The Religious Value of Trunk or Treats

 A "trunk or treat" is a Halloween activity held in a parking lot or large open field in which adults decorate their automobile trunks with Halloween decorations and hand out candy to children who walk from car to car in their Halloween costumes.

This article at RNS discusses how churches have become suppliers of trunk or treats.  Read the entire article and ask yourself why churches have become suppliers of trunk or treats.  Who attends the trunk or treat?  Why can a trunk or treats be an effective religious activity?  What religious purposes can a trunk or treat serve?

The U.S. Catholic Church's Internal Self-evaluation

In October 2021, Pope Francis asked the worldwide membership of the Catholic Church to reflect on the church, its mission, and their membership.  As part of a two-year "Synod of Synodality" (you can see the Vatican's web site for the Synod here), leaders of local congregations (parishes) and local collections of congregations (dioceses) were to engage in dialogues with their members to gather information about their members' experiences and perspectives.  In the U.S., the local reports from this process were then to be sent to the national U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops who would then create a summary for Catholicism as a whole in the U.S.  This summary -- called the National Synthesis -- was completed and sent to the Vatican in August 2022 and can be found here in pdf format.

This document provides an excellent look at the key issues and concerns of American Catholics who remain the largest religious denomination in the U.S.  So this study is worth a look.  It intends to reflect contributions from about 700,000 persons, so this was a large collective effort.

Several key issues are identified in the report as being of extreme importance to the study participants, and I will mention just a few of them.

The first issue mentioned is the sexual abuse within the Church.  The report states: "The sin and crime of sexual abuse has eroded not only trust in the hierarchy and the moral integrity of the Church, but also created a culture of fear that keeps people from entering into relationship with one another and thus from experiencing the sense of belonging and connections for which they yearn" (p. 5).

Another issue was "to be a more welcoming Church where all members of the People of God can find accompaniment on the journey. ...  People want the Church to be a home for the wounded and broken, not an institution for the perfect" (p. 7).  LGTBQ+, divorced, and those with special needs (e.g., deaf) members were identified as particularly in need of this welcoming, and there was a desire for women to have more leadership roles.

A third issue, called "co-responsibility" in the report (p. 11), is to find a better balance of the religious work between the clergy (the appointed religious leaders) and the laity (the member volunteers).  There was an expression that the laity can do more than they have been doing.

Yet other issues are mentioned so you can see the report for more details.  Of course, this report reflects the concerns of American Catholics who participated, and the concerns of Catholics in other countries can and will differ.  Nonetheless, a lesson for our class is that religious groups -- even ones as old and established as the Catholic Church -- must continue to adapt and innovate when confronting changing circumstances and challenges.  Only by doing this can they keep up in an ever changing religious marketplace.

The Benefits and Costs of Streaming Church Services

The COVID pandemic has affected social interactions in many ways, and this is also true for religious interactions.  One of the biggest changes for churches is is that many congregations began live streaming their church services online.  Some did this because large worship services were temporarily prohibited by law, while others did it to enable members with health concerns who would not attend in person to watch remotely, or both.

As COVID infection rates have continued to fluctuate, congregations that started live streaming during the pandemic must decide whether or not to continue streaming their services.  But as with any type of activity, the streaming of church services has benefits and costs.  Let us consider some of these here.

Benefits:

1. Streaming allows people who would not participate in person to participate remotely.  Streaming thus allows those people to maintain their religious capital -- or to prevent it from depreciating as rapidly as it would if they did not participate at all.  This is the most important reason to stream and is the main motivation for beginning to stream during the pandemic.  Some members might be especially served by streaming services, including those who are out of town and those whose health prevents them from attending in person.
2. Streaming allows the congregation to more easily reach and recruit new members.  Attending a congregation for the first time can be a scary experience.  When a person is invites you to attend church you have not previously attended, you might hesitate to go because you are unsure of what the experience will be like.  Watching a service remotely entails a much lower cost and risk because you can easily stop the stream or watch anonymously.  Streaming the service thus allows potential recruits an easier entry into the congregation.  Some people might be too afraid to go in person but be willing to watch remotely, and maybe they will come in person once they determine that they like the congregation. 
3. Streamed services can be recorded, thereby allowing some people to have a form of engagement with a church service that they missed synchronously.  As with 1 and 2 above, the ability to watch a recorded services enable people to reinforce their religious capital when they might not have been able to do so otherwise.

