Despite its reputation, Appalachia — especially northern Alabama and Georgia to southern Ohio — has far lower church attendance than the Midwest, parts of the Mountain West, and much of the space between Michigan and Montana. Oddly enough, we think we attend church more than we actually do. In a recent Gallup poll, Southerners and Midwesterners reported the highest rates of church attendance in the country. Yet actual church attendance is much lower in the South.

According to Gallup, church attendance hovered around 39 percent in the 1930s and 1940s.7 It increased in the 1950s, when Dwight D. Eisenhower encouraged Americans everywhere to go to services. This was the sales pitch: America was now at war with communism, which was perpetuated by atheism. Americans could differentiate themselves from the godless hordes by exercising their freedom of religion. The call was taken up by religious leaders such as Billy Graham, and soon going to church was more than just something for the religious, it was part of being a good American.

I do not like a high-organized church. I think that as soon as the congregation reaches a level of one hundred or so people, it is time to build a new church. As soon as the congregation gets to the point where you are not on fairly intimate terms with every other person in that church, then you have become a theater where people can attend services. I do not think you can attend a church service. Service is not something which is there to be viewed as if it were a play or a movie.

Religious folks are much happier. Regular church attendees commit fewer crimes, are in better health, live longer, make more money, drop out of high school less frequently, and finish college more frequently than those who don’t attend church at all.16

People often ask me why I believe still. I ask myself that too. Why do I still go to church through all of this? Why do any of us? If faith is changing and dying, why do we still participate? Why do 70 percent of Americans still profess to be Christian? Even more still believe in God.

I imagine it’s the same reason why people in Middle America don’t just move. In these small towns, where loss has eviscerated them and their communities, they stay. Because this place is part of their identity — this land that gives and destroys, that creates and breaks.

The experience of the common worship of God is such a moment. It is in this connection that American Christianity has betrayed the religion of Jesus almost beyond redemption. Churches have been established for the underprivileged, for the weak, for the poor, on the theory that they prefer to be among themselves. Churches have been established for the Chinese, the Japanese, the Korean, the Mexican, the Filipino, the Italian, and the Negro, with the same theory in mind. The result is that in the one place in which normal, free contacts might be most naturally established — in which the relations of the individual to his God should take priority over conditions of class, race, power, status, wealth, or the like — this place is one of the chief instruments for guaranteeing barriers. It is in order to quote these paragraphs from a recently published book, The Protestant Church and the Negro, by Frank S. Loescher: There are approximately 8,000,000 Protestant Negroes. About 7,500,000 are in separate Negro denominations. Therefore, from the local church through the regional organizations to the national assemblies over 93 per cent of the Negroes are without association in work and worship with Christians of other races except in interdenominational organizations which involves a few of their leaders. The remaining 500,000 Negro Protestants — about 6 per cent — are in predominantly white denominations, and of these 500,000 Negroes in “white” churches, at least 99 per cent, judging by the surveys of six denominations, are in segregated congregations. They are in association with their white denominational brothers only in national assemblies, and, in some denominations, in regional, state, or more local jurisdictional meetings. There remains a handful of Negro members in local “white” churches. How many? Call it one-tenth of one per cent of all the Negro Protestant Christians in the United States — 8,000 souls — the figure is probably much too large. Whatever the figure actua

churchgoing is not synonymous with personal spirituality. There are some people who get so busy in church worship and projects that they become insensitive to the pressing human needs that sourround them, contradicting the very precepts they profess to believe deeply.

Attending church does not necessarily mean living the principles taught in those meeting. You can be active in a church but inactive in its gospel.

There's also way too much religion in the South to be consistent with good mental health.

When you go to church you are really listening-in to the secret wireless from out friends: that is why the enemy is so anxious to prevent us from going. He does it by playing on our conceit and laziness and intellectual snobbery.

A person's faith goes at its own pace. The trouble with church is the service. A service is conducted for a mass audience. Just when I start to like the hymn, everyone plops down to pray. Just when I start to hear the prayer, everyone pops up to sing. And what does the stupid sermon have to do with God? Who knows what God thinks of current events? Who cares?

I’m such an alcoholic that I go to church just for communion.

People go to church for the same reasons they go to a tavern: to stupefy themselves, to forget their misery, to imagine themselves, for a few minutes anyway, free and happy. — Circular Letter to My Friends in Italy

Baptists:
I'm a pious guy, but even I have my limits. I draw the line right around spending 8 hours in church every Sunday. Church should be a solemn 45 minutes to sit quietly and feel guilty, with donuts at the end to make you feel better. I don't go in for a full day of singing and dancing and rejoicing, no matter how nice the hats are. I prefer my Gospel monotonously droned to me from a pulpit, thank you very much.