American Academy of Religion
The Religion of the Market
Author(s): David R. Loy
Source: Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Vol. 65, No. 2 (Summer, 1997), pp.
275-290
Published by: Oxford University Press
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Journal of the American Academy of Religion 65/2
AAR
The Religion of the Market
David R. Loy
RELIGION IS NOTORIOUSLY DIFFICULT to define. If, however, we
adopt a functionalist view and understand religion as what grounds us by
teaching us what the world is, and what our r6le in the world is, then it
becomes obvious that traditional religions are fulfilling this role less and
less, because that function is being supplanted-or overwhelmed-by
other belief-systems and value-systems. Today the most powerful alternative explanation of the world is science, and the most attractive valuesystem has become consumerism. Their academic offspring is economics,
probably the most influential of the "social sciences." In response, this
paper will argue that our present economic system should also be understood as our religion, because it has come to fulfill a religious function for
us. The discipline of economics is less a science than the theology of that
religion, and its god, the Market, has become a vicious circle of everincreasing production and consumption by pretending to offer a secular
salvation. The collapse of communism-best understood as a capitalist
"heresy"-makes it more apparent that the Market is becoming the first
truly world religion, binding all corners of the globe more and more
tightly into a worldview and set of values whose religious role we overlook only because we insist on seeing them as "secular."
So it is no coincidence that our time of ecological catastrophe also
happens to be a time of extraordinary challenge to more traditional
religions. Although it may offend our vanity, it is somewhat ludicrous to
think of conventional religious institutions as we know them today serving
David R. Loy is Professor in the Faculty of International Studies, Bunkyo University, Chigasaki 253,
Japan (email: loy@shonan.bunkyo.ac.jp).
275
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276 Journal of the American Academy of Religion
a significant role in solving the environmental crisis. Their more immediate problem is whether they, like the rain forests we anxiously monitor, will
survive in any recognizable form the onslaught of this new religion.
The major religions are not yet moribund, but when they are not already
in bed with the economic and political powers that be, they tend to be
so preoccupied with past problems and outmoded perspectives (e.g.,
pronatalism) that they are increasingly irrelevant (e.g., fundamentalism)
or trivialized (e.g., television evangelism). The result is that up to now they
have been unable to offer what is most needed, a meaningful challenge to
the aggressive proselytizing of market capitalism, which has already
become the most successful religion of all time, winning more converts
more quickly than any previous belief system or value-system in human
history.
The situation of religions today is becoming so critical that the environmental crisis may actually turn out to be a positive thing for religion.
This is because ecological catastrophe is awakening us not only to the fact
that we need a deeper source of values and meaning than market capitalism can provide but also to the realization that contemporary religion is
not meeting this need either.
ECONOMICS AS THEOLOGY
It is intolerable that the most important issues about human livelihood
will be decided solely on the basis of profit for transnational corporations
(Daly and Cobb: 178).'
In 1960 countries of the North were about twenty times richer than
those of the South. In 1990-after vast amounts of aid, trade, loans, and
catch-up industrialization by the South-North countries had become
fifty times richer. The richest twenty percent of the world's population
now have an income about 150 times that of the poorest twenty percent,
a gap that continues to grow (Korten:107-108). According to the UN
Development Report for 1996, the world's 358 billionaires are wealthier
than the combined annual income of countries with 45% of the world's
people. As a result, a quarter million children die of malnutrition or
infection every week, while hundreds of millions more survive in a limbo
of hunger and deteriorating health .... Why do we acquiesce in this social
injustice? What rationalization allows us to sleep peacefully at night?
' This essay is much indebted Daly and Cobb, who present a detailed critique of modern economic
theory and demonstrate how our environmental and social problems can be solved if we have the will
to do so.
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Loy: The Religion of the Market 277
[T]he explanation lies largely in our embrace of a peculiarly European or
Western [but now global] religion, an individualistic religion of economics and markets, which explains all of these outcomes as the inevitable
results of an objective system in which ... intervention is counterproductive. Employment is simply a cost of doing business, and Nature is merely
a pool of resources for use in production. In this calculus, the world of
business is so fundamental and so separate from the environment.., that
intervention in the ongoing economic system is a threat to the natural
order of things, and hence to future human welfare. In this way of thinking, that outcome is just (or at least inevitable) which emerges from the
natural workings of this economic system, and the "wisdom of the market" on which it is based. The hegemony achieved by this particular intel-
lectual construct-a "European religion" or economic religion-is
remarkable; it has become a dogma of almost universal application, the
dominant religion of our time, shoring up and justifying what would
appear to be a patently inequitable status quo. It has achieved an
immense influence which dominates contemporary human activity.
