The Dubious and the Dutiful:

Responding to the Financial Slump

copublished with The Guardian Comment is Free site, 5 December 2008

by Nick Spencer

Religion often does rather well during recessions, but what kinds of religion will flourish in the slump?

During the 1930s, UK church attendance rose. Four decades later, its (already precipitous) decline slowed somewhat. There's something about a slump that gets people thinking about God.

Everyone has a reason why. The theophiles say that religion offers values that transcend economics: better security, more hope, genuine wellbeing. The theophobes tell us that religion preys on the vulnerable and there are simply more vulnerable people during a downturn.

In good, wishy-washy, post-modern fashion, they're both right. Take Christianity, for example. You can see how (and there is some evidence that) the prosperity gospel might flourish in a recession. The message that God wants you to be rich (it's never as brutal as that, of course, but that's usually the gist) has a great deal of appeal when you're poor. Prosperity gospel teaching can be found in countless socially-excluded neighbourhoods around the world. Poverty is its natural habitat, the poor its natural prey.

Then again, you can see how the more obviously spiritual (or, at least, anti-material) strands of Christianity might flourish. Those theologies that take Jesus' less compromising messages seriously – "Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me" – are pretty much recession-proof. As the bottom line crumbles beneath our feet, we are entreated to lift up our eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh our help. "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal." End of story.

Or then again, you can see how the "social gospel", as it is sometimes disparagingly called, would flourish during periods of economic peril. Those forms of Christianity that actually walk their talk – running homeless shelters and soup kitchens, offering debt counselling and marriage guidance – will touch people when and where they most need it. "I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink … " And that's just Christianity. Doubtless the other major religions could say something similar (I am not qualified to comment). Being the million-petalled flower it is, religion will bloom in countless different ways, from the dubious to the dutiful.

Nick Spencer is director of studies at the thinktank Theos

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