The unseen economic and social impacts of American faith

 

The unseen economic and social impacts of American faith Religious freedom sets religion free to help communities across the country to thrive By Brian Grim May 12, 2021, 11:00pm CDT Facebook Twitter SHARE ,
St. Benedict’s Preparatory School rises like a red-brick mountain from the urban cityscape of Newark, New Jersey. The school — which has been the subject of books and documentaries — readies 530 mostly poor, mostly minority boys for college and beyond. In an area where public schools are working hard just to keep young men from ending up in gangs, in jail or dead, St. Benedict’s sends 95% of its graduates to college, including a sizable number to Ivy League schools.
Graduates, such as Uriel Burwell, often then return home to make an impact. Upon graduating from Drew University, Burwell was drawn to his childhood neighborhood where he has now built 50 new affordable houses and has rehabilitated more than 30 homes, attracting $3 million in funding for additional projects in the area.
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Report ad We rarely quantify the dollar and cents of faith’s impact, but the numbers should draw attention from even the most secular pockets of today’s society. According to a 2016 Faith Counts study by the Religious Freedom & Business Foundation, religion contributes about $1.2 trillion of socioeconomic value annually to the U.S. economy. That is equivalent to being the world’s 15th-largest national economy, outpacing nearly 180 other countries and territories. It’s more than the global annual revenues of the world’s top 10 tech companies, including Apple, Amazon and Google. It’s also more than 50% larger than the global annual revenues of America’s six largest oil and gas companies.
These contributions fall into three general categories: $418 billion from religious congregations; $303 billion from other religious institutions such as universities, charities and health systems; and $437 billion from faith-based, faith-related or faith-inspired businesses.
“Religion contributes about $1.2 trillion of socioeconomic value annually to the U.S. economy. That is equivalent to being the world’s 15th-largest national economy.” Religious congregations — churches, synagogues, mosques, temples and chapels — of every denomination add $418 billion annually to the American economy. These local congregations number more than 344,000 and employ hundreds of thousands of staff and purchase billions worth of services in every corner and crossroads of the country’s urban and rural landscape.
Of course, these congregations do much more than just provide places of worship. Each year congregations spend $84 billion on their operations, ranging from paying hundreds of thousands of personnel to paying for goods and services as diverse as flowers, sounds systems, maintenance and utilities. Almost all is spent right in the local community. Congregations are like magnets attracting economic activity ranging from weddings to lectures, conventions and even tourism. For instance, 120,000 congregations report that people visit them to view their art and architecture.
Schools attached to many of these congregations — such as St. Benedict’s — employ 420,000 full-time teachers and train 4.5 million students each year. By comparison, this is the same number as the total population of Ireland or New Zealand.
But it’s what congregations do in their communities that makes the biggest contribution. Congregations provide 130,000 alcohol recovery programs such as the Saddleback Church’s Celebrate Recovery program that has helped more than 27,000 individuals over the past 25 years. Congregations also provide 120,000 programs to help the unemployed. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has employment service centers across the country (and world).