Turning to God in Tough Times? Human Versus Material Losses from Climate Disasters in Canada

Religion and Labor Market Performance: Is It What You Believe or How Much?

“…Bentzen (2020) found no effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the number of prayer-related Google searches for the decile of those countries that are least religious. Similarly, Zapata's (2018) findings support the hypothesis that natural disasters lead to increased religiosity among the religious and further erode religious beliefs among the less religious. As Pargament (2012) points out, "a number of studies have shown that people are more likely to involve religion in coping when religion is a larger part of their orienting system", i.e., in contexts marked by high levels of religiosity and the prevalence of spiritual and religious worldviews.…”

“…While this can be considered unlikely, I hedge against this possibility by using the second indicator of contingency, Experience of death, which can hardly be argued to be driven by religious interpretation. Moreover, previous research suggests that experience of death constitutes a contingency experience that can contribute to increased religiosity (as, for example, shown by Zapata 2018) and that religion is used to cope with experiences of death in close social proximity (Ungureanu and Sandberg 2010). In Section 6.2, I scrutinize the validity of the exclusion restriction for our case by evaluating potential alternative pathways from contingency experience to labor market performance in the data.…”

“…In a similar vein, the same author shows that religiosity globally increased in the COVID-19 pandemic, based on an assessment of the number of Google searches for prayer (Bentzen 2020)-indicating an increase in the dimension of private practice. The study on Canada by Zapata (2018) shows that "among religious individuals, human losses increase the intensity of their religious preferences". The author concludes that "religion provides people .…”

“…I propose that a person's contingency experiences (Lübbe 2004;Luhmann 1982)-that is, experiences of "existential insecurity" (Norris and Inglehart 2011), such as natural catastrophes and death-constitute relevant and valid instruments for religiosity. Recent research has shown that experience of contingencies is one of the factors affecting religiosity and religion is a means of coping with these experiences (Ano and Vasconcelles 2005;Bentzen 2019Bentzen , 2020Pargament 2012;Zapata 2018). In the econometric approach, I use contingency experiences as an exogenous variable that produces a variation in the level of individual religiosity (see Section 5.2 for a compre-hensive discussion).…”

Searching for comfort in religion: insecurity and religious behaviour during the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy

“…When discussing about the ways in which religion may turn useful in adverse situations, two different sets of benefits are usually mentioned. On the one side, religion can furnish cognitive and psychological support by means of myths and parables (Stolz 2009), shared worldviews (Zapata 2018) and sense of certainty (Brandt and Henry 2012). On the other side, religion can provide and strengthen social ties and religious communities where people can find comfort and support (Ellison and George 1994;Lim and Putnam 2010).…”