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This article presents a study which examined church activity in Woodbury, Connecticut in colonial times. The existing body of research on American religion in the colonial period is extensive and important. Unfortunately, researchers have often focused on a single issue in an era when a number of important factors were operating simultaneously to influence church activity. In examining religious behavior, economists argue that individuals make choices based on internal preferences and external factors like opportunity costs and income. In this view, religious activity is produced with endowments of money and time and influenced by individual productivity, preferences, and income. This model has been used to explain choice of denominations, time spent in religious activity, and financial contributions. An important implication of this work is that increases in opportunity costs of temporal products cause an increase in consumption of religious activity, other things being equal. In addition, economists have used the theory of the firm to analyze church behavior. Individuals or groups form churches to provide valuable products. Churches are faced with competition in some temporal markets and with potential or actual competition from other churches.

This paper analyzes the relationship between religious market product variety and church membership. We find that denominational variety is negatively associated with the total level of church membership in U.S. counties. This result appears to contradict the standard religious product variety model. Our data are consistent with a more general view of markets that incorporates the cost to consumers of product variety. Where product variety has significant costs, an increase in variety may reduce total market penetration. The paper suggests market characteristics that might give rise to this situation, characteristics present in the religion market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Suggests that economics provides a vehicle for analyzing religion and the church. Application of the theory of the firm in explaining behavior of the church; Intrinsic nature of the church; Unintended function of reducing transaction costs; Enforcement of a system of property rights; Production of four sets of products.