Henry Ward Beecher’s church was very rich. Every Sunday crowds would flock across New York’s East River on “Beecher’s boats” to see the charismatic preacher, who had arrived in Brooklyn from rural Indiana. In the 1850s and 60s Beecher sold sermons, bringing in so much cash that he could sponsor and arm with rifles a regiment in the American civil war (“Beecher’s regiment,” toting “Beecher’s bibles”). By 1875, when an adultery scandal brought him down, his Brooklyn congregation had swollen from 20 souls to thousands. Beecher was a celebrity; proof both that religion can lead to riches, and that riches can lead to religion.
Nowadays Christianity is struggling across the developed world. According to the most recent data, just 45% of Americans attend church, down from 70% in 1999. In Italy, home of Catholicism, the number of churchgoers has shrunk by almost half over the past decade. What can the clergy do to draw people back? Various options have been tried in the past. The authors of the Gospels appealed to miracles. Crusading popes preferred the use of force. In the 19th century British Quakers thought that providing for the material needs of their flock would guarantee its piety.
Fortunately, growing numbers of economists now study religion—and can offer despairing clergymen some advice. The first lesson is that experimentation may be required. Religious institutions around the world have long offered scripture classes, bankrolled religious schools and run cut-price bookshops, based on the theory that knowledge will lead to godliness. According to Jean-Paul Carvalho of the University of Oxford and co-authors, this theory may be misguided. Looking at Turkey, they find that the more years of religious education a person receives, the less likely they are to vote for a religious candidate in an election. Perhaps this is because, as Mr Carvalho suggests, people who have sat through years of religious education have already made their piety clear, and so do not need to prove it with their politics. Yet some cynics suspect a different mechanism is at play: maybe religious education, much like mainstream schooling, provides people with the tools required to question dogma.
Charity appears to be no more effective. The Cadburys, a family of Quaker faith and chocolate fame, built Bournville near Birmingham, England in the 1890s. The village provided low-cost housing and health care to the area’s factory workers. Although this probably improved their well-being, that is unlikely to have made them more pious. In 2017 Ingrid Storm, then at the University of Manchester, published a paper looking at censuses across 31 European countries. She found that people were most religious when they were poor. Indeed, in modern America, it is Evangelical megachurches, which offer few handouts but preach that religion is the route out of penury, that are growing fastest. Prayer’s potential to bring prosperity seems to be more alluring than giveaways.
Even divine intervention may not be enough to fill the pews. According to Carson Mencken of Baylor University and his co-authors, who surveyed some 14,000 Texans, people who reported having witnessed a miracle were more likely to consider themselves religious. They were, however, less likely to attend church. That may satisfy preachers who are content with inner holiness, but organised religion requires more.
Thankfully, there is something even more powerful than the Lord himself: economic incentives. In a forthcoming paper, Raphael Corbi and Fabio Sanches, both of the University of São Paulo, look at the impact of tax breaks on church membership. Such incentives are common: American churches, for instance, are exempt from levies on revenue and property. Messrs Corbi and Sanches assume that priests are constantly evaluating whether to cut back or expand based on the size of congregations and revenues from worshippers. They then use data from isolated Brazilian townships to measure the impact of tax breaks. Their results are striking. Federal tax breaks from 1992 to 2018, which amounted to 30% of total religious profits, led to 10% more churches being open than would have otherwise been the case. This ripples through to politics: Messrs Corbi and Sanches find that tax breaks are associated with 8% more votes for Evangelical politicians.
Tax breaks benefit churches, not worshippers, so cannot persuade people into the pews directly. How, then, to explain their effects? The researchers do not guess what clergymen spent their profits on but, given the findings of other researchers, it is unlikely to have been education or welfare that put more bums on seats. Larger congregations may instead reflect performance-related pay. It is not uncommon for Brazilian Evangelical preachers to become millionaires—provided they fill the pews. Lower taxes only increase the incentive for priests to preach to their fullest ability (or to tailor their sermons to what is popular among parishioners). Moreover, it may be easier for a parishioner to believe that a well-resourced and well-known man has been ordained by God.
The eye of the needle: bigger than previously thought
Religious scholars would rather not think that churches act like firms in economic theory. Surely a priest is watching over the souls of his parishioners, rather than trying to maximise revenue per square metre of consecrated floorspace? And economists do face difficulties. They usually assume that people pursue certain outcomes, such as consumption or satisfaction, over the course of their life. How to account for belief in an afterlife? But economics can still bring expertise to bear. Today most churches in America are registered as corporate organisations, albeit tax-exempt ones. Many have complex structures through which millions of dollars a year flow. The results speak for themselves. Although priests may be God’s representatives on Earth, they still respond to financial incentives. You can, it turns out, serve both God and Mammon. ■
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