Harmon’s Histories: Missoula churches fretted over attendance in 1890s

By Jim Harmon

According to the Pew Research Center (Feb. 26, 2025), “only one-third of U.S. adults say they attend religious services in person at least once a month, including 25% who report going at least once per week.” The report added, though, that the decline in attendance may be leveling off.

The issue of declining church attendance takes us back to June 25, 1890 when a letter to the editor of the Missoula Weekly Gazette, submitted by someone identifying himself as “An Old Deacon,” offered up his opinion on the subject.

The Old Deacon said he had attended religious services the prior Sunday, “as was his custom,” calling the sermon “excellent.”

But he took issue with the part of the sermon which “admonished that nothing should be done on the Sabbath but to pray.”

He found that as silly as commanding that “the grass should not grow on Sunday,” and asserted that such an admonishment might well lead to declining church attendance.

He cited a New York newspaper article on the “propriety of closing art galleries and museums” in the city, given the sacredness of the Sabbath.

The author of the Editor of the Missoula Weekly Gazette quoted Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll, known as “the Great Agnostic” of the 1800s, who believed any day “in which good was done was sacred.”

Ingersoll was known for downplaying the sacredness of Sunday over any other day of the week. “A space of time cannot be sacred any more than a vacuum can be sacred by deeds it has done, and not in and of itself.”

“The man who works eight to twelve hours a day has no time during his six days of labor to visit libraries and museums,” he wrote. “Sunday is his day of leisure.”

“For men of wealth to close museums and libraries on that day shows they have either a mistaken idea as to the well-being of their fellow men or that they care nothing about the rights of any except the wealthy.”

Robert Green “Bob” Ingersoll (1833-1899), according to the Marion Illinois History Preservation group, “was a Civil War veteran, American political leader, and orator during the Golden Age of Free Thought.”

The Preservation group says, “His radical views on religion, slavery, woman’s suffrage, and other issues of the day effectively prevented him from ever pursuing or holding political offices higher than that of state attorney general.”

Newspapers of the day often attacked him, but he remained extremely popular with the public. In fact, folks paid a dollar or more (a huge amount back then) to hear him speak.

The person writing the letter to the editor of the Missoula Weekly Gazette concluded with a quote from Ingersoll: “I think that every working man and working woman should have a good time and enjoy themselves each Sunday.”

These days, that sentiment seems to be embraced by most Americans, who - after working 40 or more hours Monday through Friday - choose to recreate in a variety of ways each weekend, rather than attending church.

It is a challenge for today’s clergy: How can you make religion and church attendance more relevant to the 60-75% of Americans who do not attend religious services in person? A serious challenge, indeed.