(Dobell:232)
According to Dobell, this theology is based on two counterintuitive but
widely accepted propositions: that it is right and just (which is why "the
market made me do it" is acceptable as a defense of many morally questionable activities); and that value can be adequately signaled by prices.
Since natural resources are unpriced, harvesting techniques such as drift
nets and clear cuts are not only acceptable but necessary in order to be
competitive, despite the fact that "more or less everybody now knows
that market systems are profoundly flawed, in the sense that, left on their
own with present pricing and practices, they will lead inevitably to environmental damage and destruction of irreplaceable ecological systems"
(237).
The basic assumption of both propositions is that such a system is
"natural." If market capitalism does operate according to economic laws as
natural as those of physics or chemistry-if economics were a genuine science-its consequences seem unavoidable, despite the fact that they have
led to extreme social inequity and are leading to environmental catastrophe. Yet there is nothing inevitable about our economic relationships. That
misunderstanding is precisely what needs to be addressed-and this is also
where religion comes in, since with the increasing prostitution of universities and the media to these same market forces there seems to be no other
moral perspective left from which to challenge them. Fortunately, the
alternative worldviews that religions offer can still help us realize that the
global victory of market capitalism is something other than the simple
attainment of economic freedom: rather, it is the ascendancy of one par-
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278 Journal of the American Academy of Religion
ticular way of understanding and valuing the world that need not be
taken for granted. Far from being inevitable, this economic system is one
historically-conditioned way of organizing/reorganizing the world; it is a
worldview, with ontology and ethics, in competition with other understandings of what the world is and how we should live in it.
What is most impressive about market values from a religious perspective is not their "naturalness" but how extraordinarily effective and
persuasive their conversion techniques are. As a philosophy teacher, I
know that whatever I can do with my students a few hours during a
week is practically useless against the proselytizing influences that assail
them outside class-the attractive (often hypnotic) advertising messages
on television and radio and in magazines and buses, etc., which constantly urge them to "buy me if you want to be happy". If we are not
blinded by the distinction usually made between secular and sacred, we
can see that this promises another kind of salvation, i.e., another way to
solve our unhappiness. Insofar as this strikes at the heart of the truly reli-
gious perspective-which offers an alternative explanation for our
inability to be happy and a very different path to become happyreligions are not fulfilling their responsibility if they ignore this religious
dimension of capitalism, if they do not emphasize that this seduction is
deceptive, because this solution to our unhappiness leads only to greater
dissatisfaction.
Instead of demonstrating their inevitability, the history of economic
systems reveals the contingency of the market relationships we now take
for granted. Although we tend to view the profit motive as universal and
rational (the benevolent "invisible hand" of Adam Smith), anthropologists have discovered that it is not traditional to traditional societies.
Insofar as it is found among them, it plays a very circumscribed role,
viewed warily because of its tendency to disrupt social relations. Most
premodern societies make no clear distinction between the economic
sphere and the social sphere, with the result that economic roles are subsumed into more general social relationships. Pre-capitalist man "does
not act so as to safeguard his individual interest in the possession of
material goods; he acts so as to safeguard his social standing, his social
claims, his social assets. He values material goods only in so far as they
serve this end." But in capitalist society "instead of economy being
embedded in social relations, social relations are embedded in the economic system" (Polanyi:46, 57).
Tawney discovered the same perspective on market forces in the preRenaissance West: "There is no place in medieval theory for economic
activity which is not related to a moral end, and to found a science of
society upon the assumption that the appetite for economic gain is a
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Loy: The Religion of the Market 279
constant and measurable force, to be accepted like other natural forces, as
an inevitable and self-evident datum, would have appeared to the
medieval thinker as hardly less irrational and less immoral than to make
the premise of social philosophy the unrestrained operation of such necessary human attributes as pugnacity and the sexual instinct" (31).
The crucial transformation evidently began in the late Middle Ageswhich, by no coincidence, is when the prevailing religious interpretation
of the world began to lose its hold on people's lives. As profit gradually
became the engine of the economic process, the tendency was for gradual
reorganization of the entire social system and not just of the economic
element, since there is no natural distinction between them.2 "Capital had
ceased to be a servant and had become a master. Assuming a separate and
independent vitality it claimed the right of a predominant partner to dic-
tate economic organization in accordance with its own exacting requirements" (Tawney:86). It is another example of the technological paradox:
we create complex systems to make our lives more comfortable, only to
find ourselves caught within the inexorable logic of their own development. The monster in Shelley's Frankenstein expresses it more brutally:
"You are my creator, but I am your master."
