Benedikt Koehler is the Economics of Religion Fellow at the Institute of Economic Affairs and editor of Faith in Markets? Abrahamic religions and economics, out on Tuesday, 27 June
Many studies of Abrahamic religions foreground their mutual antagonisms. Indeed polemical theology often has escalated into bellicose politics. But Faith in Markets?, a forthcoming book from the Institute of Economic Affairs, tells an alternative, underexposed story. Whatever the adversarial nature of Abrahamic politics, economic crossovers existed between them for millennia.
The business advice of the three Abrahamic religions reflected the background of their founders. Moses grew up in the home of a prince, Jesus that of a carpenter, and Muhammad that of a merchant. Their respective family backgrounds were upper class, working class, and middle class – and those backgrounds shaped their approaches to business and economics.
Moses decreed that land was to be held by Israelites as tenants but not as owners, and he had strong views against lending money at interest. Mosaic approaches to land tenure were maintained in Christianity until the end of the Middle Ages and the ban against lending at interest until the modern era. In Islam, the ban against usury holds even today.
Christians and Muslims made original contributions to providing poor relief. The Gospels repeatedly showed Jesus handing out alms and feeding multitudes. Muhammad put welfare on a new footing. Islamic jurists devised the waqf, a special-purpose vehicle for distributing philanthropy, which some centuries later became a blueprint for a Common Law innovation in England, the trust.
Muhammad’s mercantile savvy showed up in a host of other pro-business provisions. The most consequential one was price deregulation, which helped launch Muslims on a dynamic economic trajectory, as it did Jews and Christians who copied them.
Faith in Markets? shows that in the modern era, the relationship between religion and economics became tense once economics had slipped from the grasp of prophets and priests. Thomas More’s title for his economic fairyland was apt: Utopia. The modern era has wrested economics out of the hands of religions. Sacred and secular spheres now lead segregated lives.
Today, whenever religions make themselves noticed in politics, then more often than not by ranging themselves against core liberal, free market policies. Israel is a successful, pro-business economy, but the Haredi, the country’s most devout citizens, contribute little to it.
Similarly, fundamentalists in Islam have no practicable agenda for improving economic growth. Pope Francis inveighs against globalisation. The priorities of religious fundamentalists and political pragmatists differ. If they take notice of each other at all, then most likely to confirm how little they have to say to each other. This outcome locks both camps into a lose-lose situation.
The notion that politics is insulated from religion is comparatively recent. But to see an illustration that political ritual is grounded in religion, one need to look no further than to the ceremonies framing the coronation of King Charles.
A Roman emperor was imperator as well as pontifex maximus (commander and high priest), medieval theology deliberated the nature of the king’s two roles, and Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan clutches a sword and a crosier. For sociologists, historians, and philosophers of many stripes and colours, from Émile Durkheim to Max Weber to Giorgio Agamben, it has become commonplace to state that modern political notions recycle conceptions brought into circulation by medieval theologians.
Lacking insight into the religious connotations of political terms amounts to historical amnesia. For example, F. A. Hayek once termed the concept ‘social justice’ a “quasi-religious belief with no content whatsoever.” Hayek had a point if what he had in mind as quasi-religious was the fervour that animated proponents of income distribution.
But he could have strengthened his argumentation had he cited the distinction between distributive and commutative justice, between what groups owe their members and what members of groups owe each other, which distinction was refined by medieval theologians. Faith in Markets? shows that theological discriminations are still pertinent to social policy debates now.
The study of the economics of religion is well underway in the US. Harvard University has been forging ahead. Harvard economist Benjamin Friedman’s Religion and the Rise of Capitalism reads out the subtext of eighteenth-century Scottish religious controversies in the work of Adam Smith. His faculty colleague Robert Barro’s The Wealth of Religions surveys research on social incentives framed by religious institutions.
Joseph Henrich – a Harvard evolutionary biologist – has written The WEIRDEST People in the World points to early Christian kinship rules as enablers of Western individualism and won him the Manhattan Institute 2022 Hayek Book Prize. Harvard Professor of Government Eric Nelson in The Theology of Liberalism showed that John Rawls’ thinking on free will reflected his engagement with the fourth-century monk Pelagius.
Clearly, in the US the economics of religion is a field of widening academic inquiry, taking in the entire gamut of social sciences. British economists of liberal persuasion should not stand apart from these developments.
In the Middle East political factions rally around religious causes as they do also in the Americas. But in Britain, the trend has been going the other way, and politics does not fuss over religion. The country’s recent Prime Ministers have been Anglican, Catholic, and Hindu, and none of their denominations ever moved the dial on their ratings.
Tony Blair treated politics as doable without ‘doing God’. Indeed he might be right when it comes to Britain’s day-by-day political skirmishes. But the fabric of social and political norms is liable to unravel in a society that is forgetful of where these norms came from and what made them unfold.
In Britain today, teachers and professors in classrooms and lecture halls up and down the country face the challenge of talking about religion without stirring up acrimony or worse. Faith in Markets? is a serviceable tool to put in their hands, putting religion on the agenda for discussion by readers regardless of denomination. The discovery of reciprocal impacts between economic practices across Abrahamic faiths will, if nothing else, show that their capacity to learn from each other marks them out as decidedly liberal.
