A county-by-county census of church and synagogue membership in the United States will be completed and released late in 1956, it was reported here yesterday at the sixth annual assembly of the Division of Home Missions of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S. The study is being conducted by the bureau of research and survey of the National Council.
Jewish data has not yet been completed in the survey, it was reported, although Protestant and Catholic figures are complete except for groups which do not keep membership statistics or do not choose to make them public. When the survey is completed, any religious group will be able to find the exact number of its members in any county of the country through a card index file.
The census is being financed in part by an anonymous $35,000 contribution from a foundation and through denominational contributions which will bring the total to over $100,000. The last religious affiliation survey undertaken on a national basis was carried out in 1936 by the Federal Government.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
