As I pointed out, since I joined a church that was founded in Beautancus, about as country as it got even in the 1950s, in 1757, I'm not sure that I'm buying that so much. That's in one of the states and in that time period of single figure church attendance. It's not like there were much in the form of rules or numbers required or weekly meetings. The first two churches my stepfather preached at after seminary in 1960 were in Sampson County and one was quarter time and one was half time and they were fully accepted as members of the Southern Baptist Convention.To be fair, a lot of that was probably because people lived on farms and in the country prohibitively far from established churches
I won't claim that it wasn't any factor but a large one? Color me a skeptic. After all, the early Christians did it in what was ,much of the time, an actively hostile environment.