It’s not that surprising, I think it shows the huge disconnect between what these institutions think the do for people and what they really do.

They assumed they were providing moral/spiritual guidance but in reality most people were coming to them because they were the only affordable source of community in the area. Another example of a point of community organizing would be something like a board game/table top store, but those are often expensive to participate in as they have a lot of over head that needs to be payed for. Churches of course were not free to run but they had a huge leg up by being tax exempt, not to mention had a lot of people willing to work for them for low wages out of passion for the topic. So they could get by on small volunteer donations.

So churches could survive in areas where something like a mall, or game store, a book shop or some other type of focused community couldn’t due to there not being enough people with the means to participate.

Now though, the effective monopoly that kept these churches popular has been broken, as anyone with a cellphone can go on to the internet and participate in community that way. Is it the same quality of experience? Is something being lost through purely digital community? Maybe, maybe not, but theses religious institutions have become so divorced from the interests and needs of their constituents that even a pale imitation has been able to absorb their audience in less than a couple decades.

Interesting findings. I think it's interesting that the decline in religiosity seems to be more lack of trust in religious institutions, rather than just non-belief. I'm curious how this will affect organized religions. It seems religion is becoming more personal, with less of a social aspect, for better or worse.