Did suburbs cause Americans to stop going to church?

Answer 1

No. Suburbs started to appear as early as the 19th century, and their mass development ocurred after WW 2, so in the 1940s and 1950s. If anything, suburban life stimulated shared community values and a higher level of social control than before during inner city living. Most studies show a decline in church attendance over mostly the last 30 to 40 years. The start of the decline therefore dates from long after the start of suburban life.

Studies and surveys show a wide variety of reasons for that fairly recent decline in church attendance. One of them is that people are today more open that they can no longer be bothered to go to church. Earlier studies had already shown that only half of the people who then described themselves as 'regular churchgoers' did actually regularly visit a church . Although Americans still like to see themselves as Christians, only 17.5% still regularly visit a church.

A major reason for today's decline as reported by surveys is the fact that people today have so many other options in structuring their social life - and many today also resent the social control and to a certain level "forced" conformity of a church community.

Answer 2

Americans have never been big church goers. Only 20% of the colonists went to church. The fallacy that the 13 colonies were founded because of religion is not true. Many colonists lived in rural areas on farms and weren't near other people or churches. 90% of the colonies was farmers and they were busy building and establishing their farms. It wasn't easy to go any place and a trip of 30 miles could take 3 days to get there and another 3 days getting back. Farmers couldn't leave the farm and the animals that long just to go to church.