Unchurched Statistics Point to Opportunity for Unitarian Universalism

I found the new study on who in America is "unchurched" extremely interesting. It was done by the Barna Group, and is available here.

Some of the more intriguing points:

Some population segments are notorious church avoiders. For instance, 47% of political liberals are unchurched, more than twice the percentage found among political conservatives (19%). African Americans were less likely to be unchurched (25%) than were whites (32%) or Hispanics (34%). Asians, however, doubled the national average: 63% were unchurched! Single adults continued a historic pattern of being more likely than married adults to stay away from religious services (37% versus 29%, respectively).

Residents of the West (42%) and Northeast (39%) remain the most church resistant, while those in the South are the least prone to avoid religious services (26%). Sexual orientation is closely related to church status, too: while about one-third of heterosexuals are unchurched (31%), half of the homosexual public (49%) met the unchurched criteria.

So: political liberals, along with unmarried and/or gay people in the western states are a huge potential source of people seeking a spiritual home. Time to make our message known more widely, I'd say.