Religious Capital and Community Resilience: An Empirical Study of Church Contributions in Flood-Affected Communities in Anambra State

This study empirically investigates the role of religious capital generated through church membership and participation in building community resilience among flood-affected populations in Anambra State, South East Nigeria. Anambra has experienced increasingly severe flooding in recent years, and its Christian communities have developed informal and formal response mechanisms that deserve systematic analysis. Drawing on the social capital and religious capital theoretical frameworks, the study uses a mixed-methods design with 300 survey respondents drawn from flood-affected communities in Ogbaru, Onitsha North, and Awka South Local Government Areas, supplemented by twenty qualitative interviews with community leaders and church coordinators. Quantitative analysis examines the relationships between religious capital indicators (church attendance, fellowship membership, prayer networks, charitable giving) and resilience outcomes (disaster preparedness, post-flood recovery time, social cohesion, psychological resilience). Findings indicate a significant positive relationship between religious capital and all four resilience outcome measures, with prayer network participation and inter-church mutual aid being the strongest predictors. The study also identifies gaps in churches' disaster preparedness knowledge and structural capacity. The research recommends the formalisation of church disaster response networks in Anambra State and the integration of disaster risk reduction content into church community development programmes. Keywords: religious capital, community resilience, flooding, Anambra State, disaster response