The scholar who did the most to uncover the religious roots of market
capitalism was Max Weber. His controversial theory not only locates the
origins of capitalism in the "this-worldly asceticism" of Puritan ethics but
suggests that capitalism remains essentially religious in its psychological
structure. According to The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
Calvinist belief in predestination encouraged what became an irresistible
need to determine whether one was among the chosen. Such predestination made sacraments unnecessary and led to devaluation of the sacred. In
its place economic success in this world came to be accepted as the
demonstration of God's favor. This created the psychological and sociological conditions for importing ascetic values from the monastery into
worldly vocations, as one labored to prove oneself saved by reinvesting any
surplus rather than consuming it. Gradually this original goal became
attenuated, yet inner-worldly asceticism did not disappear as God became
more distant and heaven less relevant. In our modern world the original
motivation has evaporated, but our preoccupation with capital and profit
has not disappeared with it; on the contrary, it has become our main
obsession. Since we no longer have any other goal, there being no other
final salvation to believe in, we allow the means to be, in effect, our end.
2 This implies that an alternative to the market religion would not require eliminating the market
(and the failure of twentieth-century socialism suggests that it should not be eliminated) but restoring
market forces to their proper delimited place within community social relations.
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280 Journal of the American Academy of Religion
The crux of Weber's essay reflects on how the original intention
behind an activity may eventually be transformed into something quite
different: "The Puritan wanted to work in a vocation; we must do so. For
when asceticism was carried out of monastic cells into vocational life and
began to dominate inner-worldly morality, it helped to build the tremendous cosmos of the modern economic order. This order is now bound to
the technical and economic presuppositions of mechanical, machinelike
production, which today determines with irresistible force the life-style of
all individuals born into this mechanism, not only those directly engaged
in economic enterprise, and perhaps will determine it until the last ton of
fossil fuel is burned. In Baxter's view the care for external goods should
only lie on the shoulders of the saint 'like a light cloak, which can be
thrown aside at any moment.' But fate decreed that the cloak should
become an iron cage" (in Scaff:88).
We are a long way from Adam Smith's invisible hand. Weber's
metaphor is less sanguine: the original Calvinist vocational ethos now
"prowls about in our lives like the ghost of dead religious beliefs," conquered by a rationalized civilization of large-scale production and ravenous consumption that today rests on merely mechanical foundations (in
Scaff:89).3
Weber's sociology of religion distinguishes more ritualistic and legalistic religions, which adapt themselves to the world, from salvation religions more hostile to it. Salvation religions are often revolutionary due to
the prophecy and charisma that motivate them and missionary because
they seek to inject a new message or promise into everyday life. Their
efforts to ensure the perpetuation of grace in the world ultimately require
a reordering of the economic system. Weber noticed that adherents of this
type of religion usually "do not enjoy inner repose because they are in the
grip of inner tensions."
This last point, which not only describes the Puritans discussed in The
Protestant Ethic but also reminds us of our own situation, suggests that
market capitalism began as, and may still be understood as, a form of salvation religion: dissatisfied with the world as it is and compelled to inject a
new promise into it, motivated (and justifying itself) by faith in the grace
of profit and concerned to perpetuate that grace, with a missionary zeal to
expand and reorder (rationalize) the economic system. Weber's arguments
imply that although we think of the modern world as secularized, its values (e.g., economic rationalization) are not only derived from religious
ones (salvation from injecting a revolutionary new promise into daily life),
they are largely the same values, although transformed by the loss of refer3I am not in a position to evaluate the scholarly debate that Weber's thesis has provoked; for an early
overview, see Eisenstadt (1968), especially 67-86.
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Loy: The Religion of the Market 281
ence to an other-wordly dimension. Or, more precisely, these values have
been distorted by the fact that our no longer other-worldly yet still futureoriented motivation has become unconscious.
Weber emphasized that the ascetic vocational ethos may have lost its
original meaning but that does not make it any the less powerful. Our
type of salvation still requires a future orientation. As Norman Brown put
it, "We no longer give our surplus to God; the process of producing an
ever-expanding surplus is in itself our God" (261). In contrast to the
cyclic time of pre-modern societies, with their seasonal rituals of atonement, our economic time is linear and future-directed, since it reaches for
an atonement that can no longer be achieved because it has disappeared
as a conscious motivation. As an unconscious motivation, however, it still
functions, for we continue to reach for an end that is perpetually postponed. So our collective reaction has become the need for growth: the
never-satisfied desire for an ever-higher "standard of living" (because
once we define ourselves as consumers we can never have too much) and
the gospel of sustained economic expansion (because corporations and
the GNP are never big enough).4
THE GREAT TRANSFORMATION
Engels tells the story of remarking to a Manchester manufacturer that he
had never seen so ill-built and filthy a city: "The man listened quietly to
the end, and said at the corner where we parted: 'And yet there is a great
deal of money made here; good morning, sir."' (Sale:58)
The critical stage in the development of market capitalism occurred
during the industrial revolution of the late eighteenth century, when new
technology created an unprecedented improvement in the tools of production. This led to the "liberation" of a critical mass of land, labor, and
capital, which most people experienced as an unprecedented catastrophe
because it destroyed the community fabric-a catastrophe that is recurring today throughout much of the "developing" world. Karl Polanyi's The
Great Transformation (1944) is an expression of outrage at these social
consequences as well as an insightful explanation of the basis of this disfiguration: the way that the world became converted into exchangeable
market commodities. In order for market forces to interact freely and pro-
ductively, the natural world had to become commodified into land, life
commodified into labor, and patrimony commodified into capital. Earlier
the commercialization of English agriculture had led to enclosure of the
SSince every God needs a Devil and every religion a theory of evil, members of the market religion
find evil in that which threatens one's ever-expanding surplus, especially taxes, inflation, and governmental regulation, e.g., trade barriers.
