Fascinating throughout; informative throughout; provocative throughout.
Will simply blow your mind.
BR Note
------------------------------------------------------------------
from the site: Studystore Tilburg
In Marketplace of the Gods, award-winning journalist Larry Witham tells
the inside story of the ground-breaking—and controversial—“economic approach”
to religion, a story rich with history, contemporary thought, and the
colorful people who are using economic ideas to solve the puzzles of our
religious beliefs and behaviors.
Written with an investigative flare and a lively writing style, this
fascinating book presents a wide-ranging account of how the economic approach
to
religion can be applied to different faiths, activities, and times in
history. Drawing upon cutting edge ideas from the behavioral sciences, and a
deep knowledge of religious history, this new approach reveals how the
choices individuals make regarding religion can shape households, groups,
movements, and the entire “religious economies” of nations. For many, this new
economic approach seems an uncomfortable mixture of sacred and profane,
turning our good angels into grubby consumers. But as Witham concludes, the
economic approach to religion has insights for everyone, believers and
skeptics, offering an exciting exchange of ideas between economics, sociology,
psychology, history, and theology.
Larry Alan Witham is a veteran journalist and author in the Washington
D.C. area who has covered current events, history, religion and society,
science, and philosophy. After twenty-one years in a newsroom, Witham now
writes
and edits books full time. He is the author of ten books. In 2007 he
served as Editor of the bimonthly magazine Science & Spirit. As a former
reporter with The Washington Times, Witham wrote more than four thousand news
stories, features, and book reviews and has filed stories from Asia, Africa,
Europe, the Soviet Union and Latin America. A native of Los Altos, California
(born June 1952), Witham earned a bachelor’s degree in fine arts from San
Jose State University (1974). He and his wife, Kazui Yamamoto, live in
Maryland.
=============================================
from the Blog: RY Viewpoint
Friday, May 20, 2011
Review of-
Larry Witham's "Marketplace of the Gods:
How Economics Explains Religion"
This was an interesting read. I had high expectations. They were not fully
met but there was sufficient material that I found of interest to sustain
me through the book.
Initially I was put off with the push for the viewpoint of _rational
economics_ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_economic_man) . But he showed
sensitivity to the critiques of idealization, so I was willing to play along
with the text. I found the opening chapters to be a nice overview of
economic thinking. A bit of a surprise since this is a book about religion,
but
the author felt a need to establish his bona fides and make clear the
methodology he was going to use in exploring religion. The subtitle of the
book
implies that he will "explain" religion, but he doesn't. He examines
religion from an economic theory perspective:
At least traditionally, religion falls on the side of investing for the
future. It counsels restraint in day-to-day gratification. In this sense, of
course, religion and economics could not be more different, since the
latter generally encourages optimal consumption -- you can have it now. But in
looking to future rewards, religion sets up a situation of uncertainty. As
the study relating church attendance and seat belt use (and smoking)
suggests, people treat religion "like other goods that exhibit uncertainty and
that provide for a delayed expected future payoff." Some people feel like
getting something now is a better bet than an uncertain promise of getting
something in the future. This might be an apt description of a teenager. On
the
other hand, another type of person likes to plan for the future. For
example, surveys find that people who go to church tend to be more educated
than
the general population. When it comes to a time preference, these
individuals may be showing a basic liking for investment in the future:
putting
their time into education and into religious participation.
And.
In East or West, the religious consumer faces the same problem: how to
verify the quality of a religious good. One way, as we've seen, is to sample
many in hopes that some of them are genuinely effective. But as with picking
a brain surgeon, we'd like to pick a religion that is safe and effective
from the start. So let's return to the skyscrapers and cathedrals. In the
world of supply and demand, consumers want a good product and sellers want to
win consumer confidence. This goes for all goods in the marketplace, but
especially for something that economists call "credence goods."
Credence goods are items whose quality cannot be judged before or after
purchase. We buy them because we trust the credibility of the supplier.
Examples of credence goods abound. Consumers must trust a medical diagnosis,
for
instance. They must accept the word of a mechanic who says the
transmission needs repair. The same goes for services provided by counselors
and
therapists. In many such cases, we turn to a third party to gain proof of
reliability. Doctors, mechanics, and therapists all need a license. Producers
offer warranties and money-back guarantees to reassure consumers. And they
advertise, which, as we will see, can be a signal of reliability.
