A new study, published Wednesday by a father-daughter researcher team, says religion is bigger than Facebook, Google and Apple — combined.

The article in the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion said that the annual revenues of faith-based enterprises — not just churches but hospitals, schools, charities and even gospel musicians and halal food makers — is more than $378 billion a year.

And that's not counting the annual shopping bonanza motivated by Christmas.

Georgetown University's Brian Grim and the Newseum's Melissa Grim — in a study sponsored by an organization called Faith Counts, which promotes the value of religion — produced a 31-page breakdown of all the ways religion contributes to the U.S. economy.

The largest chunk of that $378 billion tally comes from faith-based health-care systems.

Religious groups run many of the hospitals in the United States; Catholic health systems alone reportedly account for 1 in 6 hospital beds in the country.

Then there are churches and congregations themselves.

Based on prior censuses of U.S. bodies of worship, the Grims looked at 344,894 congregations, from 236 different religious denominations (217 of them Christian, and others ranging from Shinto to Tao to Zoroastrian).

Collectively, those congregations count about half the American population as members. The average annual income for a congregation, the study said, is $242,910.

Most of that income comes from members' donations and dues, meaning Americans give $74.5 billion to their congregations per year, the study said.

Religious charities also contribute to the economy.

By far the largest faith-based charity, according to the study, is Lutheran Services of America, with an annual operating revenue of about $21 billion.

The study counted 17 more faith-based charities, all among Forbes's 50 biggest charities in America, with revenues ranging from $300 million (Cross International) to $6.6 billion (YMCA USA).

Almost all the charities are Christian, except for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, with an annual operating revenue of $400 million. Continue reading

Sources

• The Washington Post, article by Julie Zauzmer, a religion reporter.
• Image: Stuff

• Black (78%) and white (69%) Americans are substantially more likely than Hispanic Americans (52%) to say they are somewhat or very likely to watch the Super Bowl this year.
• Although solid majorities of both genders report that they are somewhat or very likely to watch the Super Bowl this year, men (73%) are more likely than women (58%) to say they are likely to watch the game.
• Two percent of Americans report that the team they identify with most closely is the San Francisco 49ers, while one percent say the same of the Baltimore Ravens.
• More than 4-in-10 (42%) Americans who seldom or never watch sports nevertheless report that they are very or somewhat likely to watch the Super Bowl this year.

Professional football is, by far, Americans' most-watched or followed sport: nearly half (48%) of Americans who watch college or professional sports at least a few times a year say professional football is the sport they follow most closely, while around 1-in-10 say the same of college football (12%) or professional basketball (11%). Less than 1-in-10 report that they follow major league baseball (7%) or college basketball (6%) most closely.

Most Americans (55%) say that football has replaced baseball as America's national sport, while more than one-third (36%) disagree.

Americans are less likely to believe that God plays a role in the outcome of sporting events than they are to believe God rewards religious athletes. While only about 3-in-10 (27%) Americans, believe that God plays a role in determining which team wins a sporting event, a majority (53%) believe that God rewards athletes who have faith with good health and success, compared to 42% who disagree. There are substantial differences by religious affiliation on all of these questions. Continue reading

Sources

• Public Religion Research Institute
• Image: The Guardian

A new study by the Public Religion Research Institute found that one-third of the country believes God plays a role in determining which team wins.

And Americans are even more certain about the players themselves. A majority believe God rewards individual athletes who are faithful to God with good health and success.
This kind of thinking about faith and success follows a broader religious trend. Over the past 50 years, American Christians have gravitated toward spiritual explanations for why winners deserve their rewards.

The default rationalizations — Good things happen to good people! Everything happens for a reason! — are no longer simply clichés. They are the theological bedrock for one of the most popular contemporary movements:

The American prosperity gospel.

Millions of American Christians now agree that faith brings health, wealth and victory. This movement, which began in the Pentecostal revivals of the post-World War II years, has become a commonplace theological framework for how faith works to secure God's blessings.

For the past eight years, I have studied the American prosperity gospel. Basically, it contends that believers must learn to speak positive words (called "positive confessions") to unleash spiritual forces that move God to act. Faithful people can know that their prayers and actions are working by their effects: a healthy body, a rising bank account, an ability to overcome life's obstacles. The pursuit of happiness is no longer simply an inalienable right — it's a divine mandate.

When people say God rewards certain teams or athletes, their opinions usually reflect a range of explanations — from "hard prosperity" to "soft prosperity" — for how people earn wins or losses.

Hard prosperity draws a straight line between the believer's faith to his circumstances. Did a player tithe 10 percent of his income? Did an unspoken sin block his prayers? Continue reading

Sources

• Kate Bowler in nj.com
• Image: Spirit Meat Readers

Kate Bowler is an assistant professor of American Christianity at Duke University's Divinity School.