Natural Language Analyses Reveal Religious Niches in 24,479 American Sermons

Religious sermons are one of the oldest and most widespread forms of mass communication. In the U.S. alone, 100 million people listen to them every week. How do religious organisations differentiate their sermons to compete in the religious marketplace? To answer this, we analysed 24,479 sermon transcripts across 4,925 Christian churches, 1,358 U.S. counties and 6 denominations through bottom-up topic modelling, top-down dictionaries, and variance decomposition analyses. Across thematic focus, moral foundations, personal values, and emotional tone, most differentiation arose between churches, with smaller effects between denominations, and minimal variation between counties. Churches differentiated their sermons across several dimensions, including the use of high-arousal positive emotions and traditional moral values. Denominations differed in their endorsement of liberal versus conservative values and ritual content. Our findings suggest that churches and denominations differentiate their messages to serve distinct niches in America’s religious marketplace, offering new insights into the cultural dynamics of religion.