Faith in the Storm: Exploring the Dynamics of Evangelical Religiosity in Response to Natural Disasters

Abstract

Religious communities have traditionally served as significant sources of public good and social capital. This paper demonstrates how religious institutions' varied responses to natural disasters may affect church attendance and membership in the United States. Leveraging a dataset that encompasses the expected annualized frequency of disasters and their corresponding economic losses, I first show that the percentage of Evangelical adherents is closely related to different types of disaster risks. To further explore the time dimension, I incorporate a dataset documenting the historical number of tornado and storm activities from 1955 to 2020, alongside yearly reports of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) and the Presbyterian Church (USA) (PCUSA) from 2000 to 2023. These churches represent the Evangelical and Mainline branches within Presbyterianism in the US, respectively. My results indicate that when a county is hit by severe disaster events, there is a rise in disaster aid expenses, followed by an increase in the number of adherents for PCA, but not for PCUSA. At the individual level, compared to other Christians, Evangelicals are more likely to attend churches in counties affected by these events, especially those who are economically vulnerable, while their subjective religiosity remains unchanged.