Bad Times Draw Bigger Crowds to Churches – NYTimes.com

by Dec 15, 2008Books

Another good reason to read the New York Times: Mark Minnick does! He mentioned in his Sunday-evening sermon that he had just read that afternoon the article from which I offer this interesting excerpt:

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.

[From Bad Times Draw Bigger Crowds to Churches]

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