Religion is the credence good par excellence. ...every religion must
continue to make its case as reliable and valid. Religion can't offer a
warranty, so it must use every other means. "No church offers a money-back
guarantee to a soul that is dissatisfied with his or her afterlife
experience,"
write the economist Robert Ekelund. In religion, therefore, the demand for
credibility, honesty, fairness, and sincerity in religious institutions and
leaders goes far beyond what is expected of business firms. By worldly
experience, everyone knows he or she can be hoodwinked, especially when it
comes
to credence goods. "Unfortunately, sellers of credence goods have
incentives to cheat consumers by overstating the product's merits (and so
raise its
price)," writes economist Brooks B. Hull. "Buyers and honest sellers of
credence goods gain if honest sellers can somehow assure their honesty." So,
for example, a church cannot prove eternal life. But "it can assure
consumers that priests sincerely believe in life after death and believe that
certain steps must be taken to achieve it.
So this book looks at religion like a business and explains how new
religions start at small businesses (cults), grow into local thriving business
(clubs, sect), and finally into a widespread big business (firm, church).
This bit from the book hammers the business angle home. Witham is explaining
how _Rodney Stark_ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodney_Stark) got his
first lesson in viewing religion like a business:
...Stark went to interview the pastor of an Italian Catholic parish. This
was on the eve of the Second Vatican Council. The pastor took Stark to the
front steps of the church and pointed across the street to a white frame
church with a huge vertical neon sign on the bell tower: "Jesus Saves,
Italian Pentecostal Church." Gesturing at the neon sign, the pastor explained
to
Stark, "Everyone over there came from over here. Every time you are tempted
to cut corners, remember that." What Stark remembered, to great effect in
his future work, is that religion lives or dies in a competitive
marketplace.
Here is the economic approach to religion:
As Stark and Bainbridge viewed the world, individuals organized themselves
according to exchanges, thus accounting for groups and power structures.
People faced scarcity of resources. Every choice for one thing was a denial
of another thing. People also tried to solve problems in how they lived t
heir lives and understood reality. In the latter case, religion offered
explanations, and the exchange of belief systems was an important human
reward.
Individuals made religious commitments and joined groups -- cults, sects,
and churches -- on the basis of judging the costs and benefits of the
explanations. Founders of religions,priesthoods, and organized religion all
supplied these explanations. And, as history testified, consumers were eager
to
have them, whatever the cost.
This economic approach explains why "liberation theology" grew quickly in
some areas of Latin America and not in others:
...where Protestant competition was highest, the bishops were strongest in
opposing the government, their former benefactor. In Brazil, Chile, El
Salvador, Nicaragua, and Panama, for example, religious competition was high
and it was in these countries that the bishops' anti-regime rhetoric was
loudest during the 1970s. Opposition to the regime was especially acute in
Brazil and Chile were Protestant proselytizing at the grassroots was the most
aggressive. In countries where bishops remained neutral toward the dictators
-- Argentina, Bolivia, Honduras, Paraguay, Uruguay -- there was little
Protestant competition.
I liked this insight and reference to the earliest serious economist:
Adam Smith also looked at the powerful force of individual self-interest.
But in passages of his Wealth of Nations that are often overlooked, he
spoke of how religion can discipline the lives of individuals. He identified
two "schemes or systems of morality" in most societies. The wealthier class,
which has wealth enough to adopt "loose" ethics and morals, is nevertheless
kept in check by the need to retain reputation and credibility in society.
In the lower classes, or in the anonymous setting of urban life, people
with fewer resources or no standing in society have little to rely upon. That
is the setting in which strict religions provide an "austere" moral system
and small groups that pay attention to the behavior of their members. On
vices and the "common people," Smith said that "a single week's
thoughtlessness and dissipation is often sufficient to undo a poor workman for
ever.
This book by Witham points out that there are benefits and costs to
religion. I think as the above shows, most of the benefits accrue to the lower
classes who use the strictures of religion to help them face the cruelties of
the free market economy. But here is a more general statement:
Another study of sixty-six nations covered by the World Values Survey also
found a correlation between religion and upbeat economic activity. The
survey asked about economic attitudes toward cooperation, government, working
women, legal rules, thriftiness, and the market economy. There did not seem
to be a clash between religious people and basic market economics, the
study concluded. "On average, religious beliefs are associated with 'good'
income and growth." As we will explore later, however, religion also creates
enclaves rather than openness to markets. The one deleterious finding in this
sixty-six nation survey, for example, is that religious people are more
prejudiced against outsiders. They are also more likely to oppose women
leaving the home for the workplace. Religions differed on these and other
topics, but overall, "Christian religions are more positively associated with
attitudes conducive to economic growth."
.....
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