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282 Journal of the American Academy of Religion
commons, the pasturage land that traditionally belonged to the whole
community. The plague of industrial commodification proved to be much
worse. The earth (our mother as well as our home) became objectified
into a collection of resources to be exploited. Human life became objectified into labor, or work time, valued according to supply and demand. The
social patrimony, the cherished inheritance laboriously accumulated and
preserved for one's descendants, became objectified into fungible capital,
also something to be bought and sold, a source of unearned income for
the lucky few and a source of crushing debt for the rest.
The interaction among these commodifications led to an almost
miraculous accumulation of capital and an equally amazing collapse of
traditional community life, as villagers were driven off their land by these
new economic forces. "To separate labor from other activities of life and
to subject it to the laws of the market was to annihilate all organic forms
of existence and to replace them by a different type of organization, an
atomistic and individualistic one," emphasizes Polanyi. Such a system
"could not exist for any length of time without annihilating the human
and natural substance of society." The laissez-faire principle, that government should not interfere with the operations of the economic system,
was applied quite selectively: although government was admonished not
to get in the way of industry, its laws and policies were needed to help
reduce labor to a commodity. What was called non-interference was actually interference to "destroy noncontractual relations between individuals
and prevent their spontaneous re-formation" (163).
Is it a coincidence that the same doublespeak continues today? While
so-called conservatives preach about liberating the free enterprise system
from the restraining hand of government, federal subsidies are sought to
support uneconomic industries (e.g., nuclear power) and underwrite
economic failures (the savings-and-loan scandal), while international
policies are now designed to make the world safe for our multinational
corporations (GATT, NAFTA, and the Gulf War). Until the last few centuries there has been little genuine distinction between church and state,
between sacred authority and secular power, and their cozy relationship
has recurred today. Far from maintaining an effective regulatory or even
neutral position, the U.S. government has become the most powerful proponent of the religion of market capitalism as the way to live, and indeed
it may have little choice insofar as it is now a pimp dependent upon skimming the cream off market profits.
A direct line runs from the commodification of land, life, and patrimony during the eighteenth century to the ozone holes and global warming of today. Yet those commodifications have also led to another kind of
environmental destruction that, in a very different way, is just as problem-
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Loy: The Religion of the Market 283
atic: the depletion of "moral capital," a horrible term that could only have
been devised by economists to describe another horrific social consequence of market forces. As Adam Smith emphasized in his Theory of
Moral Sentiments, the market is a dangerous system because it corrodes the
very shared community values it needs to restrain its excesses. "However
much driven by self-interest, the market still depends absolutely on a community that shares such values as honesty, freedom, initiative, thrift, and
other virtues whose authority will not long withstand the reduction to the
level of personal tastes that is explicit in the positivistic, individualistic phi-
losophy of value on which modern economic theory is based" (Daly and
Cobb:50). A basic contradiction of the market is that it requires character
traits such as trust in order to work efficiently, but its own workings tend to
erode such personal responsibility for others. This contradiction tends
toward a breakdown that is already quite advanced in many corporations.
Massive "downsizing" and a shift to part-time workers demonstrate
diminishing corporate concern for employees, while at the top astronomical salary increases (with lucrative stock options) and other unsavory
practices such as management buy-outs reveal that the executives
entrusted with managing corporations are becoming more adept at
exploiting or cannibalizing them for their own personal benefit. Between
1980 and 1993 Fortune 500 firms increased their assets 2.3 times but shed
4.4 million jobs, while C.E.O. compensation increased more than sixfold,
so that the average C.E.O. of a large corporation now receives a compensation package of more than $3.7 million a year (Korten:218).
