Praying for a Recession: The Business Cycle and Protestant Church Growth [Beckworth]
David Beckworth
Texas State University
A widely-held view is that economic distress increases religiosity and vice versa. This understanding implies there should be an inverse relationship between the business cycle and religiosity. This possibility is empirically explored in this paper by examining the relationship between macroeconomic conditions and Protestant church growth in the United States. The findings of this paper suggest there is a countercyclical component to church growth for Protestant denominations, particularly for evangelical Protestants.
File: praying_for_a_recession1.pdf [376.04KB]
Published 11/02/2007
Filed under: (2007), *beckworth, @asrec'07, business cycle, church attendance, growth, recession, religiosity