Benedikt Koehler is the Economics of Religion Fellow at the Institute of Economic Affairs and editor of Faith in Markets? Abrahamic religions and economics, out on Tuesday, 27 June
Many studies of Abrahamic religions foreground their mutual antagonisms. Indeed polemical theology often has escalated into bellicose politics. But Faith in Markets?, a forthcoming book from the Institute of Economic Affairs, tells an alternative, underexposed story. Whatever the adversarial nature of Abrahamic politics, economic crossovers existed between them for millennia.
The business advice of the three Abrahamic religions reflected the background of their founders. Moses grew up in the home of a prince, Jesus that of a carpenter, and Muhammad that of a merchant. Their respective family backgrounds were upper class, working class, and middle class – and those backgrounds shaped their approaches to business and economics.
Moses decreed that land was to be held by Israelites as tenants but not as owners, and he had strong views against lending money at interest. Mosaic approaches to land tenure were maintained in Christianity until the end of the Middle Ages and the ban against lending at interest until the modern era. In Islam, the ban against usury holds even today.
Christians and Muslims made original contributions to providing poor relief. The Gospels repeatedly showed Jesus handing out alms and feeding multitudes. Muhammad put welfare on a new footing. Islamic jurists devised the waqf, a special-purpose vehicle for distributing philanthropy, which some centuries later became a blueprint for a Common Law innovation in England, the trust.
Muhammad’s mercantile savvy showed up in a host of other pro-business provisions. The most consequential one was price deregulation, which helped launch Muslims on a dynamic economic trajectory, as it did Jews and Christians who copied them.
Faith in Markets? shows that in the modern era, the relationship between religion and economics became tense once economics had slipped from the grasp of prophets and priests. Thomas More’s title for his economic fairyland was apt: Utopia. The modern era has wrested economics out of the hands of religions. Sacred and secular spheres now lead segregated lives.
Today, whenever religions make themselves noticed in politics, then more often than not by ranging themselves against core liberal, free market policies. Israel is a successful, pro-business economy, but the Haredi, the country’s most devout citizens, contribute little to it.
Similarly, fundamentalists in Islam have no practicable agenda for improving economic growth. Pope Francis inveighs against globalisation. The priorities of religious fundamentalists and political pragmatists differ. If they take notice of each other at all, then most likely to confirm how little they have to say to each other. This outcome locks both camps into a lose-lose situation.
The notion that politics is insulated from religion is comparatively recent. But to see an illustration that political ritual is grounded in religion, one need to look no further than to the ceremonies framing the coronation of King Charles.
A Roman emperor was imperator as well as pontifex maximus (commander and high priest), medieval theology deliberated the nature of the king’s two roles, and Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan clutches a sword and a crosier. For sociologists, historians, and philosophers of many stripes and colours, from Émile Durkheim to Max Weber to Giorgio Agamben, it has become commonplace to state that modern political notions recycle conceptions brought into circulation by medieval theologians.
Lacking insight into the religious connotations of political terms amounts to historical amnesia. For example, F. A. Hayek once termed the concept ‘social justice’ a “quasi-religious belief with no content whatsoever.” Hayek had a point if what he had in mind as quasi-religious was the fervour that animated proponents of income distribution.
But he could have strengthened his argumentation had he cited the distinction between distributive and commutative justice, between what groups owe their members and what members of groups owe each other, which distinction was refined by medieval theologians. Faith in Markets? shows that theological discriminations are still pertinent to social policy debates now.
The study of the economics of religion is well underway in the US. Harvard University has been forging ahead. Harvard economist Benjamin Friedman’s Religion and the Rise of Capitalism reads out the subtext of eighteenth-century Scottish religious controversies in the work of Adam Smith. His faculty colleague Robert Barro’s The Wealth of Religions surveys research on social incentives framed by religious institutions.
Joseph Henrich – a Harvard evolutionary biologist – has written The WEIRDEST People in the World points to early Christian kinship rules as enablers of Western individualism and won him the Manhattan Institute 2022 Hayek Book Prize. Harvard Professor of Government Eric Nelson in The Theology of Liberalism showed that John Rawls’ thinking on free will reflected his engagement with the fourth-century monk Pelagius.
Clearly, in the US the economics of religion is a field of widening academic inquiry, taking in the entire gamut of social sciences. British economists of liberal persuasion should not stand apart from these developments.
In the Middle East political factions rally around religious causes as they do also in the Americas. But in Britain, the trend has been going the other way, and politics does not fuss over religion. The country’s recent Prime Ministers have been Anglican, Catholic, and Hindu, and none of their denominations ever moved the dial on their ratings.
Tony Blair treated politics as doable without ‘doing God’. Indeed he might be right when it comes to Britain’s day-by-day political skirmishes. But the fabric of social and political norms is liable to unravel in a society that is forgetful of where these norms came from and what made them unfold.
In Britain today, teachers and professors in classrooms and lecture halls up and down the country face the challenge of talking about religion without stirring up acrimony or worse. Faith in Markets? is a serviceable tool to put in their hands, putting religion on the agenda for discussion by readers regardless of denomination. The discovery of reciprocal impacts between economic practices across Abrahamic faiths will, if nothing else, show that their capacity to learn from each other marks them out as decidedly liberal.