Who typically did NOT go to church in the 1950s?

Factual Questions
1

A stereotype I’ve had of the past, received from various media, is that in North America, in more conservative times, i.e., up until the liberalization of society in the late 1960s and 1970s, almost everyone went to church on Sunday (unless you were Jewish, in which case you probably went to synagogue on Saturday, or belonged to one of the then-very-much in the minority ethnic groups that were not traditionally Judaeo-Christian). Also, that back then (and much more recently), almost everyone believed in God, or if you didn’t, you generally kept quiet about it.

However, a statistic that I have found in some sources (e.g. here) claims that the highest rate of churchgoing in the USA (as in, the percentage of people who attended church at least once a week) was 49%, in 1955 and again in 1958. If this statistic is correct, that means that, even at churchgoing’s 20th-century peak, a very slight majority was not attending church!

This begs the question of what lies behind the statistic. Is there any way in which those who in 1955 went to church and those who didn’t could be distinguished?

For example, were young people who had not yet gotten married, bought a house, and started a family, and so did not feel they needed to present an image of respectability in a specific community among those that tended not to go to church, becoming churchgoers when they settled down?

Or would the statistic for those who did not go to church have included a lot of people from big cities where it was easier to remain anonymous?

It is interesting that, for example, Walt Disney is claimed not to have attended church as an adult, despite the fact that he was a public figure who built a strong impression of family respectability around his business. Would he have needed to justify himself in some way?

What were you THINKING?
2
Off-topic, hidden

My parents lived in So Cal in the 1950s. They, and nobody they knew, went to church ever. I was born in 1958. I never attended a church service of any sort as a not-yet-adult. Except for weddings and funerals I’ve still never atended a church service.

I have no doubt reality was different in e.g. 1950s Oklahoma City. But the 1950s were not a religious era in much of Los Angeles.

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Off-topic, hidden

My mother’s parents and sister never attended church. Mom became a Christian independently as a young adult.

4

Nope. Those numbers, admittedly cited almost everywhere, are from Gallup, which has been asking the question since the 1930s. Well, a question, but not exactly this one. As shown in that link, the actual question was “Did you, yourself, happen to attend church, synagogue, or mosque in the last seven days, or not?”

I can think of a myriad of reasons why an individual, even a dedicated, deeply religious believer, might miss the the most recent weekly service. The implication is that the Gallup percentage is lower, perhaps much lower, than a question asking whether a person or their family regularly attended services. What that percentage is becomes difficult to know. This site claims " During the 1950s and 1960s, nearly 70% of Americans identified as regular churchgoers, attending services every week." [bold in original] No source is given, but it backs up my contention and is the only stat I could find.

Religion has never been a universal in America. It unquestionably dominated the early years and peer pressure was strong in small towns. As the country urbanized, non-attendance became less visible and so went less challenged. Attendance is not the same as belief; modern studies say that overall religious affiliation is about the same in urban and rural communities.

I’m not sure much more explanation is needed.

What were you THINKING?
5
Off-topic, hidden

Well some people were working–although in the 1950s blue laws were common which prevented most retailers from being open on Sunday.

A lot of people only went on special occasions–Easter and Christmas, etc, not weekly.

People who were “living in sin” [living together without being married] probably tended not to go to avoid negative reactions from other attendees.

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Off-topic, hidden

I grew up in a small town outside of a mid-sized Pennsylvania city in the 1950s and 60s. Our family went to Sunday school every week, but we never attended “church.” My Father was in the Men’s Bible Class and my Mother in the Women’s Bible Class. Younger adults had their own class, designed for younger married couples. I went through elementary school with pretty much the same classmates. They and all of their families attended one of the four churches nearby. (Presbyterian, Lutheran, United Brethren and Catholic. There were no Baptists, and there was only one Jewish family in town.) I can’t speak for the neighbors, but I remember some of them attended our church.

So, in our 2,000 population Pennsylvania town, I would guess that a high percentage attended church of some sort. It was the thing to do, a way of keeping connected to the community. And in a small town, it was good for business too.

I HATED Sunday school and had many an argument with my parents about it. Once I got into high school I got a job that required me to work on Sunday and I finally got out of it. I’ve never looked back. My wife, who hated Sunday school as much as I did, converted to Judaism a few years ago, and in support of her, I’ve attended services at the Synagogue, but I can take it or leave it.

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Off-topic, hidden

My parents basically never went to services. My maternal grandmother would get tickets for the high holidays at a storefront schul that was not a real synagogue but just an empty store rented for 10 days. My grandfather didn’t join her. I don’t think my father’s parents ever went. Suddenly, when I was about 11 1/2 my parents discovered that I would soon be 13 and they sent me to classes to cram for my bar mitzvah. I went to class two afternoons a week for a year and a half and never went back thereafter. AFAIK, in my mother’s family there was one pious aunt and uncle and none in my father’s.

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Off-topic, hidden

I grew up Catholic in the late '60s and '70s, and we went to church every weekend (either on Sunday, or on the Saturday evening service), unless we were out of town. There were a whole lot of people in our congregations who, yeah, only went to church for Christmas and Easter, to the point that they were nicknamed “C&E Catholics.”

I do think that there are two things conflated in the OP, which, as they note, is a stereotype:

  1. Yes, in the '50s, it was, largely, assumed that if you were an American, you were some flavor of Christian (unless you were Jewish). There were certainly atheists back then, and certainly some more liberal cities where it wasn’t entirely the norm, but the social expectation seems to have been that you would be at least nominally some denomination of Christian.
  2. Actual church attendance, however, probably never actually mapped 100% to that, and there were likely many “Christians,” even back then, who weren’t regular churchgoers.

