Motus Mundi

“Religious worship is integral to the lives of millions of Americans. In this paper, I provide a descriptive analysis of religious worship attendance using geodata from smartphones for over 2 million Americans in 2019. … I document how start times, duration of attendance, and average household income all differ meaningfully across religious traditions. The intensity of religious observance correlates with a host of other activities. For example, relative to non-attenders and infrequent attenders, frequent religious attenders are less likely to go to strip clubs, liquor stores, and casinos.”

“…only 5% of Americans attend services “weekly”, far fewer than the ~22% who report to do so in surveys.”

“The religions with the longest average visit duration are Orthodox Christians (116 minutes), Latter-day Saints (115 minutes), and Jehovah Witnesses (115 minutes). The religions with the shortest average visit duration include Muslims (51 minutes), Catholics (66 minutes), and Buddhists (71 minutes). Jews (92 minutes) and Protestants (102 minutes) have average durations in the middle of the distribution.”

[this study has me feeling all sorts of muzzy (cause mixed?) emotion, replete w all sorts of nascent reactive thought…]