Costs:

1. Some people who would attend in person if there was no remote option might switch to remote attendance rather than attend in person.  If this happens, then the lower in-person attendance can reduce the vitality of the in-person meetings.  It also means that those who switch to remote viewing will have fewer chances to develop friendship and other ties at church services, thereby causing their religious capital to be lower than it would be without the remote option.  Worshipping together and fellowshipping each other are two of the main benefits of in-person church attendance, and these are missed when people switch from in-person participation to remote viewing.  Lower in-person participation can thus bring a lower quality of collective religious production.
2. Some equipment and software may need to be purchased, and a volunteer will need to run the live stream.  The technical requirements for streaming a church service are not that large.  A smart phone and a Zoom account can be enough to do a simple live stream, and a tripod and good microphone can improve the quality. More sophisticated set-ups with multiple audio feeds and viewer participation are also possible, and a volunteer will be needed to run the live stream.  Note that many of these technical costs are set-up costs that are paid when first beginning the live streams and not thereafter.  The ongoing costs of continuing to live stream are fairly low.

The size of these benefits and costs will differ across congregations.  A congregation that places a high value on in-person participation will be less comfortable with an easy remote option that creates an added incentive for members to skip church because of the convenience of remote viewing.  Another congregation that values a low cost of initial participation for potential new members will like having the remote option for new recruits.  There might also be innovations in how to grant access to the live stream or the recordings that try to balance different desires.  For example, a congregation can limit access to its live stream, e.g., limit to only those who are unable to attend in person due to health.  By limiting the remote access, the in-person participation is promoted while still making a remote option available for some of the members.

A key point to take away from this discussion is that we should expect to see wide variation across congregations in how streaming is used going forward.  Some will continue their live streams while others will stop them, and among those that continue there will be variation in how open or restricted the access is to those live streams.

The Economics of the Taliban

Tony Gill, a political scientist at the University of Washington and long-time promoter and practitioner of the economic approach to religion, recently published this article in the Wall Street Journal (the article is gated).  In it he explains how economics can be used to understand the surprising success of the Taliban.  This is timely piece about a difficult to understand topic.

A Proposal to Split the United Methodist Church

Just one week into 2020 and we have what might be the biggest religion story of the year.  Leaders of the United Methodist Church (UMC) have now signed in support of a proposal for a split of the UMC.  The split is over same-sex marriage and LGBTQ clergy.  The denomination currently does not allows its local leaders to perform same-sex marriage or to be practicing LGBTQ.  The split will remove those restrictions, while providing funds and an easy transition for traditionalists out of the organization.  See this NPR article here.

The actual proposal can be read here.  Among other details, $25 million will be given to a new "traditionalist" denomination over the next four years, local church congregations can decide whether to stay in the UMC or join a new denomination by 2024, and congregations that do leave will be able to take their church buildings with them.

The proposal will be voted on in May at the UMC General Conference.  It currently has strong support from leaders of both sides of the split, perhaps because it is very clear compromise.  In an opinion piece here, a Methodist pastor writes:

Even with much grace sown into this protocol, many will still find this latest step toward a split disheartening. Those fighting for the rights of LGBTQ persons will grieve a compromise they perceive as less than full affirmation from all sides. Those who stand for theological orthodoxy, meanwhile, will decry the fact that they have won all the votes at General Conference, only to end up exiled from the existing church.

