The financial dilemma that wound up helping US churches thrive

Americans are far more religious than Western Europeans—two-thirds consider faith important, compared with forty to fifty-six percent in Europe. Scholars argue one reason is America's strict separation of church and state. When government funding for churches disappeared after independence, congregations got creative. Ministers became fundraisers. Believers became donors with real stakes in their faith communities. The Conversation reports that churches responded by building colleges and schools that became central to denominational life. Southern Methodist University in Dallas exemplifies this: it was built in the early nineteen hundreds by more than twenty-nine thousand donors from Texas, many of them poor people giving modest contributions. A financial crisis became the engine for America's religious strength.

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