One of the desperate pleas of those who do not like to see the world passing away from Christianity is that there is "a considerable and increasing interest in religion." That is to say, they bully the press into giving a large space to the activities of the Churches and use their wealth to put religion on the ether (radio) and in the topical pictures, and then they ask us to be impressed. When some scientific man writes a book which seems to be favorable to religion, they boost its circulation and then flaunt the figures in our faces. Curiously, they never mention as an indication of interest in religion the immense circulation of 280,000,000 Little Blue Books. But the best test of the sincerity of these people is that, as I said, not the least attempt is made to ascertain even approximately how many in the last 20 years have passed from Christianity to Atheism, though the figure obviously runs to tens of millions.
In the very conspicuous case of Russia the religious writer first says that the change has been brought about by compulsion, which you easily disprove, and then he objects that the fascination of some millions of peasants who have just learned to read for new ideas is unimportant and transitory. Again he completely ignores or misrepresents Russian experience. We might make a broad distinction of three intellectual levels in Russia. The highest is that of the higher officials, technical experts, professors, writers, artists, and all who have received higher education. No one questions that the man and women of this category are solidly atheistic. The second intellectual level is that of the skilled workers, town- workers generally, officials of third and fourth grade, and youths and young women who have had secondary or technical education. These are overwhelmingly, though not so completely, atheistic. The third level is that of the mass of the peasants, the great majority of whom were illiterate until a few years ago. And it is in that category that you find the remaining tens of millions of believers, and particularly in the remoter provinces where education is most difficult. To point out a few exceptions to this classification is polemical trickery. It is the broad truth that matters.
But the chief blunder of these people is to imagine that when we speak of Atheism in our time we are thinking only, or almost entirely, of Russia. There are today more Atheists outside Russia than there are under the Soviet rule, That is what I have now to show, and we will begin with a consideration of the number of Atheists in the United States and Great Britain.
1. Statistics Made by Holy Men
The government of the United States was persuaded many years ago to omit from the census-papers the clause that asked a man's religious "affiliation." The clause itself was deliberately ambiguous and was intended to enable men and women to say that they had some sort of connection with a Church, or disliked it less than others, though they never attended its services. But skepticism continued to grow, and the clergy persuaded officials that the best way to ascertain how many Catholics and Protestants there are in the country is to ask the Churches. It must have tickled the genial cynicism of our civil servants, but they agreed. How nice and easy their work would be in the Treasury if they just had to ask a man what his income is and need not trouble to put any check on his statement.
As a result, naturally, we get fantastic figures of church-membership at which the clergy often smile. Dr. McConnell says in his Christianity, an Interpretation, (p. 229):
"Church statistics are worth less than nothing. It is probably speaking within bounds to say that not one parish in 10 could find and locate one half the number of members it reports."
In the circumstances the preciseness of these religious statistics is an exquisite piece of humor. At the last census we learned that there were just 54,576,346 Christians in America. It conveyed an impression—to some people—of swarms of priests and parsons perspiring over their books and meticulously counting their sheep to the last unit.