Church on Sunday

Apparently, the easiest way to reduce the percentage of churchgoers is to allow retail activity on Sundays. In this recently published paper on NBER, economists Jonathan Gruber and Daniel Hungerman examined the effect of repealing "blue laws" on church attendance in the sixteen states that have done away with such laws since 1955. They found that allowing Sunday retail activity dramatically decreased churchgoing and church donations among people who previously went to church once a week. (Among people who went to church more than once a week, repealing blue laws had no effect.) When people are allowed to shop on Sunday, religion has a higher "opportunity cost". God has a tough time competing with the mall.

But here's the rub:

We find that repealing blue laws leads to an increase in drinking and drug use, and that this increase is found only among the initially religious individuals who were affected by the blue laws. The effect is economically significant; for example, the gap in heavy drinking between religious and non religious individuals falls by about half after the laws are repealed.

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Still, I'd take the increase in alcohol and drug use over religious activity. I think the latter has far worse social repurcussions than the former.

And there is always the fact that I prefer a real crutch in life to an imaginary one.

By Tyler DiPietro (not verified) on 12 Oct 2006 #permalink

Recommended reading: The Lord's Day Alliance by Clarence Darrow

It's very witty, if occasionally vicious.

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These Lord's Day Alliance gentlemen are not only religious but scientific. For instance, they publish a pamphlet written by one Dr. A. Haegler, of Basle, Switzerland, in which he says that experiments have shown that during a day's work a laborer expends more oxygen than he can inhale. True, he catches up with a large part of this deficiency through the night time, but does not regain it all. It follows, of course, that if he keeps on working six days a week, for the same time each day, he will be out a considerable amount of oxygen, and the only way he can make it up is to take a day off on Sunday and go to church. This statement seems to be flawless to the powerful intellects who put out this literature. Any person who is in the habit of thinking might at once arrive at the conclusion that if the workman could not take in enough oxygen gas in the ordinary hours of work and sleep he might well cut down his day's work and lengthen his sleep and thus start even every morning. This ought to be better than running on a shortage of gas all through the week. Likewise, it must occur to most people that there are no two kinds of labor that consume the same amount of oxygen gas per day, and probably no two human systems that work exactly alike. Then, too, if the workman ran behind on his oxygen gas in the days when men worked from ten to sixteen hours a day he might break even at night, since working hours have been reduced to eight or less, with a Saturday half-holiday thrown in. It might even help the situation to raise the bedroom window at night. These matters, of course, do not occur to the eminent doctor who wrote the pamphlet and the scientific gentlemen who send it out. To them the silly statement proves that a man needs to take a day off on Sunday and attend church in order that he may catch up on his oxygen. To them it is perfectly plain that for catching up on oxygen the church has a great advantage over the golf links or the baseball park, or any other place where the wicked wish to go. This in spite of the fact that in crowded buildings the oxygen might be mixed with halitosis.
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By somnilista, FCD (not verified) on 12 Oct 2006 #permalink