ETHNOCULTURAL CLEAVAGES AND THE GROWTH OF CHURCH MEMBERSHIP IN THE UNITED-STATES, 1860-1930

Recent research on the expansion of overall church membership in the U nited States has led to conflicting conclusions as to whether religiou s diversity or monopoly increases participating. This investigation he lps resolve the debate by distinguishing among different religious tra ditions. It is hypothesized that differences in participation can be t raced to racial, ethnic, and doctrinal divisions, and moreover, that t hese divisions also provide the contingent conditions under which comp etition or monopoly effects operate. Using pooled cross-sectional time series, comparisons center on Catholics, Baptists, and Mainline denom inations. Separate analyses are presented for white and black Baptists , and for the Northern Baptist Convention that emerged in the early 20 th century as a relatively liberal Baptist denomination. The results s uggest that ecumenical and liberal religious traditions did accompany religious diversity, but membership in such churches grew very slowly. In contrast, groups that faced discrimination as well as those that s hielded themselves from progressive currents of modernism sustained hi gh rates of growth. Their monopoly situations are evident in the low r eligious diversity of counties in which they grew (as well as by low e thnic or racial diversity) and by their increasing spatial concentrati on over time.