Pew Research Center Report on Church Taxes in Western Europe

The Pew Research Center published today a report on Western Europeans' views about church taxes.  The pdf is here.  In several countries, the government collects the church tax on behalf of officially-recognized churches, thereby helping, in theory, those religious groups overcome the free-rider problems associated.  People may still opt out of paying the church tax by officially deregistering from their church, and more and more people are doing so.  But questions remain about the popularity of this system, and this report summarizes the results from a survey on public attitudes towards the church tax.

From pp. 6-7 of the report:

There is evidence that some Europeans are leaving the church tax system, but there does not appear to be a mass exodus. The survey finds that between 8% of adults (in Switzerland) and 20% (in Finland) say they have left their church tax system. And, in several countries, one-fifth or more of current payers describe themselves as either “somewhat” or “very” likely to opt out in the future.

At the same time, majorities still support the tradition of paying taxes to religious institutions. Indeed, in six Western European countries with a mandatory tax on members of major Christian churches (and in some cases, other religious groups), most adults say they pay it. The share of self-reported church tax payers in these countries ranges from 68% of survey respondents in Sweden to 80% in Denmark, while no more than one-in-five in any country say they used to pay but have stopped. 

In addition, among those who say they pay, large majorities describe themselves as “not too” or “not at all” likely to take official steps to avoid paying the tax in the future, including nearly nine-in-ten in Denmark and Finland.

That so many people currently pay the church tax helps us understand why the practice remains widespread and is likely to continue for many years into the future.

Should the Government Collect Donations on the Church's Behalf?

Monetary donations to churches in the USA are made voluntarily and directly to the churches.  As a consequence, if a member of a church wants to skimp on her donations, she can easily do so, and it is difficult for a religious leader to know if the person donated a fair or proper amount.  Our economic senses should be tingling here.  There's a clear free-rider problem, and we should expect there to be quite a bit of free riding (or easy riding) as people hold back on contributing proper amounts.

Hence, the "church tax."  Under a church tax, the government works in tandem with religious groups in the collection of donations.  The proper donation amount (e.g., a particular percentage of income) is taken directly out of the person's paycheck, given to the government, and then passed from the government to the church.  The government already acts as a tax collection agency for itself because it removes regular government taxes from paychecks, but with a church tax, the government also becomes, in effect, a tax collection agency for the church.

By having the government collect the donations straight from paychecks, the church is able, in theory, to receive much larger donations from those persons that are skimping in their donations.  For one, the government can just take the donation directly, bypassing altogether the individuals' temptation to free ride.  But if a Catholic individual claims to not be Catholic to become exempt from the tax, then the government can report that claim to the church, and then the church can without religious services from that individual.  Read an earlier post about the church tax in Germany here.

Why bring this up?  Two reasons.

First, this is a form of government intervention in religion, and we will soon be discuss government interventions in religion in lecture.  So this is a opportunity for you to learn about actual church-state religions around the world.

Second, just last month, Catholic Archbishop Cyprian Kizito Lwanga of Kampala, Uganda, asked the Ugandan government to institute a church tax for Ugandan Catholics.  Read the story here.  The Archbishop had the German church tax in mind when making this request.  Identify the reasoning for the Archbishop's request for the church tax, but also identify the reasoning used by those who dislike the request.

Do you think that instituting a church tax in Uganda is a good idea?  Why or why not?  Will instituting help the Catholic Church in Uganda?  Or will it hurt?  What might be the effects of a church tax in the short run?  What might be the effects in the long run?

Faith Groups and Election Turnout

There's a nice article yesterday at the Religion News Service about the efforts that religious groups are making to increase voter turnout.  See article here.  These efforts come from religious groups on both sides of the political spectrum.

Religious groups and political activism have gone together for centuries in the USA.  This should not be too surprising when you remember that religious groups in the USA are collective action machines.  In theory, once they have solved their own collective action problems associated with religious production, they can branch out into other forms of collective action, including political activism.

