More on the Business Cycle and the Church

I just presented a paper this past weekend looking at the dynamic response of religious participation and religious giving to economic shocks. This paper follows an earlier one where I found a strong countercyclical component to religious participation by evangelical Protestants and a slightly procyclical component for mainline Protestants. Economic theory provides good motivations for these results. Given my interest in this field of economics--yes, I am macroeconomist dabbling in the economics of religion--I was pleased to find the following video clip on CNN. It shows people turning to church as a means to smooth their consumption over this business cycle.