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As the title suggests, this extended essay is a critique of mainstream economic theory (neoclassical and neo-Keynesian), which serves the function of a theology for the Capitalist religion -- a rationalization and legitimization of capitalist accumulation. The economics faculty constitute a secular priesthood with its own arcane form of self-referential theological discourse. The essay examines the discursive and institutional practices which systematically distort genuine understanding of the economic system in a way that rationalizes capitalist production.
Studia Gilsoniana
Religion and Economics: Editors’ Introduction2021 •
The response to the special 2019 issue of Studia Gilsoniana on economics was so positive that it led to the creation of the Aquinas School of Leadership School of Economics (ASLSE). This 2021 publication is, therefore, a second special issue of Studia Gilsoniana on the same theme and the second installment of ASLSE’s economic journals. We are delighted to present here further fruits of thought from the maturing Studia Gilsoniana and ASLSE partnership. Economics is held to be a value-free, scientific enterprise, and as such there can be no relationship between economics and religion. Ayn Rand, a well-known novelist-turned-philosopher, took this position in an unapologetic way in her writings, specifically in her novel Atlas Shrugged. The contrary position to what we might call the Randian “strict separation” thesis holds that economics and religion are related, in some way and to some degree, and therefore should be considered in tandem. The papers in this special edition of Studia Gilsoniana set out to show the extent and quality of the relationship between economics and religion from a variety of viewpoints and historical periods.
Edward Bailey contacted me in September 2014 to review this book, which was formerly unknown to me although my research deals with religion and economics. Edward seemed to have turned to me when he had particularly lengthy books on the topic to review (cf. my review of Philip Goodchild's Capitalism and Religion in IR 15/3), which I chose to understand as a compliment even if it put a heavy strain on a typically overcharged workload. Edward had written to me a few of times since to recall the deadline, apparently pressed by an eager author. I had to miss the deadline and request a delay, and it is with much regret that I have handed this in at the tail end of July 2015, a few months after Edward passed away. I would like to dedicate this to his memory and express my gratitude to him for having been a generous elder and a precious interlocutor over the years, since he first invited me to talk in one of his seminars at Middlesex when I was only a Masters student, and later on to Denton and Oxford. Robert Nelson's book could well have been titled 'Economics as Implicit Religion,' and it is indeed fitting to review it here in IR. The edition at hand of Economics as Religion is a 2014 reissue of the 2001 opus in addition to a short epilogue. It is the second book of a trilogy in which Nelson charts the rise of a 'modern secular religion of economics' that culminates in the twentieth century cultural ideology of the market. In his first volume, Reaching for Heaven on Earth. The Theological Meaning of Economics (Bowman and Little, 1993), Nelson argued that economics became 'the modern theology that .... replaced traditional theology as the set of doctrines that give meaning to our social reality and hope to our endeavors to improving our lives' (quote from Peter Boettke's review, cited in the epilogue p.342). The present volume pursues the task by analysing the works of the major twentieth century American economists to show how professional economists are equivalent to the priesthood of this religion of economics which justify, disseminate and legitimize in scientific discourse 'normative foundations required for a rapidly growing modern economy' (p.8). The third volume, The New Holy Wars : Economic Religion Versus Environmental Religion in Contemporary America (Penn State University Press, 2010), picks up on the argument made at the end of Religion as Economics and details how this religion of progress in economic dress has recently been opposed by a growing counter-religion of environmentalism. After a PhD in economics at Princeton, Nelson worked from 1975 to 1993 as an economic analysist in the Office of Policy Analysis of the US Secretary of the Interior, where he started realizing that the policy debates which he assisted and in which he participated were more normative than purely scientific, in other words that they were 'religious in character', and that this contradicted the pretentions of his disciplinary alma mater. He therefore embarked upon the project of enquiring into what he calls the 'theological foundations of modern economics' (p.xviii), a task he has since pursued as professor at the School of Public Policy of the University of Maryland. Although the whole of Nelson's enterprise rests on the argument that what passes for scientific and secular is in fact religious, his definition of religion is vague and the conceptual discussion poor when compared to the numerous detailed discussions that make up the volume. The elements of definition are scattered in the introductory section, where religion is said to be 'about making claims to truth', as well as 'about changing people to make them better understand the truth as it is seen by the initiated and thereby also changing their behavior' (p.xviii). Nelson also makes an oblique reference to a Supreme Court judgement which itself refers to Paul Tillich's conception of religion as expressing individual's ultimate concerns (p.xxiv). At the same time, the 'science' of economics is said to serve the 'social functions of religion' (p.xviii), which we imagine have something to do with legitimizing values and proposing a path for salvation (p.xx). Professional