The Times offers a fair look at how more people are turning to churches to cope with an economy in decline, and how religious institutions are accommodating and taking advantage of increased attendance. Many sources are cited to show the different facets of this shift, including some independent observers. Background on how the religious have weathered previous recessions is interesting.

Solid journalism based on face-to-face interviews as well as digging through the research. Although the author describes current times as times of fear and greed, one of the reasons people also flock to churches in times of crisis is that they need more comfort from a higher authority.

A timely and objective view of the driving forces behind evangelical church growth over the past 150 years. Mr. Vitello allows church leaders and patrons to speak for themselves, combining those self-described motives with enlightening survey data to draw his conclusions. Providing relevent historical context, he creates a thought-provoking article that is urgently important at this time.

This article does a really good job combining historic trends with what is happening now. Also, the reasons why envangelical churches are growing faster than other denominations - that they're more flexible, for example - are reasonable and well sourced.

The story seems quite anecdotal, without extensive statistical confirmation. There seems to be a note of people going to mega churches to learn how to make money again, as opposed to going for religious purposes.

If the point of the article is more people go to church during hard times, it's not exactly news.If the point is a lot of people are praying to their God for a job,it's a good story.

Informative article about the resurgence of religious activity in response to the recent economic crisis. This short report offers good factual evidence from multiple sources to document this trend, along with helpful context to put it in perspective.