The Negro's church,.

232

The Negro's Church

In the urban study, 392, or 64.4 per cent., of the churches,
and in the rural study only 49, or 26.5 per cent., have memberships of 200 or more. In the urban study 130, or 21.3
per cent., of the churches report 800 or more members enrolled, including a good many with several thousand members
and a few with memberships of more than 5,000. In the
rural study only one, or less than 1 per cent., had a membership of 800.
TABLE XIX-AVERAGE MEMBERSHIP PER CHURCH IN FOUR
COUNTIES
Combined Average
Place No. of Churches Membership Per Church
Fort Bend, Texas.................... 50 3,863 77
Peach County, Georgia............... 25 2,151 86
Montgomery, Alabama.............. 57 8,491 149
Orangeburg, South Carolina.......... 53 12,340 233
Total.......................... 185 26,845 145
The average is approximately 145 members per church for
the 185 rural churches, while 586.5 is the average for the
609 urban churches. The average of 145 members in the
rural churches of these four counties compares somewhat
favorably with the membership per church in rural Virginia.
Messrs. Ellison and Hamilton state that the Negro rural
church in the state of Virginia has an average of 158 members.' The total membership of 26,845 in the 185 rural
churches scarcely equals the combined membership of four
large-sized urban churches.
Per Cent. of Regular Contributors Higher in the Rural
Churches
The rural church differs from the urban in the percentage
of active supporters in the total membership.
In Fort Bend County, 54.5 per cent. of the members are
regular contributors; in Montgomery County, 51.3 per cent.,
1 Hamilton, C. Horace, and Ellison, John M., The Negro Church in Rural
Virginia (Blacksburg, Va.: The Virginia Polytechnic Institute), p. 8.