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Longlisted for the Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year Award
A novel economic interpretation of how religions have become so powerful in the modern world
Religion in the twenty-first century is alive and well across the world, despite its apparent decline in North America and parts of Europe. Vigorous competition between and within religious movements has led to their accumulating great power and wealth. Religions in many traditions have honed their competitive strategies over thousands of years. Today, they are big business; like businesses, they must recruit, raise funds, disburse budgets, manage facilities, organize transportation, motivate employees, and get their message out. In The Divine Economy, economist Paul Seabright argues that religious movements are a special kind of business: they are platforms, bringing together communities of members who seek many different things from one another-spiritual fulfilment, friendship and marriage networks, even business opportunities. Their function as platforms, he contends, is what has allowed religions to consolidate and wield power.
This power can be used for good, especially when religious movements provide their members with insurance against the shocks of modern life, and a sense of worth in their communities. It can also be used for harm: political leaders often instrumentalize religious movements for authoritarian ends, and religious leaders can exploit the trust of members to inflict sexual, emotional, financial or physical abuse, or to provoke violence against outsiders. Writing in a nonpartisan spirit, Seabright uses insights from economics to show how religion and secular society can work together in a world where some people feel no need for religion, but many continue to respond with enthusiasm to its call. Paul Seabright teaches economics at the Toulouse School of Economics, and until 2021 was director of the multidisciplinary Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse. From 2021 to 2023, he was a Fellow of All Souls College at the University of Oxford. His books include The War of the Sexes: How Conflict and Cooperation Have Shaped Men and Women from Prehistory to the Present and The Company of Strangers: A Natural History of Economic Life (both Princeton). "In this compelling and highly original book, Paul Seabright combines sympathetic vignettes of believers and practices with shrewd analysis to generate insights that illuminate both a key area of contemporary life and its historical roots."-Robin Briggs, author of Witches and Neighbours: The Social and Cultural Context of European Witchcraft
"This brilliant, challenging, and remarkably wide-ranging book is daringly built around a seemingly simple proposition: all religions are platforms, comparable to the digital platforms that have transformed our world. With inexhaustible curiosity, subtle intelligence, and a deeply sympathetic understanding of human needs and longings, Paul Seabright has illuminated not only the functioning of religions throughout world history but also their ability to survive and flourish in the contemporary world."-Stephen Greenblatt, author of The Swerve: How the World Became Modern
"The coming of commercial society and its dissolving status-society structures provoked countermovements-nation and religion. Paul Seabright's brilliant book begins the exploration of how commercial society can be strengthened by religion, and religion strengthened by commercial society."-J. Bradford DeLong, author of Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century
"Erudite, expansive, and elegant, this is a wonderful book. With characteristic eloquence and charm, Seabright demonstrates the continued resilience of religion in debates about economics, politics, and the global challenges facing our world today."-Sriya Iyer, author of The Economics of Religion in India
"The gods may be beyond all understandin
A novel economic interpretation of how religions have become so powerful in the modern world
Religion in the twenty-first century is alive and well across the world, despite its apparent decline in North America and parts of Europe. Vigorous competition between and within religious movements has led to their accumulating great power and wealth. Religions in many traditions have honed their competitive strategies over thousands of years. Today, they are big business; like businesses, they must recruit, raise funds, disburse budgets, manage facilities, organize transportation, motivate employees, and get their message out. In The Divine Economy, economist Paul Seabright argues that religious movements are a special kind of business: they are platforms, bringing together communities of members who seek many different things from one another-spiritual fulfilment, friendship and marriage networks, even business opportunities. Their function as platforms, he contends, is what has allowed religions to consolidate and wield power.
This power can be used for good, especially when religious movements provide their members with insurance against the shocks of modern life, and a sense of worth in their communities. It can also be used for harm: political leaders often instrumentalize religious movements for authoritarian ends, and religious leaders can exploit the trust of members to inflict sexual, emotional, financial or physical abuse, or to provoke violence against outsiders. Writing in a nonpartisan spirit, Seabright uses insights from economics to show how religion and secular society can work together in a world where some people feel no need for religion, but many continue to respond with enthusiasm to its call. Paul Seabright teaches economics at the Toulouse School of Economics, and until 2021 was director of the multidisciplinary Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse. From 2021 to 2023, he was a Fellow of All Souls College at the University of Oxford. His books include The War of the Sexes: How Conflict and Cooperation Have Shaped Men and Women from Prehistory to the Present and The Company of Strangers: A Natural History of Economic Life (both Princeton). "In this compelling and highly original book, Paul Seabright combines sympathetic vignettes of believers and practices with shrewd analysis to generate insights that illuminate both a key area of contemporary life and its historical roots."-Robin Briggs, author of Witches and Neighbours: The Social and Cultural Context of European Witchcraft
"This brilliant, challenging, and remarkably wide-ranging book is daringly built around a seemingly simple proposition: all religions are platforms, comparable to the digital platforms that have transformed our world. With inexhaustible curiosity, subtle intelligence, and a deeply sympathetic understanding of human needs and longings, Paul Seabright has illuminated not only the functioning of religions throughout world history but also their ability to survive and flourish in the contemporary world."-Stephen Greenblatt, author of The Swerve: How the World Became Modern
"The coming of commercial society and its dissolving status-society structures provoked countermovements-nation and religion. Paul Seabright's brilliant book begins the exploration of how commercial society can be strengthened by religion, and religion strengthened by commercial society."-J. Bradford DeLong, author of Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century
"Erudite, expansive, and elegant, this is a wonderful book. With characteristic eloquence and charm, Seabright demonstrates the continued resilience of religion in debates about economics, politics, and the global challenges facing our world today."-Sriya Iyer, author of The Economics of Religion in India
"The gods may be beyond all understandin