In such ways the market shows that it does not accumulate "moral
capital"; it "depletes" it and, therefore, depends upon the community to
regenerate it, in much the same way it depends upon the biosphere to
regenerate natural capital. Unsurprisingly, the long-range consequences
have been much the same: even as we have reached the point where the
ability of the biosphere to recover has been damaged, our collective
moral capital has become so exhausted that our communities (or rather,
our collections of now-atomized individuals each looking out for "num-
ber one") are less able to regenerate it-with disturbing social consequences apparent all around us. This point bears repetition because the
economic support system that was created to correct the failures of capitalism is now blamed for the failures of capitalism. But the social rot
affecting so many "developed" societies is not something that can be corrected by a more efficient application of market values (such as getting
unmarried mothers off welfare so their work will contribute to society);
rather, it is a direct consequence of those market values. The commodification that is still destroying the biosphere, the value of human life, and
the inheritance we should leave for future generations, also continues to
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284 Journal of the American Academy of Religion
destroy the local communities that maintain the moral fiber of their
members. The degradation of the earth and the degradation of our own
societies must both be seen as results of the same market process of
commodification-which continues to rationalize its operation as nat-
ural and inevitable.
The cumulative depletion of "moral capital" forcefully reminds us
that a community is greater than the sum of its parts, that the well-being
of the whole is necessary for the well-being of each member. This, however, is something that contemporary economic theory cannot factor into
its equations. Why not? The answer brings us back to the origins of economic thought in the eighteenth century, origins that were embedded in
the individualistic philosophy of utilitarianism prevalent at that time.
Philosophy has developed considerably since then, yet economic theory
remains in thrall to utilitarian values, all the more for being ignorant of
its debt.5 According to utilitarianism, society is composed of discrete individuals seeking their own personal ends. Human values are reduced to a
calculus that maximizes pleasures (with no qualitative distinctions
between them) and minimizes discomfort. Rationality becomes defined
as the intelligent pursuit of one's private gain. In Adam Smith's understanding of this, "individuals are viewed as capable of relating themselves
to others in diverse ways, basically either in benevolence or in self-love,
but they are not constituted by these relationships or by any others. They
exist in fundamental separation from one another, and from this position
of separateness they relate. Their relations are external to their own iden-
tities" (Daly and Cobb:160).
Inasmuch as the discipline of economics seems to have attained priority among the social sciences (there is no Nobel Prize for sociology or
political science, much less for philosophy or religion), this view of our
humanity has come to prevail at the same time that its presuppositions
have been thoroughly discredited by contemporary philosophy, psychology, and sociology-not to mention religion, which has always offered a
very different understanding of what it means to be a human being.
Nonetheless, as market values lead to a decline in the quality of our social
relationships, " [s]ociety becomes more like the aggregate of individuals
that economic theory pictures it as being. The 'positive' model inevitably
begins to function as a norm to which reality is made to conform by the
very policies derived from the model" (Daly and Cobb:162). We have
learned to play the roles that fit both the jobs we now have to do and the
commercial images that constantly assail us.
5"Economics sprang at least half-grown from the head of Adam Smith, who may very properly be
regarded as the founder of economics as a unified abstract realm of discourse, and it still, almost
without knowing it, breathes a good deal of the air of the eighteenth-century rationalism and Deism"
(Boulding:187).
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Loy: The Religion of the Market 285
Given the influence today of Neo-Malthusian thinking about population, it is important to notice that Malthus stands within this tradition.
His Essay on the Principle of Population (1798) argued for an iron law of
wages: a subsistence wage is the just wage, because higher wages can lead
only to rapid population growth until that growth is checked by poverty.
It follows that poverty is not a product of human institutions but the
natural condition of life for most people. The influence of this way of
thinking has been in inverse proportion to the (lack of) empirical evidence for it, for world demographic trends have provided little. The rapid
population increase that occurred in nineteenth century England, which
occurred after many people had been driven off their land and into factory work, supports the contrary conclusion, that people are not poor
because they have large families but require large families because they
are poor (there was a great demand for child labor). Morally, Malthusianism tends to gloss over the issue of who is actually consuming the earth's
resources. Theoretically, its major propositions-that population grows
geometrically while food increases arithmetically-arbitrarily isolate two
causal variables from the complexity of historical factors, while assuming
as constant perhaps the most important variables of all: the "naturalness"
of an unfettered market and the type of person who corresponds to itthe competitive, self-seeking "rational" individual that neoclassical economics still presupposes.6
Like all modern Western philosophy, the utilitarianism that Smith
and Malthus took for granted was itself indebted to Rene Descartes. His
metaphysical dualism distinguished the purposes of human beings from
all other things that exist, with the effect of devaluing them into means
for the ends of humans. Despite the preoccupation of twentieth-century
philosophy with critiquing Cartesian subject-object dualism, contemporary economic theory still presupposes such a subjectivist theory of value,
which can perceive value only in fulfilling human desires.
