Religions take a hit
Published Saturday October 3rd, 2009
Meltdown: Recession is draining financial resources of congregations and schools
NEW YORK - Organized religion was already in trouble before the fall of 2008. Denominations were stagnating or shrinking, and congregations across faith groups were fretting about their finances.
The Great Recession made things worse.
It's further drained the financial resources of many congregations, seminaries and religious day schools in Canada and the United States. Some congregations have disappeared and schools have been closed. In areas hit hardest by the recession, worshippers have moved away to find jobs, leaving those who remain to minister to communities struggling with rising home foreclosures, unemployment and uncertainty.
Religion has a long history of drawing hope out of suffering, but there's little good news emerging from the recession. Long after the economy improves, the changes made today will have a profound effect on how people practise their faith, where they turn for help in times of stress and how they pass their beliefs to their children.
"In 2010, I think we're going to see 10 or 15 per cent of congregations saying they're in serious financial trouble," says David Roozen, a lead researcher for the Faith Communities Today multi-faith survey, which measures congregational health annually. "With around 320,000 or 350,000 congregations, that's a lot of them."
The sense of community that holds together religious groups is broken when large numbers of people move to find work or if a ministry is forced to close.
"I'm really still in the mourning process," says Eve Fein, former head of the now-shuttered Morasha Jewish Day School in Rancho Santa Margarita, Calif.
The school, a centre of religious life for students and their parents, had been relying on a sale of some of its property to stay afloat, but land values dropped, forcing Morasha to shut down in June.
"I don't think any of us who were in it have really recovered," Fein says. "The school was 23 years old. I raised my kids there."
The news isn't uniformly bad. Communities in some areas are still moving ahead with plans for new congregations, schools and ministries, religious leaders say.
And many congregations say they found a renewed sense of purpose helping their suffering neighbours. Houses of worship became centres of support for the unemployed. Some congregants increased donations. At RockHarbor church in Costa Mesa, Calif., members responded so generously to word of a budget deficit that the church ended the fiscal year with a surplus.
"We're all a little dumbfounded," says Bryan Wilkins, the church business director. "We were hearing lots of stories about people being laid off, struggling financially and losing homes. It's truly amazing."
In the Great Depression, one of the bigger impacts was the loss of Jewish religious schools, which are key to continuing the faith from one generation to the next. Jonathan Sarna, a Brandeis University historian and author of American Judaism, says enrolment in Jewish schools plummeted in some cities and many young Jews of that period didn't have a chance to study their religion.
Today, some parents, regardless of faith, can no longer afford the thousands of dollars in tuition it costs to send a child to a religious day school. Church officials fear these parents won't re-enroll their kids if family finances improve because it might be disruptive once they've settled into a new school.
The National Catholic Education Association is still measuring the toll on its schools, but expects grim news from the hardest hit states, after years of declining enrolment.
Before the stock market tanked last fall, only 19 per cent of U.S. congregations described their finances as excellent, down from 31 per cent in 2000, according to the 2008 Faith Communities Today poll.
Because of these trends, mainline Protestants were among the most vulnerable to the downturn.
Their denominations had been losing members for decades and had been dividing over how they should interpret what the Bible says on gay relationships and other issues.
National churches had been relying on endowments to help with operating costs, along with the generosity of an aging membership that had been giving in amounts large enough to mostly make up for departed brethren.
The meltdown destroyed that financial buffer.
Religious leaders say the next year or so will be key in determining which organizations survive the downturn intact. Even if the recession ends soon, religious fundraisers say the angst donors feel will not lift immediately, prolonging the difficulties for congregations, schools and ministries.
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