The Impact of ATMs on Churches

James Hudnet-Beumler, Professor of American Religious History at Vanderbilt University, wrote an article at Real Clear Religion that describes how ATMs impacted church fundraising in the U.S.  Here is an extended quote:

There are two interesting dimensions of this appearance of ATMs and churches to consider. One is the strong affinity between cash and conservative evangelicals. For many evangelicals debt is a form of bondage – a message conveyed through conservative radio financial guru Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University to tens of millions of his followers on AM radio each week in his call-in programs. Ramsey teaches how to “dump debt, budget, build wealth and give like never before!” The building of wealth is a corollary to eschewing debt and it makes Christians free, in Ramsey’s view to be godly. 

The point is, money isn’t just a fungible means to various ends, it is sacred to these believers.

The second dimension for consideration in the appearance of ATMs in the lobbies of evangelical churches is that they signaled something by their very presence: America was in fact becoming a cashless society. The debit card that people carried in their wallet could be just as good as cash anywhere else, but in the sanctuary, cash was the appropriate offering.

Collective Production and Aging Women in the Church of England

This Christian Today article describes a serious issue in the Church of England.

The Church of England is facing a demographic time bomb as an entire generation of active lay women is starting to pass away, according to new research.

The research found that the unpaid work in cleaning, furnishing, catering, fundraising, and supporting midweek services by 70,000 older women effectively keeps the church from collapse.

There is no evidence that younger people are coming up to replace them.

In religious congregations that rely heavily on volunteers to contribute towards the production of services, there is an ever-present challenge to replace in the future those individuals that contribute a lot in the present.  We will discuss this particular challenge later in the course when discussing the free-rider problem.  Just what can a religious group do to solve this problem?  And what might have the religious group done incorrectly to put itself in this position?

Is Belief in the Supernatural Natural?

Evolutionary biologist/political scientist Dominic Johnson argues that the answer is yes, as explained in this article in the New Statesman.

Johnson believes that the need to find a more-than-natural meaning in natural events is universal – “a ubiquitous phenomenon of human nature” – and performs a vital role in maintaining order in society. Extending far beyond cultures shaped by monotheism, it “spans cultures across the globe and every historical period, from indigenous tribal societies . . . to modern world religions – and includes atheists, too”.

[S]ome kind of moral order beyond any human agency seems to be demanded by the human mind, and this sense that our actions are overseen and judged from beyond the natural world serves a definite evolutionary role. Belief in supernatural reward and punishment promotes social co-operation in a way nothing else can match. The belief that we live under some kind of supernatural guidance is not a relic of superstition that might some day be left behind but an evolutionary adaptation that goes with being human.

Johnson is not the first but rather just the latest to make this argument.  Read the article to understand how belief in the supernatural may provide evolutionary advantages.  The argument is interesting in its own right, but it is also relevant to our class discussion on secularization later in the quarter.  If belief in the supernatural is, well, natural, then perhaps there will be limits to the secularization that has been predicted for centuries.

Bible and Brew in Minneapolis

That's the title of one of the regular monthly events hosted at the home of Nicholas and Kristin Tangen, members of the Gustavus Adolphus Lutheran Church in northeast Minneapolis.  See this article or this new link.  The event brings together those that enjoy discussing the Bible while having a beer.  There are many such events around the Minneapolis-St.Paul area, each targeting a specific group.

Questions for you to consider:

• Why are these gatherings organized?
• What are the kinds of economic good that are produced at these gatherings?
• Who are the likely attendees at these gatherings?
• How integral is beer to these gatherings?
• Why might it be appropriate to call these "religious" gatherings?

Zuism and Tax Rebates in Iceland

During the last week there has been wide interest in the rise of Zuism in and its connection to church-state relations in Iceland.  From the Guardian here:

Icelanders opposed to the state funding of religion have flocked to register as Zuists, a movement that worships ancient Sumerian gods and – perhaps more importantly – promises its followers a tax rebate.

