Survey claims women are leaving churches

VENTURA, Calif. — Women are not going to church as much as they used to, according to a new study.

The Barna Group, a research company located in Ventura, Calif., released part of their annual "State of the Church" survey this week and compared those findings to a similar survey taken 20 years ago. The results seem to indicate church activity has dropped for women.

Maybe. Maybe not. While many news outlets are reporting the numbers, at least one religious polling expert is skeptical.

Religion News Service covered the poll this way: "Women, long considered the dominant pew dwellers in the nation's churches, have shown a dramatic drop in attendance in the last two decades, a new survey shows. Since 1991, the percentage of women attending church during a typical week has decreased by 11 percentage points to 44 percent ... ."

The Sun Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., likewise described the dismal news: "(P)ollster George Barna says women attend church and Sunday school less since 1991. They also read the Bible less and regard it as less reliable, and consider their faith less important in their lives. Over the last two decades, women have also become less likely to hold orthodox views of God as the all-knowing creator and ruler of the universe. And they're less likely to see the devil as a real person, considering him more a 'symbol of evil.'

Rodney Stark, a professor at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, doesn't buy it. At least not yet. "There are all kinds of polls asking about religious stuff. There is the General Social Survey which has been asking religious questions every year since 1972. Why not go in there and see if you can replicate the findings?" Stark said. "We haven't had time to do that yet, but we will. And I would just be absolutely shocked if Barna's findings held up."

Stark suspects Barna's results could be an accidental difference — mere random variation. "When you are dealing with surveys you are dealing with probabilities of the statistic moving no more than four or five points up and down — but sometimes it does. And if you keep looking around you will find sometimes that two surveys show quite a big difference," Stark said. "And then you run to the press."

Stark also said he would like to see Barna's data trends charted over a series of years — not just a 20-year difference.