Protestant Council, gives dramatic evidence of the decline of the once-preponderant white Protestants in Manhattan and vicinity. In 22 counties of the metropolitan area (reaching into New Jersey and Connecticut), 29.5% of the population is Roman Catholic, 18% Jewish and 15.9% Protestant; 2.2% is listed as "other," and 34.4% is unaffiliated. More than 55% of the city's estimated 960,000 Protestant church members are nonwhite. Among the nonwhites, the council, in an odd ethnological stance, listed 440,000 Negroes and almost 90,000 Puerto Ricans.