The Story: Computational analysis of nearly 50,000 sermons reveals differences in emphasis across major Christian traditions.
The Background: Pew Research Center recently released the results of analysis of 49,719 sermons shared online by 6,431 churches and delivered between April 7 and June 1, 2019 (a period that included Easter). Pew used computational techniques to identify, collect, and analyze the sermons that U.S. churches livestream or share on their websites each week.
Because of the nature of the data collection, the results do not represent all Christian churches in America. For example, churches with sermons included were more likely to be in urban areas and have larger-than-average congregation sizes. But despite such limitations, the results are revealing.
For instance, evangelical sermons were an average of 39 minutes, compared to 14 minutes for Catholics and 54 for minutes for historically black Protestant churches. When measured by word count, though, historically black Protestant sermons are roughly as long as evangelical sermons, despite being 38 percent longer when measured by duration.
Certain words and phrases appear consistently across the sermons of all Christian traditions. For example, “know,” “God,” and “Jesus” were used in sermons at 98 percent or more of churches in all four major Christian traditions included in this analysis, and “Jesus” was the 20th most common term, used in sermons at 99 percent of congregations. The most frequently used words or phrases in evangelical sermons were “say,” “people,” “life,” “God,” and “come,” which were also common in the other traditions.
However, a number of expressions are more commonly used in particular traditions. The most distinctive phrases in evangelical sermons compared to other traditions was “eternal hell,” or some variation of “lose . . . salvation,” “trespass . . . sin,” “home . . . heaven,” and “absent . . . body.” However, just because they were more common to the tradition did not mean they were used often. As Pew notes, a congregant who randomly chose one of the evangelical churches in the study and listened to all the sermons it posted online during the eight-week period would have only a one-in-ten chance of hearing the most distinctive phrase in evangelical sermons. Only one distinctively evangelical phrase (“Bible . . . morning”) was used in a sermon at more than 10 percent of evangelical congregations during the study period (mostly likely because it is a common opening: “Open your Bible this morning to . . .”).
According to the study, across every Christian group, books from the New Testament were more commonly cited than books from the Old Testament. At least one book from the New Testament is named in 90 percent of all sermons, while a book of the Old Testament is cited in 61 percent of sermons. Evangelical sermons were more likely to mention both the New Testament (93 percent of sermons) and Old Testament (66 percent) than other groups (for example, the Old Testament was only mentioned in about one out of three Catholic sermons [28 percent]). Evangelical churches with 200 or fewer members were also slightly more likely to mention a book from the Old Testament (66 percent of sermons) than churches with more than 200 members (64 percent of sermons).
Evangelical sermons were also the most likely to name a book from both the Old and New Testaments in the same sermon: 62 percent of all sermons from evangelical churches did so in the study period, compared with 56 percent of historically black Protestant sermons, 37 percent of mainline Protestant sermons, and 22 percent of Catholic homilies.
Why It Matters: The results from Pew’s research are mainly interesting for comparisons across Christian traditions. But the use of such computational analysis of sermons could be beneficial for identifying trends in evangelical preaching. It can also be helpful for clearing up misconceptions about what is being taught in our churches.
On any given week, you are likely to hear someone in the pews or on social media make a sweeping assertion that preachers in evangelical churches “never talk about ______ from the pulpit.” The claims are almost always made based on anecdotal evidence, and often by people who, though they have limited exposure to the preaching in other churches, feel confident reporting on what is not said in churches they’ve never attended. Having some evidence from which to judge such assertions would be helpful in identifying positive or negative trends in evangelical teaching.
Such data-based analysis would also be particularly helpful for denominations and individual churches. Many pastors, for instance, may assume they are being balanced in teaching from both the Old and New Testaments or in presenting certain key doctrines. By having the ability to analyze their sermons, they could better identify areas where they’ve been lacking, helping them to improve their ability to preach the whole counsel of God (Acts 20:27).