American Churches have grown in diversity with Catholic Churches leading as the most diverse, a new study by Baylor University shows.
The number of churches where less than 80% of people belonged to one race has nearly tripled since 1998, from 6% to 16%. The study counts churches in this category as “multiracial.”
Baylor University Professor Kevin Dougherty ran the study along with professors Michael Emerson and Mark Chaves. To find the information, the group asked 1,262 churches questions about race from 2018 to 2019. The study is the fourth in a series of studies which began in 1998. It’s unclear whether church makeup is changing society or whether some other change is changing church makeup.
“There’s a long history of research that shows when you bring people together to form relation-ships across racial lines, they start to think differently about race. Racism disappears,” Dougherty told The Christian Post. “But for most people, the reason they choose a multiracial place of worship is because they already have positive attitudes about other racial groups.”
Since 1998, Catholic Churches have always been the most diverse, the study suggests. But Pentecostal, evangelical, mainline Protestant and black Protestant denominations have all been catching up.