The Divine Economy
How Religions Compete for Wealth, Power, and People
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- $24.99
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- $24.99
Publisher Description
A novel economic interpretation of how religions have become so powerful in the modern world
Religion in the twenty-first century is alive and well across the world, despite its apparent decline in North America and parts of Europe. Vigorous competition between and within religious movements has led to their accumulating great power and wealth. Religions in many traditions have honed their competitive strategies over thousands of years. Today, they are big business; like businesses, they must recruit, raise funds, disburse budgets, manage facilities, organize transportation, motivate employees, and get their message out. In The Divine Economy, economist Paul Seabright argues that religious movements are a special kind of business: they are platforms, bringing together communities of members who seek many different things from one another—spiritual fulfilment, friendship and marriage networks, even business opportunities. Their function as platforms, he contends, is what has allowed religions to consolidate and wield power.
This power can be used for good, especially when religious movements provide their members with insurance against the shocks of modern life, and a sense of worth in their communities. It can also be used for harm: political leaders often instrumentalize religious movements for authoritarian ends, and religious leaders can exploit the trust of members to inflict sexual, emotional, financial or physical abuse, or to provoke violence against outsiders. Writing in a nonpartisan spirit, Seabright uses insights from economics to show how religion and secular society can work together in a world where some people feel no need for religion, but many continue to respond with enthusiasm to its call.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Religions are business platforms that recruit members, raise funds, distribute benefits, and motivate adherents by "facilitat relationships that could not form or could not function effectively in the platforms' absence," according to this sprawling study. Seabright (The War of the Sexes), a professor of economics at the University of Toulouse, contends that seemingly impractical beliefs and rituals make sense when religion is viewed as a platform: hyperspecific feast day practices and other rituals might seem opaque to outsiders (and thus no great draw for potential "recruits"), but they help adherents foster relationships with one another "on the strength of that shared performance." Seabright investigates why religious movements have emerged in varied forms across history; the ways in which religions draw "time, energy, and money" from willing participants; and how they use and abuse their power in political and social realms (he takes an especially hard look at the cover-up of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church). Though Seabright draws plenty of insightful and surprising links between religious belief, community, and business, he sometimes lapses into oversimplifications and weakens his case by failing to meaningfully cite religious texts themselves. Still, scholars of religion and economics will find plenty to chew on.