Our humanity is reduced to a source of labor and a collection of insatiable desires; our communities disintegrate into aggregates of individuals competing to attain private ends; the earth and all its creatures are
commodified into a pool of resources to be exploited to satisfy those
desires. Does this radical dualism leave any place for the sacred? for wonder and awe before the mysteries of creation? Whether or not we believe
in God, we may suspect that something is missing. Here we are reminded
of the crucial role that religions can serve: to raise fundamental questions
about this diminished understanding of what the world is and what our
life can be.
6 For an incisive critique of Malthusianism, see Rao.
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286 Journal of the American Academy of Religion
THE ENDLESS HUNGER ... ARE WE HAPPY YET?
It is not the proletariat today whose transformation of consciousness
would liberate the world, but the consumer. (Miller: 19)
From a religious perspective the problem with market capitalism and
its values is twofold: greed and delusion. On the one hand, the unrestrained market emphasizes and indeed requires greed in at least two
ways. Desire for profit is necessary to fuel the engine of the economic sys-
tem, and an insatiable desire to consume ever more must be generated to
create markets for what can be produced. Within economic theory, and
increasingly within the market it promotes, the moral dimension of greed
is inevitably lost; today it seems left to religion to preserve what is problematic about a human trait that is unsavory at best and unambiguously
evil at its worst. Religious understandings of the world have tended to
perceive greed as natural to some extent; yet rather than liberate it, they
have seen a need to control it. The spiritual problem with greed-both
the greed for profit and the greed to consume-is due not only to the
consequent maldistribution of worldly goods (although a more equitable
distribution is, of course, essential), or to its effect on the biosphere, but
even more fundamentally because greed is based on a delusion: the delusion that happiness is to be found this way. Trying to find fulfillment
through profit, or by making consumption the meaning of one's life,
amounts to idolatry, i.e., a demonic perversion of true religion; and any
religious institution that makes its peace with the priority of such market
values does not deserve the name of genuine religion.
In other words, greed is part of a defective value-system (the way to
live in this world) based on an erroneous belief-system (what the world
is). The extreme subjectivism of Cartesianism and the atomistic individualism of utilitarianism, which "naturalize" such greed, must be challenged and refuted-not just intellectually but especially in the way we
live our lives. The great sensitivity to social justice in the Semitic religions
(for whom sin is a moral failure of will) needs to be supplemented by the
emphasis that the Asian enlightenment traditions place upon seeingthrough and dispelling delusion (ignorance as a failure to understand).
Moreover, I suspect that the former without the latter is doomed to be
ineffective in our cynical age. We are unlikely ever to solve the problem of
distributive social justice without also overcoming the value-delusion of
happiness through individualistic accumulation and consumption, if
only because of the ability of those who control the world's resources to
manipulate things to their own perceived advantage; and, as the twentieth
century has shown, violent revolutions to overthrow such elites merely
replace them with others.
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Loy: The Religion of the Market 287
According to the French historian Fernand Braudel, the industrial
revolution was "in the end a revolution in demand"-or, more precisely,
"a transformation of desires" (183). Since we have come to look upon
our own insatiable desires as "natural," it is necessary to remember how
much our present mode-of-desiring is also one particular, historically-
conditioned system of values-a set of habits as manufactured as the
goods supplied to satisfy it. According to the trade journal Advertising
Age, which should know, in 1994 the U.S. spent $147 billion for advertising-far more than on all higher education. This translated into a barrage of 21,000 television commercials, a million magazine advertising
pages, 14 billion mail-order catalogues, 38 billion junk-mail ads, and
another billion signs, posters, and billboards. That does not include various related industries affecting consumer taste and spending, such as
promotion, public relations, marketing, design, and, most of all, fashion
(not only clothes), which amounted to another $100 billion a year
(Durning:122). Put together, this constitutes probably the greatest effort
in mental manipulation that humanity has ever experienced-all of it to
no other end than defining and creating consumerist needs. No wonder
a child in the developed countries has an environmental impact as much
as thirty times that of a child in the third world.
If the market is simply the most efficient way to meet our economic
needs, why are such enormous industries necessary? Economic theory, like
the market itself, makes no distinction between genuine needs and the
most dubious manufactured desires. Both are treated as normative. It
makes no difference why one wants something. The consequences of this
approach, however, continue to make a great difference. The pattern of
consumption that now seems natural to us provides a sobering context to
the rapid deterioration of ecological systems over the last half-century:
according to the Worldwatch Institute, more goods and services have been
consumed by the people living between 1950 and 1990 (measured in con-
stant dollars) than by all the previous generations in human history
(Durning:38).
If this is not disturbing enough, add to it the social consequences of
our shift to consumption values, which, in the U.S. at least, has revolutionized the way we relate to each other. "With the breakdown of com-
munity at all levels, human beings have become more like what the
traditional model of Homo economicus described. Shopping has become
the great national pastime .... On the basis of massive borrowing and
massive sales of national assets, Americans have been squandering their
heritage and impoverishing their children" (Daly and Cobb:373).
