Gaston County, North Carolina

Denominational Groups, 2000

76,199	26,004		5,304	1,857	81,001
Evangelical Protestant	Mainline Protestant	Orthodox	Catholic	Other	Unclaimed

Congregational "adherents" include all full members, their children, and others who regularly attend services. The historically African American denominations are not included in the 2000 congregation and membership totals. Many are also missing in 1990 and most historically African American denominations are missing in the 1980 reports.
[More information on the data sources]

Reports

Religious Bodies	Theology	Congregations	Adherents	% Change
Assemblies of God	Evangelical Protestant	0	+497	41.0%
Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church	Evangelical Protestant	+1	+26	1.0%
Catholic Church	Catholic	0	+3,080	138.0%
Christian Churches and Churches of Christ	Evangelical Protestant	+1	+62	n.a.
Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee)	Evangelical Protestant	-8	+2,047	46.0%
Church of God of Prophecy	Evangelical Protestant	+3	+156	n.a.
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, The	Other Theology	+2	+1,140	286.0%
Church of the Nazarene	Evangelical Protestant	+1	-63	-20.0%
Churches of Christ	Evangelical Protestant	+1	+20	9.0%
Episcopal Church	Mainline Protestant	0	+156	19.0%
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America	Mainline Protestant	0	-81	-1.0%
Evangelical Presbyterian Church	Evangelical Protestant	+2	+77	n.a.
International Church of the Foursquare Gospel	Evangelical Protestant	0	+171	16.0%
International Pentecostal Holiness Church	Evangelical Protestant	+2	+492	120.0%
Jewish Estimate	Other Theology	0	+2	1.0%
National Association of Free Will Baptists	Evangelical Protestant	+22	+2,848	n.a.
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)	Mainline Protestant	-3	-1,265	-19.0%
Presbyterian Church in America	Evangelical Protestant	-1	+141	18.0%
Salvation Army, The	Evangelical Protestant	0	-1,406	-89.0%
Seventh-day Adventist Church	Evangelical Protestant	+1	+156	n.a.
Southern Baptist Convention	Evangelical Protestant	+17	+6,261	12.0%
United Church of Christ	Mainline Protestant	+1	+100	n.a.
United Methodist Church, The	Mainline Protestant	-4	-58	0.0%
Wesleyan Church, The	Evangelical Protestant	+10	+2,270	n.a.
	Totals:	48	+16,829	+18.2%

The population of this county (or equivalent) in 1980 was 162,568; in 2000 it was 190,365. The total population changed 8.7%. The adherent totals for 1980 (102,225) represent 62.9% of the 1980 population. The adherent totals for 2000 (109,364) include 57.4% of the 2000 population. The totals represent the change in groups that reported in both 1980 and 2000 only. There is sufficient data for 24 groups to calculate 1980-2000 change. These 24 groups had 92,376 adherents in 1980 and 109,205 adherents in 2000, for a change of 18.2%

Sources

The 2000 data were collected by the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies (ASARB) and includes statistics for 149 religious groups, including number of churches and adherents. Dale E. Jones, Sherri Doty, Clifford Grammich, James E. Horsch, Richard Houseal, Mac Lynn, John P. Marcum, Kenneth M. Sanchagrin and Richard H. Taylor supervised the collection. These data originally appeared in Religious Congregations & Membership in the United States, 2000, published by the Glenmary Research Center.

The 1980 data were collected by the Glenmary Research Center and include statistics for 111 Judeo-Christian church bodies, including number of churches and adherents. Bernard Quinn, Herman Anderson, Martin Bradley, Paul Goetting and Peggy Shriver supervised the collection. These data originally appeared in Churches and Church Membership in the United States, 1980, published by the Glenmary Research Center.

[More information on these data sources]