“After all, the PCA with their 1927 churches hasn’t reached Panda Express levels.” 😂 honestly, funniest quote in a while!

Me, a Catholic: oh yeah we're everywhere

I’m a life long Catholic and was recently surprised that our church is the majority church in Bangladesh when we were visited by a bishop from there

I have a feeling that the reason why so many Lutheran churches are located in the upper Midwest and Pennsylvania, is because those where the areas with the highest concentration of German immigrants during the 19th and 20th centuries. For the most part, the majority of German immigrants into America, at the time, were Lutheran.

Dude, your work is EXCELLENT. I really appreciate your approach: No invective, no snark, no grandstanding. No attempt to sacrifice accuracy to amp-up the entertainment value. Just an arms-length, calm, objective, charitable, and easily-understood presentation of the data. Kudos! P.S. Have you considered teaching journalism lessons to that cavalcade of defectives who operate (and present on) cable news television? I'd happily replace the whole lot of them, the writers, producers, editors, on-air personalities, pretend-fact-checkers, tendentious spinners, weasely talking-head guests, and all, with an identical number of clones of YOU.

I used to work for a company that sold products to churches all over the USA. I legitimately started thinking of the United Methodists as “the McDonalds of churches” because they were so ubiquitous and all had identical branding. At least with the Roman Catholic congregations you had different names-Saint So-and-so, Our Lady of Such-and-such, etc.

I have a theory as to why the LCMS is more common in these cities than the ELCA. As a Minnesotan, I notice that in the cities (Minneapolis and St. Paul), the ELCA seems to dominate, but in more rural areas the LCMS is more common. I think that this is because of the urban/rural political divide, and the fact that the LCMS is not a conservative breakaway from the ELCA, like the PCA and ACNA, but a well established denomination. I think Lutherans have the biggeset divide between conservative and liberal churches.

Hazleton resident here and can confirm there is a majorly strong Catholic presence in Eastern Pennsylvania. Love the video and keep up the great work!

This was super interesting. Comparing it to fast food locations was clever

Another great video. Always on point. 👍🏻. The main thing I appreciate is that you don’t criticize or draw attention to yourself in your videos. You just state the facts and let the audience think for themselves. Other KZfaqrs need to learn from this.

I've been doing an overview of theology and denominational doctrines, so I've been bouncing around your channel. Pop this video up, and, well what do you know, it's talking about my town! Super cool to see the dispersion of the different denominations but also see our city's church influence brought to light. Perhaps it'd interest you to know that I learned about a few new ones I had no idea about from your video. Crazy how that works... Thanks for your videos - your style is engaging, extremely informative, and has certainly been making for some good conversations.

Me: oh that would be cool if my hometown was on the list. RtH: Moscow, Idaho Me:... alrighty then

A big reason for the large CoC presence in Searcy AR. is Harding University. A CoC based university 😊

As someone who grew up in Illinois, I was *shocked* at the map of Lutherans! I had no idea they weren't as common everywhere else as they are in IL/WI! I knew there's a lot of German immigration history in thr upper widwest, but I thought they were everywhere else, *too*

As someone who lives near Moscow, I was confused to hear that there wasn’t a Reformed church, but turns out the one I was thinking of just had “reformed” in the name and is in fact not a part of that denomination.

It would be interesting to see this kind of video on an international level. For instance seeing the top few denominations in each country by attendance. Maybe do a few videos broken into regions as that would get kind of long. Or maybe just show a graph with the stats, mention trends and point out anything surprising.

These videos are so good! Very scholarly stuff I love it!

Fantastic video, I really enjoyed watching and thank you for making it.

Thanks for including Mormons on the list :) We are Christian too ;-)

Let go!!! Arkansas made the list!!!! Searcy happens to be pretty heavy Church Of Christ since they have a local COC University there. The main SBC Church there is pretty big though for that size of city.

The ELCA is plummeting in members and congregations are folding or merging.

Thank you so much for your videos they're extremely informative and they seem trustworthy in their lack of bias content I look forward to watching as many as I can consume

Very nice study, with good parameters, and I liked your use of the fast-food comparisons. Well done! Again as in the past, informative and instructive.

Thank you so much for your work!

As always love the video. Keep up the great work man.

this is seriously helpful to me and I can imagine lots of other people thank you

What a video! You’re a stud! Thanks so much brother, God bless ya!!

Everything to the point.Thanks so much. As always.

Young man, this is a very impressive presentation. Thanks

Your channel is remarkable. The term "church shopping" is a real thing.

Really intriguing video brother. Grace and Peace.