More than 3,100 people – almost 1% of Iceland’s population – have joined the Zuist movement in the past two weeks in protest at paying part of their taxes to the state church and other religious bodies. Followers of Zuism will be refunded the tax element earmarked for religion.

Icelanders are required by law to register their religious status with the state, and then some of their tax money is sent to their religious group by the state to be used to fund religious activities.  This is one way to get around the free-rider problem because members are essentially forced by the state to contribute to their religious group.

However, those who do not want to support religion do not have any of their tax money diverted to religious groups so that they are effectively paying a higher tax rate to the state.  As explained in the article, the Zuist group was at risk of being de-registered as an official religion in Iceland, and thus ineligible for money to be sent by the government, due to low numbers.  Then a group opposed to this role of the state in religion took control of the group and promised to refund money given to the group by the government back to the members.  The group has now grown to almost 1% of Iceland's population.  By comparison, in the U.S. the Seventh-day Adventist Church is about 1.4% of the population.

This development is controversial because the money is being refunded by the group to its members rather than providing religious services, clearly against the intent of the law.  However, there are tricky issues about what is a religious group and what it considers its legitimate operations.  If someone says that this group is violating the law, then someone else says, "Who are you to say what my religious group considers religion?"

Rajdeep Singh Podcast on Sikhism

The lastest Research on Religion Podcast is an interview with Rajdeep Singh about Sikhism and religious liberty.  Listen and enjoy .. and be sure to do the homework question.

The Cost of Being Jewish in America

The latest Research on Religion Podcast is an interview with economist Carmel Chiswick.  She discusses her book that uses economics to understand patterns in Judaism.  The entire podcast  is about an hour and very worthwhile, but everyone should especially listen to the last half.  The part beginning around the 29:40 mark is particularly relevant given our recent class discussion on church attendance.

Political Orientations by Denominational Affiliation

Here's a nice figure from this blog post at RNS:

The post's author identifies some interesting lessons to take away from the figure, so I suggest you read to the post's bottom.  One note:  the title of the blog post is a bit misleading, as the figure is not about the political ideologies of churches but rather the ideologies of their members.

Church: Fast or Slow?

A new book argues that the successful practices of megachurches cannot be mass-produced by small, local churches.  Instead, these small local churches should promote "slow church," drawing lessons from the slow food movement.  The slow food movement discourages the eating of fast food and encourages eating of locally grown and produced food.  Fast food, here a metaphor for the not-fully-satisfying meal of the megachurch, is viewed as not fully satisfying the community needs of the churchgoer.  See here for a RNS article about the new book and the issues it discusses.

This argument is a neat example of how religious leaders and groups draw ideas from the secular world in informing how they might or should conduct their religious operations.  Our economic analysis cannot assess whether their argument is correct or incorrect, and, of course, different religious consumers may prefer different kinds of religious services.  But the issues of club production and religious capital permeate the article despite the lack of those labels.  And at the least, the slow church people have a nice image around which to market themselves.

Free-riding and Smart Phones

Guest post by TA Jerrod Anderson

We have recently covered the highly important topic of club goods. Here is an article from Lark News (a Christian version of The Onion): http://www.larknews.com/archives/4193. This satirical article brings up many important economic topics: free-riding in religious production, scarcity (especially as it relates to attention), and the opportunity costs of attending a religious function (and what is technology’s role in changing those opportunity costs).

Another Research on Religion Podcast Interview

The Research on Religion Podcast, a weekly podcast series conducted by Tony Gill, Professor of Political Science at the University of Washington, recently interviewed me about my research on religious authority. The podcast is now up; click here to listen.

Catholic and Amish Economics of Religion on Planet Money

NPR's Planet Money recently released two podcasts on the Catholic Church and Amish business practices.  Each is approx. 20 minutes long.

"An Economic Makeover for the Catholic Church"
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/03/01/173255772/episode-440-an-economic-makeover-for-the-catholic-church

"Business Secrets of the Amish"
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/03/05/173561926/episode-441-business-secrets-of-the-amish