So much for their patrimony. Our extraordinary wealth has not been
enough for us, so we have supplemented it by accumulating extraordi-
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288 Journal of the American Academy of Religion
nary amounts of debt. How ingenious we have been to devise an economic system that allows us to steal from the future assets of our descen-
dants! Our commodifications have enabled us to achieve something
usually believed impossible, time-travel: we now have ways to colonize
and exploit even the future.
The final irony in this near-complete commodification of the world
comes as little surprise to anyone familiar with what has become addictive
behavior for 59 million people in the U.S (Dominguez and Robin:171).
Comparisons that have been made over time and between societies show
that there is little difference in self-reported happiness. The fact that we in
the developed world are now consuming so much more does not seem to
be having much effect on our happiness (Durning:38-40).
This comes as no surprise to those with a more religious orientation
to the world. The best critique of this greed for consumption continues to
be provided by traditional religious teachings, which not only serve to
ground us but show us how our lives can be transformed. In Buddhism,
to cite the example of my own religion, the insatiable desires of the egoself are the source of the frustration and lack of peace that we experience
in our daily lives. Overconsumption, which distracts and intoxicates us, is
one of the main symptoms of this problem. Unfortunately for us, such
compulsiveness does not allay our anxiety but feeds it.
In answer, Buddhism teaches renunciation and generosity. As Shunryu Suzuki-roshi put it, renunciation does not mean giving up the things
of this world but accepting that they go away. To see and accept that
everything goes away-including ourselves-is necessary in order to live
serenely. Only someone whose identity is not tied to acquisition and consumption can truly renounce the world. The sign of renunciation is gen-
erosity, which is deeply honored in Buddhism as in all the major
religions.' True generosity demonstrates not only moral development but
insight: "As the need to define and present ourselves diminishes, so do
possessiveness and acquisitiveness. Eventually we may come to see that
the experience of possessiveness itself rests on delusion. Something is
mine only if it is not yours. Yet if we can see that there is no me apart from
you, as well as no us apart from the phenomena of the world, the idea of
ownership begins to lose its meaning. Fundamentally there can be no
acquisitiveness, for nothing is lacking" (Jeffrey:12). Consumerism not
only overlooks the superior joy of giving to others, it forecloses the onto-
logical realization of nonduality between myself and others. Such a realization leads to the transformative insight that there is no need to be
acquisitive if nothing is lacking.
7Generosity (Sanskrit, dana) is considered the first and most important of the Mahayana
pa ramitas ("transcendental virtues") because it implies all the others.
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Loy: The Religion of the Market 289
Other religions find other ways to express the importance of generosity, but I believe that their different paths work toward a similar realiza-
tion of our interconnectedness. If we contrast this approach with market
indoctrination about the importance of acquisition and consumptionan indoctrination that is necessary for the market to thrive-the battle
lines become clear. All genuine religions are natural allies against what
amounts to an idolatry that undermines their most important teachings.
In conclusion, the market is not just an economic system but a religion-yet not a very good one, for it can thrive only by promising a secu-
lar salvation that it never quite supplies. Its academic discipline, the
"social science" of economics, is better understood as a theology pretending to be a science. This suggests that any solution to the problems thus
created must also have a religious dimension. This is a matter not of turning from secular to sacred values but of the need to discover how our sec-
ular obsessions have become symptomatic of a spiritual need that they
cannot meet. As we have consciously or unconsciously turned away from
a religious understanding of the world, we have come to pursue thisworldly goals with a religious zeal all the greater because they can never
be fulfilled." The solution to the environmental catastrophe that has
already begun and to the social deterioration we are already suffering
from will occur when we redirect this repressed spiritual urge back into
its true path. For the time being, that path includes struggling against the
false religion of our age.
REFERENCES
Boulding, Kenneth E. Beyond Economics. Ann Arbor: University of
1968 Michigan Press.
Braudel, Fernand The Wheels of Commerce. Trans. by Sian
1982 Reynolds. New York: Harper & Row.
Brown, Norman O. Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytic Mean1961 ing of History. New York: Vintage.
Daly, Herman E., and For the Common Good. 2d ed. Boston: Beacon
John B. Cobb, Jr. Press.
1994
Dobell, A. Rodney "Environmental Degradation and the Reli1995 gion of the Market." In Population, Consumption, and the Environment, 229-250. Ed. by
Harold Coward. Albany: State University of
New York Press.
8 This is discussed further in Loy.
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290 Journal of the American Academy of Religion
Dominguez, Joe, and Your Money Or Your Life. Harmondsworth:
Vicki Robin Penguin.
