Religion and Economics: Normative Social Theory

Citation

Oslington, P. (2000), "Religion and Economics: Normative Social Theory", International Journal of Social Economics, Vol. 27 No. 12, pp. 1270-1282. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijse.2000.27.12.1270.5

This is a sequel to Economics and Religion: Are They Distinct? edited by Brennan and Waterman (1994). In the earlier volume, economists selected by the editors contributed essays on the question of whether economics and religion were distinct and autonomous, and what their relationship might be. A further group of economists was asked to comment on these essays, and the editors added their own introduction and comments.

The present volume is arranged in a similar way, but the question is whether “the attempt to combine economics and theology in normative social theory is intellectually defensible and actually fruitful”? (p. 4). After rejecting “a purely philosophical inquiry into the logical and epistemological issues raised by any attempted combination of the two” (p. 6) on the grounds that “methodology is boring … and can have no prescriptive function” (p. 6), the editors use the case study method of the previous volume. Essays were commissioned on the combination of economics and theology in Judaism (Jacob Neusner), Papal Encyclicals (Andrew Yuengert), Liberation Theology (Thomas Shubeck), Anglicanism (A.M.C. Waterman), Calvinism (John Tiemstra), and Evangelicalim (Kim Hawtrey). An essay on Islamic Economics proved unobtainable, which is regrettable, because this is the one body of religious economics that has some formal influence in contemporary states – it has not yet followed most of the Christian economic traditions into practical irrelevance. These essays were then circulated to the commentators (Sheila Dow, Kenneth Elzinga, Paul Heyne, Fred McChesney and Ian Steedman) and the editors summarised the responses.

For the impatient reader, the commentators’ verdict (as adjudicated by the editors, p. 183) on the fruitfulness of the combination of religion and economics in the domain of the case studies was three Yes, two No and one Undecided. The value of the book, though, is the case studies themselves and discussion. I found some of the case studies disappointing in that they did little more than summarise what others, writing in the area they had been asked to write on, had written. There is already an abundance of surveys in the field, and novel historical or analytical work would have been more valuable.

Waterman’s essay stands out in its analytical content, and some points he raises in the final pages provoke considerable discussion in the commentators’ essays. They are made in the context of Waterman’s interpretation of the history of Anglican social thought as climaxing in Richard Whately’s separation of political economy from theology in the mid‐nineteenth century, and then being a story of either faithfulness or unfaithfulness to Whately’s demarcation. The first point draws on Frank Knights’ assertion that the Christian contribution to ethics is a gospel of love that must necessarily apply to individuals and thus cannot be a basis for social ethics. For Waterman, Knight’s assertion suggests an even more radical disjunction between Christianity and economics than Whately’s. The second point draws on Wittgenstein’s idea of language games, as described in Leszek Kolakowski’s work “Religion”. Waterman suggests that economics and religion are incommensurable language games, because the fact/value distinction is possible in profane language games such as economics, but not in sacred language games. Furthermore, economics as a profane language game without an absolute subject cannot utter truth of any kind. In his comments, Waterman is careful to say that he is not necessarily committed to either Knight or Kolakowski’s point – he is just putting them up for discussion.

These two points provoke much discussion among the commentators, and are worth considering further. In relation to the first point it is not clear that Knight’s description of Christian theology is accurate. Ian Steedman considers it “little more than a clever provocation, a wildly exaggerated conclusion derived from a perfectly valid observation about an important feature of Christian ethics” (p. 166). In my view, Knight has rightly sensed the inadequacy of reducing Christian ethics to a set of rules, especially impersonal rules as in much social ethics (this inadequacy has been pointed out by more recent writers Christian ethics, notably Stanley Hauerwas), but his own reduction is similarly inadequate. Knight seems to have read his methodological individualism in economics into Christian ethics. It is interesting that the commentator who finds Knight’s description of Christian ethics and critique the most persuasive (Paul Heyne) is perhaps the closest to Knight’s methodology of economics. Even if we grant Knight his antinomian and individualistic interpretation of Christian ethics, I am not sure this makes Christian ethics irrelevant to economics. At most it makes Christian ethics sit uneasily with the type of welfare economics that was popular at the time Knight was writing.

On the argument drawn from Kolakowski, many of the commentators (particularly Sheila Dow and Ian Steedman) point out it only has force to the extent that we accept the fact/value distinction as absolute rather than just a useful simplification, accept the rigid distinction between the sacred and profane, and the peculiar restriction of truth to reference to an absolute. In discussing the relationship between economics and religion we cannot avoid wider epistemological and ontological issues (emphasised in Sheila Dow’s essay).

Overall, the book does not seem as strong as the earlier volume, although it is a useful contribution to the continuing debate about the relationship between economics and religion. Taken together, the volumes are one of the better introductions to the contemporary literature on economics and religion. As some of the commentators suggest, progress will mean grappling more deeply with the epistemological and ontological issues, and this may mean more involvement from philosophers and theologians. The case study and commentary method of these volumes works well, and intellectual history has an important role. Kenneth Elzinga’s comments on the current literature (p. 139) seems appropriate: “It may simply take more time, more insight, more resources, and maybe more common grace than have yet to be allocated to this interdisciplinary endeavour”.