Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/822

 8o8 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

denomination, namely, the local society. Considerable complaint has recently been made of a supposed shortage of Protestant ministers. Yet the returns show that, whereas in 1890 there was one Protestant minister to every 141 Protestant members, in 1906 the proportion of ministers had increased to one for every 139 members. In the seven largest Protestant denominations the number of members per minister for 1890 and 1906 is as follows :

iSpo IC06

Methodist 153 145

Baptist 14s 129

Lutheran 268 269

Presbyterian 122 147

Disciple 89 131

Protestant Episcopal 128 i6s

Congregational lOi I2i

Since the Bulletin does not discriminate betweeui active and retired ministers, of between pastors and others who have been ministerially ordained (as editors, secretaries, teachers, etc), we must suppose that the number of members to each available pas- tor is considerably larger than 139. But any reasonable estimate will still leave us with an apparent abundance of Protestant min- isters. If from the total number of the population we subtract Catholics, Jews, Mormons, adherents of the eastern orthodox churches, and the miscellaneous bodies that cannot be reckoned as Protestants, and then consider the remainder of the population as the sphere of Protestant operation, we find that there is one Protestant minister for every 473 i)ersons who, even by any stretch of zeal, might be included in Protestant parishes.

We discover where the pinch comes, however, when we com- pare the number of ministers with the number of churches or local groups of members. In 1890, for every 100 Protestant ministers there were 154 churches; in 1906, for every 100 such ministers there were 134 churches. There is thus an actual increase in the proportional supply of Protestant ministers. Yet it is obvious that the supply is not sufficient to provide each church with a minister. There are 49,167 more Protestant churches than min- isters, and the excess of churches over available pastors must be much greater. On the other hand, the average number of mem-