In my own personal example – as I mentioned, I was raised Catholic. I was baptized, I attended Catholic schools, I was confirmed, we went to church every week, etc. It wasn’t until I became an adult that I learned that my parents were not actually believers: my dad is agnostic, and my mother is an atheist. They did all of that because (a) they felt that it was important for me (and my sister) to be raised with a moral compass (and that religion helped with that), and (b) my paternal grandmother was a strong Catholic, and was insistent that her grandchildren be raised in the faith (I suspect that she also helped to pay for Catholic schooling for us).

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Off-topic, hidden

My family was nominally a member of a very vanilla Methodist church when I was growing up. My parents required my sister and me to go to Sunday school, until we entered high school (I now believe that was so that they could have some reliable alone time, but I could be wrong). My sister and I were both confirmed at age 13 (at which point, ironically, we were no longer required to go to Sunday school). But we went to church at most once or twice a year. Easter, and maybe Palm Sunday.

We were sort of a mixed family. My father was a non-philosophical atheist who just thought the whole business was pointless. My mother was more conventional, but it turned out she was mainly interested in the social aspect. I ended up an atheist, my sister got born again in her 30s. So anything can happen.

eta: I should add that I was born in 1949, and that what I remember of this topic in general is that I had no idea who among my schoolmates went to church or not, except for a few Catholic kids that were excused from class for some period of time every week to go to catechism.

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Off-topic, hidden

May I ask where generally in the USA you grew up? Region and city size is plenty; I’m not trying to out you.

IME from my school years in SoCal, we knew who the (few) Jewish kids were because they took off the Jewish holidays. But they were otherwise indistinguishable from us Gentile kids. Who was Catholic or not and who regularly attended services was an utter mystery to all of us.

“Don’t ask; don’t tell; don’t care” seemed to be the way of the (local) world. Would that we could get the rest of the USA to sign up to that enlightened view in here in 2025, a mere 60 years later.

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Off-topic, hidden

That’s a good point to mention. In a lot of the U.S., even in bigger cities, churches were an important part of the social fabric, and one’s social circle was often built around who you knew from your church, and social activities which you attended at (or sponsored by) your church.

So, even if someone was only “nominally” Methodist (or Catholic, or whatever), one may still have been socially active at one’s church.

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Off-topic, hidden

My mother went to church almost every Sunday, my father only went on Christmas and Easter - and only to please my mother. So that’s 50% right there.

That kind of arrangement wasn’t unusual in many families.

13

Norman Rockwell’s take on it:

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Off-topic, hidden

We went sometimes on Easter, and maybe Christmas? Plus weddings and such of course. Most belonged to a church, and went to the pancake breakfasts and socials and such. But hardly ever service. SoCal here.

Excellent points.

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To be 100% forthcoming: I started attending a Catholic school in 4th grade; prior to that, I had attended a Lutheran school, which my parents chose because it had smaller classes and better teachers.

Until 4th grade, I was required to go to CCD (catechism) classes every week. But, at least in my area at that time (far west suburban Chicago), the options were either (a) after school on a weekday afternoon/early evening, or (b) Saturday mornings, which is when I wound up doing it.

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Off-topic, hidden

I have no real memory of the 50s, but in that general era – late 50s to early 60s – I remember the family belonging to a church, but church-going was only on special occasions, like Christmas and Easter. My mother was fairly religious; my easy-going dad never expressed any strong preferences. But I remember my dad and a friend of his engaged in maintenance of the church, like polishing the floors. We “belonged” to it, but didn’t attend often.

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Off-topic, hidden

I’ll agree with that. Back when I was a student I was a part-time janitor at a church. The building was in some sort of use pretty much every day of the week, except Saturdays. But even then, there were weddings—not every Saturday, maybe once a month or so, but requiring extra work before and after.

So what was happening? Cubs and Scouts, a badminton group in the gym, dance lessons, the Retired Men’s Club (bring a bagged lunch and hear a talk on an interesting topic), the Women’s Bridge Club, an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, choir practices, and a lot else. The gym could be rented out to anybody as a banquet hall, and was on more than one occasion during my time there. Meetings to organize some event like the Spring Bazaar and the Christmas Craft Fair. And of course, Coffee Hour after Sunday services.

Lots of chances to socialize and make friends, in other words. I’d say that Sunday services were a small part of what that church offered. An important one, to be sure, but just one of many things that church offered the community.

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Off-topic, hidden

I grew up in the 60s and 70s, but in Utah most of us Mormons went to church pretty much every week, with several days of meetings.

We had non-Mormon neighbors, including a Greek Orthodox couple next door who also went to church, and some others who didn’t go, but the church goers vastly outnumbered the others.

I met a Jewish person in high school for the first time.

19

For a Factual Questions thread, there have been a lot of people just sharing personal experiences, but so far I haven’t really seen a factual answer to the OP’s question:

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[Moderating]
Yes, this is an FQ thread. This thread is about statistics, and the accuracy of those statistics, and the correlations and demographics within those statistics. This isn’t the thread for anecdotes about our personal experiences. If you want to discuss those, start a new thread in IMHO, where such a discussion would belong. If you know anything about the statistics, please share. If you don’t know, then don’t. Yes, this might mean that nobody knows, and so this thread ends up dying. It happens sometimes.