A study last year may lend some credence to the legend. In “Praying for
Recession: The Business Cycle and Protestant Religiosity in the United
States,” David Beckworth, an assistant professor of economics at Texas
State University, looked at long-established trend lines showing the
growth of evangelical congregations and the decline of mainline
churches and found a more telling detail: During each recession cycle
between 1968 and 2004, the rate of growth in evangelical churches
jumped by 50 percent. By comparison, mainline Protestant churches
continued their decline during recessions, though a bit more slowly.
Here is the full story. Here is the paper. Here is earlier discussion from Mark Thoma’s. Here is David Beckworth’s blog.
Looks like people skipped the Book of Job.
Since all we are dealing with here are correlations, it is quite possible that both recessions and evangelical church growth rates are actually linked to a third factor, which drives both. I would like to suggest that recessions and increases evangelical church growth rate are both caused by decreases in the bust-to-waist ratio of Playboy playmate models:
http://psp.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/30/9/1186
Seems to me a classic example of an inferior good.
Actually, your soul is priceless.
In a recession evangelicals get to say “I told you so. Debt is bad.
Prov 22:7
The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender.
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