Religion and Strife
A recent study, published as a working paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research, suggests that religious adherence is influenced by economic conditions.
More specifically, as our local economic situation falters, we’re more likely to lean into our religious rituals—which in this context serves as a stand-in for "religious convictions," as well.
There's a chance, of course, that this measurement method is flawed and folks in the researched region (for the purposes of this study, Afghanistan) were more assiduous with their religious rituals during periods of heightened economic strife for reasons unrelated to (or not primarily related to) strengthened religious convictions.
The researchers suspect there's a correlation between difficult economic times and stronger faith, basically, but it may be that difficult economic times means more participation in community activities, which in this part of the world tends to mean "religious activities."
This study also focused on areas in which climate-related issues—especially droughts—have the strongest correlation with economic well-being.
This made delineating tough economic periods from less-tough economic periods easier and more accurate, but it could also sway their results: it could be that folks look toward religion for support when the climate is messing with their sense of normalcy and safety, rather than the economic consequences of those climate issues serving as the source of that faith-related deviation.
Drawing a clean line between supposed catalysts and religious practices has long been fraught because religion can sprawl across so many aspects of life.
It's not just a sequence of performed motions or recited passages, it's not just event-attendance, it's not just self-reported levels of faith—it's a lot of different things that add up to a fuzzy cloud of belief, behavior, and ineffable social influence.
There have been numerous efforts to better understand how this category of beliefs and behaviors interacts with our other understandings of how we respond to struggles of all shapes and sizes—all of which will probably remain at least a bit speculative for the foreseeable future, but which may, nonetheless, be useful in predicting some of our responses to the unpredictable (including climate-related disasters).
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