

Church attendance in recessions

No rush for pews

A counter-intuitive finding from the pollsters

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Readers' comments



As prevalent organizations with penetrating branches in nearly all corners of a city, churches can be considered as a functional social indicator. what a church provides are mainly two, namely social support and entertainment.
Social support is obvious that when you encounter difficulties or being in deep water, you would find your friends to talk to and seek advice from them. a church is a place where you can find your back-up when you are seriously troubled by economic downturn, family disharmony and torturing physical illnesses.
Entertainment, though neglected by most, is likewise crucial. The leadership of a church would hold various activities for members like, hiking, football match, outing and so on. Going to church is a pastime in some sense. For instance, during school days I go to church once a month whereas I go once a month during summer vacation.
would the unemployed visit church more frequently? it lies to be investigated.


Because of the dominant influence of evangelical Protestantism in the United States, the Americans tend to equate religion to the Bible-belt type of Christianity with its homophobic, creationist and jingoistic nonsense.

The fact remains that the largest religious denomination even in the US is not any Protestant denomination but Catholicism (which by the way is actually more progressive than many evangelical denomination), and that outside of America many mainstream religions have been secularized and made acceptable to any sort of secular state. Therefore I appeal to all atheists, stop your vitriolic attack on people practicing their religions.


seathanaich When I came to the same faith as my father, I pracitised it very differently and by so doing, I became liberated from the coercion and persecution that you mention. I would ask those who have found religion to be soul destroying to take a very long and careful evaluating look at it and try it out with the true spirit and meaning of it or the BEST they can find in it. Liberating beyond belief, it was when I did that. Did you know that whilst St. Paul urged women to be obedient, although we should ALL be giving way to one another more readily, MEN were called in the same part of St Paul to SACRIFICE themselves for their wives as Christ sacrificed himself. Interestingly enough, some people attend church more when things are going well. Their back has not gone and they can afford a car to take them and the children are not all down with something. Makes sense really.


As religion loses the powers of persecution, coercion, and ostracism, more and more people can objectively evaluate it. When they do so, stripped of parental and societal indoctrination, they can see the creation and afterlife myths for what they are - fairy stories from a time when human imagination exceeded human knowledge. Yes, we don't want to die, but wishing death away doesn't make us immortal. Once supernatural superstition is discarded, very little culturally is actually lost by discarding religion; atheists, though not perfect, are free of the harmful effects that religion creates. Church attendance in the US is at 20% weekly (10% in other English-speaking nations). This hasn't changed, and won't soon. But those who don't go will eventually all be like Scandinavians - non-believers who are no longer forced to mumble along with rituals they know are empty.


Any claim that people turn to religion in an economic recession is similar to the "no atheists in foxholes" claim - propaganda unsubstantiated by any objective data.
And when considered dispassionately, not very flattering to those making the claim. The existence or not of a deity, and any consequent obligation to worship it, would surely be independent of what is happening to the Dow Jones or the NASDAQ.
As for "shrill voices" ...


There may be a distinct decline in religion in America. No longer is it culturally advantageous to claim membership in a church. Religion is hopeless. Many have left the pews and returned to Pew. Others have found hope and new life in their desperation - and not just for life to come.


Though I might use the same language and hazard to call the spiritual economy a growing market, I think MicCalifornia's comment is disingenuous. There is more than one church--and to blur all together their various flaws and virtues (which there are many, from a secular standpoint even), not to mention lumping them with palm readers and con men, is a typical and painfully myopic rhetorical strategy.

In fact, an increasing amount of Americans checking the “no religious preference" box while church attendance remains steady is a phenomenon that can be explained by religious pluralism. We are in an era when many different venues for spirituality are available, and in the public arena at least, coexist neutrally due to institutional secularism. It does not provide evidence of the decline of religion in the US, aside from the increasingly shrill voices of atheists.


I think that the option of turning to scripts written at a time when less than 1% of today's knowledge was known should be seen as a last resort.


The Church is a business selling an invisible product.

I think psychics, palm readers and con men of all stripes are feeling the pinch of this recession.


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