180 Degrees
Want an inside look at a yearlong project by journalists at the newspaper and the Web site to help Rockford solve serious problems and turn around? We’re focusing on five areas that are key to our way of life in the Rock River Valley: Crime, education, the local economy, state and local government and our culture/sense of place. Would you like to help us in this campaign to bring about change? Give us your ideas and insights and help guide us to better solutions for Rockford. You can join the conversation here.

Growing number of religions in Rock River Valley

April 28th, 2008 at 01:25pm Alex Gary

My role in this projects is to collect numbers. Just in this morning is a bevy of religious data from The Glenmary Research Center.

According to Glenmary, the number of religious bodies with churches in Boone, Ogle and Winnebago counties grew from 38 in 1980 to 47 in 1990 and to 53 in 2000.

These numbers do not include historically African American churches who rarely respond to Glenmary’s surveys.

Among the religious groups now with churches in the Rock River Valley that didn’t have a presence here in 1980:

American Baptist Association, American Carpatho-Russion Orthodox Greek Catholic Church, Apostolic Christian Church of America Inc., Baha’i, Buddhism, Church of God of Prophecy, Community of Christ, Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, Muslim, National Association of Free Will Baptists, New Testament Association of Independent Baptist Churches, Serbian Orthodox Church in the U.S.A. and The Wesleyan Church.

The Catholic Church remains the single largest religious body with 78,151 adherents as of 2000. That was up from 47,880 in 1980.


Entry Filed under: Uncategorized

2 Comments Add your own

  • 1. thedudeabides  |  April 28th, 2008 at 6:45 pm

    Why don’t the black churches respond to their survey?

  • 2. Chuck Sweeny  |  May 1st, 2008 at 1:30 am

    Let’s not forget the Heartland phenomenon. More and more people are attending independent churches not affiliated with any of the traditional Protestant denominations. Heartland, now with two locations in Rockford, is pulling in 8,000 people a weekend.
    It is, as they say, a different way. Faith Center, another independent church, is building a new building on South Main near the airport.

Leave a Comment

Required

Required, hidden

Security Code:

Some HTML allowed:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>

Trackback this post  |  Subscribe to the comments via RSS Feed