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Dutchess_III's avatar

How many churches does your town have?

Asked by Dutchess_III (46813points) February 26th, 2017
21 responses
“Great Question” (2points)

I live in a small Mid-western town of only about 12,000 people. We have 26 churches here! (I googled it today.) I had an old school friend visit yesterday. She had spent a lot of time here as a kid because her grand parents lived here. They went to the Methodist church every Sunday. She wanted to go by and see it. I asked if she knew where it was. She said, “With as small as this town is you don’t know where the Methodist church is?”
I said, “Man, we have a million churches here!” and I started pointing them out as we drove around town.
After about the 17th church in about as many blocks she said, “Val, you don’t belong here!”
I laughed and said, “Yeah, I feel I’m going to burst into flames sometimes!”
So how many churches compared to population does your town have?

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Answers

ANef_is_Enuf's avatar

Small Ohio city of approximately 19,000 and the only number that I can find on a search is 32. Off the top of my head I want to say that there are 3 within a couple of blocks of my house.

ragingloli's avatar

I neither know nor care.
But just for you, Google maps shows me 4, with about 16000 people.

Brian1946's avatar

In my little section of the San Fernando valley of about 1 million, I think I’ve seen about 3.

zenvelo's avatar

10 or 11 in my northern California suburb of 25,000. An internet listing of churches does not include the Buddhist monastery, nor does it include the Jewish temple.

Dutchess_III's avatar

Interesting.

Sneki95's avatar

One. It used to have two, but the other one is turned into the village school, if I remember well.

YARNLADY's avatar

Population 83,000, 921 churches listed in the YP

BellaB's avatar

There seems to be one about every three blocks along the main drags here. There are five within a ten – fifteen minute walk here. Then there are mosques/temples/prayer centres etc. There are literally thousands of religious buildings here. Some of them serve a couple of faiths.

oh. Forgot that we have a Salvation Army facility (do they call them churches?) on our street – between us and the ambulance station and the grocery store. Sometimes you can really tell that our area is a borough that was amalgamated into a bigger city.

Call_Me_Jay's avatar

There A LOT of churches in Chicago. 17 within a mile of my place according to Google maps.

In the entire city, I am guessing a few thousand,but I’m not willing to count all the red dots..

@YARNLADY Whoa. That’s a lot! One church for every 90 people. According to this, Indianapolis is the highest big city with 1:289, and Chicago is eleventh with 1:1,225.

MrGrimm888's avatar

I live in Charleston SC. “The Holy City. ”

I don’t know how many there are, but it seems like there’s a church on every corner. Hard town to open a strip club in….

Dutchess_III's avatar

You have over 200 in Charleston.

Call_Me_Jay's avatar

And I just realized with the per capita number I can calculate that Chicago has 2,200 churches.

Dutchess_III's avatar

My Google says 498 for Chicago.

I don’t know that it’s determined by per capita. Zenvelo said there are only 10 or 11 in his Northern Ca. suburb of 25,000. I think you’re more likely to find a lot of churches in the Bible belt and in the south that other places in the U.S.

Call_Me_Jay's avatar

@Dutchess_III

498 is just places that happen to be in that particular directory. My zip code alone has about 60 churches and only 3% of the city’s population.

And it’s not true that the bible belt would necessarily have more than a northern city.

The local Catholic church alone has enough that the diocese plans to close 100 in the next 15 years.

The immigrant community is probably more religious than average. I have Korean, Serbian, Ukrainian, Polish, Greek, Ethiopian, Romanian and all sorts of Spanish-language churches nearby. The black communities have tons of churches, big and small. The Hispanic communities have tons of both Catholic and evangelical churches.

We have one neighborhood with 20 orthodox Jewish congregations. I don’t know the Muslim population, but I know a bank that specializes in Islamic lending for home loans.

johnpowell's avatar

I had a hard time coming good numbers. But in Eugene/Springfield there are around 220K people. Google gave me about 90 churches but there were some that were pretty much “The church of smoking weed” and some small ones that are not considered a mainstream religion.

And on the list is the church by my mom’s house that has around 100 members. There aren’t any mega churches around here. The biggest one I can think of is out on river road and can probably hold 1K people.

JLeslie's avatar

I did a google and there appears to be 9 in my town of 100,000 people, I’m including a synagogue in that number. There are also at least 5 I can think of within a few miles of the boarders of the town that you theoretically could count. There probably are also little Christian churches I don’t even realize are close by that I’m not counting.

My experience is the parts of the country that are evangelical have lots and lots of churches. The Catholics tend to have moderate to larger sized churches, so let’s say you have 10,000 Catholics in town, there might be 2 or 3 churches. 10,000 Baptists there might be 6 churches.

flutherother's avatar

I would guess there are about 100 in my city. There are also many lovely church buildings that have been converted into pubs.

Dutchess_III's avatar

BLASPHEMY!!!

flutherother's avatar

They were no longer functioning as churches and the buildings were neglected. I’m sure some of the faithful are turning in their graves but they do make nice pubs. My local also puts on very successful plays in the old church basement at lunchtimes.

Dutchess_III's avatar

I’m sure they would. I don’t care. I was just joking.

sone's avatar

None

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