economists are said 'to serve as the priesthood of a modern secular religion of economic progress that serves sic many of the same functions in contemporary society as earlier Christian and other religions did in their time', defending 'economic efficiency' as the 'core value' and the 'greatest source of social legitimacy in the United States for the past century'. Overall and essentially, the argument revolves around the idea of religion as a system of foundational values and metaphysical underpinnings. One could summarize the argument by saying that secularization did not happen, or rather that it happened in a sense, but only as a transfer towards a new religion of economic progress (p.x) : 'The economics profession, .... is the priesthood of a powerful secular religionnor more accurately a set of secular religions, as they have been developed in the theories of the leading schools of economics of the modern age. Beneath the surface of their formal economic theorizing, economists are engaged in an act of delivering religious messages. Correctly understood, these messages are seen to be promises of the true path to a salvation in this worlddto a new heaven on earth. Because this path follows along a route of economic progresswith the technical understanding to show the way, it falls to the members of the economics profession (assisted by other social scientists) to assume the traditional role of the priesthood.' (p.xxi) The book therefore argues that the modern religion of progress was successfully reinterpreted in essentially economic terms by neo-classical liberal economics and its twentieth century avatars. In this perspective, the modern shift towards inner-worldly salvation aimed the end of material scarcity and the arrival of an era of abundance guaranteed by economic growth. Nelson threads his analysis of twentieth century economics with a rather well known narrative of Western modernization (cf. pp.266-7). By the modern age, the Christian religion has progressively lost its authority in public life and consequently did its morality cease to effectively restraint the pursuit of self-interest. This authority was transferred to science, which henceforth appeared to be the preferred vehicle for the investigation of God's Laws of Nature, and therefore as the dispenser of valid truth. Social sciences followed step and imposed themselves as the legitimate actors for the regulation of society. The discipline of economics was particularly prompt to present itself, since the times of Adam Smith (and even prior, in the works of the French Physiocrats, not mentioned by the author) as the social scientific equivalent of physics in the social sciences. In what are some of the best pages in the book, Nelson recalls in chapter 10 ('God Bless the Market') how Newtonian physics provided the template for eighteenth century economics and the Darwinian idea of the survival of the fittest in the nineteenth. Unable to follow physics' quantum and relativity revolutions, economics in the last century has continued to nourish the pretention of being the physics of social sciences, accompanied by an increasing (ab)use of mathematics. The bulk of the book charts the evolution of American economics from the works of Cambridge professor Paul Samuelson to the neoliberal free
Journal of the History of Economic Thought
Paul Oslington, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Christianity and Economics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 656, $142.50, hardcover. ISBN 978-0-19-972971-52015 •
Religious Studies Review
THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF ECONOMIC THEOLOGY Edited by StefanSchwarzkopfLondon: Routledge Taylor Francis, 2020. Pp. xxii + 396. Cloth, $250.002020 •
Econ Journal Watch
What Has Jerusalem to Do with Chicago (or Cambridge)? Why Economics Needs an Infusion of Religious Formulations2014 •
Professional economics would benefit from an infusion of religious formulations, particularly the notions that all humans are made in God’s image and are fallen creatures. This infusion would lead economics to more openly recognize the role of moral reflection in economic thinking and enhance the way in which economics conceives of the use of knowledge in both the private and public sectors. In addition, particular benefits might be realized in rethinking conceptions of entrepreneurship, competition, and opportunistic behavior. I provide examples of the ways Christian values shape my research agenda as an economist.
Journal of Economics, Theology and Religion
Review of The Routledge Handbook of Economic Theology2021 •
2016 •
Theory, Culture and Society
What is Economic Theology? A New Governmental-Political Paradigm?Countering claims of its impossibility, this paper argues for economic theology as an intelligible figure of contemporary political rationality and organization, and a distinctive analytical strategy in relation to forms of liberal and neoliberal governmentality and the contemporary management of social life. As an analytical strategy, it has two arms: an institutional one, drawing upon Michel Foucault's work on the pastorate; and a conceptual one, following from Giorgio Agamben on oikonomia, order and providence. Economic theology was the arcana of twentieth-century debates on both political theology and governmentality and a condition for their emergence. It formed the horizon of Carl Schmitt's intervention of a political theology in response to Max Weber, and, as the pastorate, it was for Foucault the historical background of the emergence of the liberal arts of government. While appearing as a new paradigm, it thus has a measure of priority over our more established ones. Furthermore, to the extent that economic theology comes to occupy the place of political rationality of contemporary liberal-democratic societies, the political becomes less a rational public sphere and more a form of public liturgy.

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