That’s from a 1998 review by Larry Iannaccone. I’d love to see an update. By the way, an area of study ripe for scholarship would be a public choice analysis of religious institutions – particularly of the large, dominant institutions in a country.
I cannot access the article, how does he define ‘church’? Does it include only ‘mainstream’ religions (I’m thinking Abrahamic ones, Hinduism, Buddhism, maybe some smaller Asian ones) or does it cover paganism and the other fringe religions?
I had kinda the same question about what constitutes a church. Looking at the article (it’s JSTOR, so I can access it from my school, but you need to have some sort of registration), it appears that it is survey data, so a church is defined by the surveyee instead of the surveyer.
Another aspect I wonder is how churches have changed over time. It could be that most churches back in the 1700 & 1800’s were very “fire and brimstone” in the condemnation of sin. Today there are several churches that are more of a feel-good place where sin isn’t really discussed. Naturally, more people would be willing to go to these churches. I have had discussions with people on this, and there are many who are all to willing to sacrifice doctrine in order to get a body in the pew. The survey does include non-Christian religions, too. And being highly biased about this area, I believe there is a significant difference between types of churches. None-the-less, it is an interesting article.