ABSTRACT
Economics has always had a place in the study of certain peripheral aspects of religious organization and behavior. For example, the fortunes of religious organizations—in the metaphorical sense—are obviously tied to their fortunes in the literal sense. Churches have prospered along with their congregations. The English Cotswolds and East Anglia have a number of “wool churches”: magnificent fifteenth-century buildings that were a by-product of a local boom in the wool trade. The statistical returns of Methodist chapels in County Durham offer many examples of the other extreme. 1 The quarterly report of membership figures from the Thornley Primitive Methodist circuit in 1886 includes the following plaintive note: “our circuit is still suffering much from the total stoppages of the Thornley, Wheatley Hill and Ludworth collieries. We have taken from the roll books the unusually large number of 319 names for the year; many who were members with us at the time when the collieries stopped have had no employment since and in consequence have ceased to meet with us” (Thornley, 1886).
