Inviting Someone to Church

How religious beliefs and preferences form is an important question in the academic and scientific study of religion. In this class we have talked about several ways to think about the formation of beliefs and preferences, and one of the most prominent is cultural transmission that occurs along multiple dimensions. You are most familiar with vertical transmission (parent-to-child), but for many religious groups horizontal transmission (peer-to-peer) is just as important or even more important.

One way to study horizontal transmission is to measure how often people invite someone to attend a religious meeting with them. A recent article in Christianity today discusses one study of American Protestants propensity to invite others to church.

According to this study, about 60% of American Protestants who attend church have invited at least one person to attend with them during the six months prior to the survey. About 20% made two invitations during that time, and 20% also made three or more invitations.

Read the article to learn who are the people most likely to extend invitations, how the extending of invitations varies across age groups, and more.

These invitations generate create potential for a lot of horizontal cultural transmission! Of course, not all invitations are accepted, so this is very much a numbers game. The larger the number of invitations extended, the larger the number of invitations accepted even if the percentage of acceptances is low. This is all the more reason why a religious group that wants to grow should encourage its members to extend invitations.