Hey, Josh, if you ever remake this, could you please include the Orthodox? Particularly Eastern + Western Rite parishes? Western Rite seems to be up and coming. It'd be interesting to keep track of their growth. Eastern is of course heavily dependent on region, but there are often some in smaller towns like those you focus on here.

Amazed to see Searcy on here - great video

Love your videos! Keep it up!

Great video, awsome job on picking up the different types of catholics churchs in the towns. most people do not know about them. You videos are great.

WOW! That was fascinating!!! Thank you for sharing!

Would like to see something similar to this but including data from outside of the US 😃 I really appreciate how well this video was made and presented

I m eastern catholic and I love your channel! Thank you for your work

I enjoy your insights. There are so many things going on in the church today. Covid has not destroyed our churches, but it may have revealed the fact that the church has been teetering on its heels and some have fallen and will not or cannot get up. I will continue to look for additional postings.

This presentation is amazingly useful.

Always awesome content

This was very interesting and informative. I live in Little Rock, not far from Searcy. I'm originally from California, but the Los Angeles area, quite a ways northwest from Brawley (but I've been to Brawley, and everyone was super friendly). My parents live in Idaho. My husband and I used to live in South Dakota. I have not been to Hazleton, PA or Key West, FL, but my husband and I are planning to visit Key West soon.

There’s something so interesting about comparing churches to fast food locations

absolutely had this conversation exact conversation before. Before this was made and after it! I am getting frisson because we have this similar interest and you are making videos about it. I watch lots of videos about construction and trains. but i always wanted there to be a video channel like yours and there is one! i'm coming from a weird tradition. but I like it. I think you are way more concise than me. I'm seeing this video and channel for the first time today really. but I love how I have talked about this informally, even the mcdonalds subway comparison. even since this video was published i've had conversations like this. but i love how you actually do the work. I'm just so excited man this rocks.

Thank you a fascinating video.

I wish you got more likes. You do good work. Keep it up.

Great video, thanks!

I appreciate your videos very much ❤❤❤👍💥💥💥

Great idea! Thank you!

Within my consolidated city/county in Georgia (pop. around 200K) there are: 4 Catholic Churches (the one I attend has a few thousand congregants) I'd say around 4 or 5 Lutheran churches, probably mostly ELCA but certainly one LCMS At least one Mormon, JW, and Seventh-Day Adventist church A few Pentacostal churches, including a big one with some cool cross tower on the lawn near the street Maybe one Orthodox church, one synagogue, and a mosque; not sure about Hindu or Buddhist places of worship Quite a few Presbyterian churches (mostly PCUSA) Probably around that many AME churches A Unitarian Universalist congregation A few non-denominational churches, plus some that primarily worship in Spanish All the rest are a number (probably hundreds) of Baptist and Methodist churches, though the former certainly outnumbers the latter and probably comprises the majority of Christians overall in the county (we're one of 159 in the state; we just happen to be probably one of the largest by pop outside of the Atlanta area)

Awesome video! Thanks for doing the research!

This was a great video!

Well done per usual. I noted that you had total congregations for a few of those that were in all 6 of your sample cities (and matching that with the fast food franchises - which is quite clever and relatable) but not all. I would have liked to have seen that for all that were in each of the 6 locations.

Thanx, Joshua🌹🌹🌹

its really interesting to look at churches this way and see which churches are the most widespread

Great content!

Sir, I really appreciate your content. I watched your _EO vs. OO_ video the other day and I was wondering whether you could make a video series about the theological differences of the Oriental-Orthodox churches and what theology and practice is unique to each of them. I know that you touched on this a little bit, but I think a deep dive video series would be really cool! Armenian-Apostolic greetings!

In Utah, Mormon churches outnumber Starbucks. And for good reason.

I’m actually shocked that you went with a small place like Hazelton instead of the more recognizable Scranton. Impressive work

great research

Such an interesting video idea!

This is just brilliant.

This is fascinating.

I appreciate this. Speaking of my own denomination, the AME Church (and likely all Black denominations). The tendency of seeing a Black Church in any town/city is based on Black population. And this population is usually based on two factors: slavery and the Great Migration.

love this one

Excellent video! I'm from a small town (less than a thousand people) in central West Virginia with two tiny churches, Baptist and Methodist. The next bigger town (around three thousand people) has two or three of each, and nothing else. As a kid I thought there were only two species of humans, Methodist and Baptist! (My family were Cornish miners who were all Methodists.) For any other denomination you have to drive to the Capitol city, Charleston.

Great video

Good work.

I am not UPCI, but it is always nice to know that I I am traveling there might be one or similar. When traveling and away from home for a weekend, they are always an easy check.

I was researching my family tree and found most my family had been Methodist since it’s inception and was what played a huge part in them all coming over to America (to escape the Church of England) this all is so fascinating!!!!

