Page:Psychology of Religion.djvu/20

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THE PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGION
19

have a disproportion of the sexes which is only slightly greater than their disproportion in the general population. In fact, we may say generally that Protestant or Evangelical churches in working class districts show (allowing for the larger number of females) little disproportion of the sexes. Here are the gross Protestant figures for three very large working class suburbs:

East Ham: 4,996 men and 7,048 women.
West Ham: 11,130 men and 16,230 women,
Ilford: 4,585 men and 6,309 women.

In these districts, moreover, where the churches are not rich, where the music and "art" are poor and the men not well educated, even the Catholic women are not nearly twice as numerous in church as the men.

There is no reason whatever to think that London differs from American cities in this respect. In the large cities of what are called Catholic countries—there are scarcely any such—it is different. In Paris there are four women in church to one man. But in Protestant cities the proportion is likely to be about the same as in London. Susan B. Anthony once wrote that women form "from two-thirds to three-fourths of the membership of the Churches of America." She had no statistics to support that