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Bad Times Draw Bigger Crowds to Churches <BR> <BR><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/14/nyregion/14churches.html?_r=1" target=_top>http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/14/nyregion/14churc hes.html?_r=1</a> <BR> <BR> <BR><blockquote><hr size=0><!-quote-!><font size=1><b>quote:</b></font><p>Part of the evangelicals’ new excitement is rooted in a communal belief that the big Christian revivals of the 19th century, known as the second and third Great Awakenings, were touched off by economic panics. Historians of religion do not buy it, but the notion “has always lived in the lore of evangelism,” said Tony Carnes, a sociologist who studies religion. <BR> <BR>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. <BR> <BR>The little-noticed study began receiving attention from some preachers in September, when the stock market began its free fall. With the swelling attendance they were seeing, and a sense that worldwide calamities come along only once in an evangelist’s lifetime, the study has encouraged some to think big. <BR> <BR>“I found it very exciting, and I called up that fellow to tell him so,” said the Rev. Don MacKintosh, a Seventh Day Adventist televangelist in California who contacted Dr. Beckworth a few weeks ago after hearing word of his paper from another preacher. “We need to leverage this moment, because every Christian revival in this country’s history has come off a period of rampant greed and fear. That’s what we’re in today — the time of fear and greed.” <BR> <BR><!-/quote-!><hr size=0></blockquote> <BR> <BR>Any observations from any of our posters???
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People seek some certainty in uncertain times and religion seems to offer that foundation.
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