This video is really well done and this was a fun comparison! I live rather close to Moscow, and it's interesting to note that it's pretty diverse with its religious congregations because it's also the home of the University of Idaho. Having the college students come in every fall almost doubles the population, resulting in more congregants. I'm curious if there is any other context like that for the other five towns, it would be interesting to think how it could affect their church population.

Very cool video

OMG! I live in DFW and I had no idea we had that many SBC churches even though I was raised SB. Crazy town. We need to calm down. 😆

A thumnail like that made me have to watch this XD

There are churches EVERYWHERE where I live. There's a catholic church in my neighborhood. Down the street is a Lutheran one, and down the street from that is a Baptist one.

for me as an Adventist, were everywhere around the globe... God bless!

This is pretty good!

This makes me curious about education and hospitals. How about a similar video on these?

This video makes me suddenly want a Ready to Harvest channel but with fast food chains.

I'm from Pennsylvania and although Hazleton didn't seem to have a UM they are all over Pa, in some very small towns too. Many more than Southern Baptists.

Years ago I did a lot of research on a different but related topic: which Christian Hymn-tunes are the most widespread in the USA? I had to determine which denominations used which Hymnals, then see what Hymn-tunes were in each. (Not the texts, the tunes. The same Hymn-tune might be found with dozens of different texts.) The easy denominations to study were ones with a single officially approved Hymnal like the LDS, United Methodist, Episcopal, etc. Extremely messy was the Catholic church; there are dozens of different Catholic Hymnals published by a number of competing publishing firms, who are free to sell their books to as many parishes as they can. And completely unmeasurable are the modern nondenominational "media Churches" who put the words up on giant TV screens and have made the concept of Hymnal meaningless.

You were talking about the difficulty in establishing the presence of a UMC church in Hazelton and then at the last moment used the name Searcy when explaining why it was important to determine whether Hazelton had a UMC church or not. :) Just a note in case you want to drop a text bug over the video at that moment. Good content, well delivered. I hope my QA habits are not offensive. I certainly don’t mean them to be.

I'd love to see a run down of New England. It's a spiritual desert.

I thought the cross on the French Fries was a speaker’s volume buttons for a sec.

Would be interesting to see something like this for other countries as well. 😃

very interesting topic

Interesting comparison! It was also interesting to watch your video (decline of Christianity) or what it was called - maybe an update could be in place? I am from Europe, and we have similar decline within Christianity here.

Ya, i find buildings for my church a lot when im on road trips

I've heard it said that Billy Graham once said that "you go anywhere in the world and you'll find two things: Coca-cola and the Assemblies of God!" I've been across the US and in some small, small places in the world, and it's true! Middle of nowhere, and there's a coke machine and an A/G church. Fun video man.

Where I live (Sanpete County, UT, population 30,000) there are three Baptist Churches (none SBC), one non-denominational evangelical, two Presbyterian churches, two small Catholic missions, one Calvary Chapel mission (ours) and 24 Mormon congregations. Probably the last figure isn't surprising.

@Ready to Harvest , Thank you very much for your wonderful work .I have a question, could you please make a Video about the churches representation worldwide?

The fact that MacDonalds, Pizza Hut and Subway combined can't even compete with Southern Baptists is quite hilarious.

I can tell you Searcy AR is a bit skewed for Church of Christ since there is also a CoC affiliated university in the town, Harding University.

Racine WI is drowning in Lutheran Churches mostly from how we used to be a huge center of Danish culture, so much so the Queen herself had visited back in the 70s. But I was raised Catholic and for a reasons know we had at least 6 but I only attended 2. What's interesting is I remember reading Cracked article about outdated Catholic stereotypes media saying that in the US most Catholic churches don't still like cathedrals built in the middle ages. When I must be lucky then because both I grew up in looked pretty old fashioned. I also know we had exactly two Independent Baptist Churches, I'd attended both of them a long time ago, and some other varying types of Baptist Churches, I think we have a Greek Orthodox Church and a Methodist Church. And one Charismatic group who had their meetings in a random room at the local hospital.

In my area, the LCMS is like a Dollar Tree or Kmart...either not that many located or non-existent. The ELCA is like the bars as they're everywhere in my area. The Methodist church basically is like the Smoke Shops, very few of them are around. Catholic Church is like a liquor store as they can be everywhere like bars in my area. The "spirit filled" denominations are like coffee shops and they exist in few numbers.

This video made me hungry.

culvers i see you are a man of culture as well

In my rural southeastern NC area, Baptist and Presbyterian churches are everywhere. I grew up Missionary Baptist.

In the Southeast, we have Krystal instead of White Castle. :-)

very interesting