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Where's the beef?
...A Southern Baptist by birth, and still a self-described evangelical, Wicker decided to investigate conventional wisdom about the numerical strength of America's moral majority. What she found should embarrass the secular media almost as much as it should evangelical leaders. The National Association of Evangelical's claim to represent 30 million souls? Wicker says the actual number is closer to 4.5 million. The Southern Baptist's Convention's estimate of 16 million members? Try a quarter of that number. ...

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Numbers racket
Religion: Survey results on megachurch growth do not add up

...While the new lists correct sorting and ranking errors, they do not revise the erroneous information given to the magazine by the churches themselves. Dan Gilgoff covers the evangelical movement for U.S. News & World Report and is the author of The Jesus Machine. He told WORLD that in his experience, megachurch pastors "notoriously inflate membership" numbers. The reasons? "Media attention, political influence, and money," Gilgoff said....