Religious Influences on Economic Thinking

How religious thinking was—and remains—a central influence shaping economics.

The conventional view of economics is that the field was a product of the Enlightenment and, therefore, bore no relation to religious ideas. But is this true? In Religious Influences on Economic Thinking, Benjamin Friedman shows that religious thinking was, in fact, a powerful force in shaping the initial development of modern Western economics and that it has remained an influence on economic thinking ever since. Friedman argues that an important influence enabling the insights of Adam Smith and his contemporaries was the new and highly controversial line of religious thinking at that time in the English-speaking Protestant world.

Friedman explains that the influence of religious thinking on modern economic thought at the field’s inception established resonances that have persisted through the subsequent centuries, even as the economic context has evolved and the questions economists ask have shifted along with it. Because we are largely not conscious of these influences, neither in the past nor as they are at work today, we are sometimes puzzled when we stumble across evidence of them—for example, in the otherwise hard-to-explain attitudes that many of our fellow citizens express on issues like estate taxes, business regulation, and environmental restrictions. But they are still at work. Understanding them can only enhance the economics profession’s capacity to contribute to our ongoing public discussion of the important questions on which the discipline so usefully bears.Table of Contents
Introduction: Ideas and Their Origins
I. The “Economic” Problem
II. The Competitive Market Mechanism
III. The Sunset of Orthodox Calvinism
IV. Lasting Influences
Notes
Bibliography
Index“Friedman says this work is ‘Weber upside down’ referring to Max Weber's classic 1904 book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. I would call it ‘Weber elevated’ since it offers insights into serious economic thought and not so much just the behavior of people at large.”
—Robert J. Shiller, Sterling Professor of Economics, Emeritus, Yale University; co-winner of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Economics; author of Narrative Economics
 
“This crisply written book makes a compelling case for the importance of understanding religious change and historical theology in the emergence of modern economic ideas in eighteenth-century Scotland and beyond. Friedman’s intellectual range is at once dazzling and refreshingly unobtrusive.”
—David N. Hempton, Former Dean, Harvard Divinity School
 
“Theoretically sophisticated and engaged with a broad array of economic and religious literature, Friedman’s analysis overturns traditional notions about religion and economics. A stimulating and provocative reading of important intellectual history.”
—Harold W. Attridge, Sterling Professor of Divinity, Emeritus, Yale UniversityBenjamin M. Friedman is William Joseph Maier Professor of Political Economy at Harvard University. He is the author of Religion and the Rise of Capitalism and The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Council on Foreign Relations.