1993
Durning, Alan How Much Is Enough? New York: Norton.
1992
Eisenstadt, S.N., ed. The Protestant Ethic and Modernization: A
1968 Comparative View. New York: Basic Books.
Jeffrey, Meg "Consumerism in the Monastery." Turning
1995 Wheel Summer 1995: 11-13.
Korten, David When Corporations Rule the World. West
1995 Hartford, CT: Kumarian Press.
Loy, David Lack and Transcendence: The Problem of Death
1996 and Life in Psychotherapy, Existentialism, and
Buddhism. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press.
Miller, Daniel "Consumption as the Vanguard of History."
1995 In Acknowledging Consumption: A Review of
New Studies, 1-57. London: Routledge.
Polanyi, Karl The Great Transformation. Boston: Beacon
1957 Press.
Rao, Mohan "An Imagined Reality: Malthusianism, Neo-
1994 Malthusianism and Population Myth." In
Economic and Political Weekly January 29,
1994: 40-52.
Sale, Kirkpatrick Rebels against the Future: The Luddites and
1995 Their War on the Industrial Revolution. Read-
ing, MA: Addison-Wellesley.
Scaff, Lawrence Fleeing the Iron Cage: Culture, Politics, and
1989 Modernity in the Thought of Max Weber.
Berkeley: University of California Press.
Tawney, R.H. Religion and the Rise of Capitalism. New York:
1926 Harcourt, Brace.
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WORLDVIEWS
Worldviews 11 (2007) 135-154
www.brill.nl/wo
The Religion of the Market:
Reflections on a Decade of Discussion*
Richard Foltz
Department of Religion, Concordia University, Montreal, 1455 DeMaisonneuve Blvd. W,
Montreal, Quebec, Canada H3G 1M8
rcfoltz@gmail.com
Abstract
By the mid-1990s scholars of religion had begun to analyze the ideologies associated with global capitalism as a new, hegemonic world faith system, which some
referred to as the Religion of the Market. Many have taken polemical positions,
either arguing that it is a “false faith” which needs to be exposed, or that it is the
appropriate faith for our times. Still others refuse to see global capitalism as a
religion and reject the analytical paradigm altogether. This essay argues that
describing the ideologies of global capitalism as the dominant faith system in the
world today is indeed appropriate, and even necessary if one is fully to understand
the role of religious belief and behavior in contemporary society. Moreover, since
discussions of global capitalism as a faith system currently lack a coherent or
widely recognized framework, adopting and refining the Religion of the Market
paradigm will facilitate and improve future scholarly analysis of the faith dimensions of global economics.
Keywords
global capitalism, marketplace religion, economics, consumerism, David Loy
The Jewish and Christian bibles foretell one outcome of history. If economics
foresees another, it is in effect offering a competing religious vision. The prophecies of economics would then be a substitute for the traditional messages of
the Bible. Perhaps the biblical God has reconsidered. Perhaps, instead of Jesus,
he has now chosen economists to be a new bearer of his message, replacing
the word of the Old and New Testaments that has now become outdated for
*) Commemorating the tenth anniversary of the publication of David Loy’s “The Religion
of the Market,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 65/2 (1997): 275-290.
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2007
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R. Foltz / Worldviews 11 (2007) 135-154
the modern age—as Islam advertised the Koran as a later and more accurate
statement of God’s real plans for the world. Perhaps God has decided that the
underlying ordering forces of the world, the ultimate reality that will shape the
future outcome of history, will be truly economic. (Nelson 2001: 23)
Introduction
At what point can a system of beliefs and practices be referred to as a “religion”? Many definitions exist, and both wide and narrow approaches alike
have the potential to be misleading. Even when one clearly spells out what
one means by the term, others will disagree and perhaps refuse to continue
the discussion. Jay McDaniel, a professor of religion at Hendrix College in
Arkansas, suggested in a 1997 book chapter that the dominant faith system of our times is rarely recognized as such, although it contains the
complete ecclesiastical apparatus: a priesthood—the economists—whose
formulaic mumbo-jumbo nobody really understands but almost everyone
trusts to be effective, a missionary organization in the form of the advertising industry, preaching the gospel of salvation through consumption, and
a church—the shopping mall—where the rituals of the faith are carried
out. The ethics of this faith system are summed up by the belief that the
highest virtue is to shop (McDaniel 1997: 105).
Most people, on being presented with this paradigm, will respond with a
smile of both recognition and amused dismissal; though charming, such an
analysis can hardly be more than a metaphor, since common wisdom knows
intuitively what is “really” a religion and what is not. While it would seem
that in recent years more and more individuals—scholars and laypersons
alike—are coming to perceive the religious dimensions of globalizing consumerist ideologies associated with so-called “free-market” capitalism, more
common is the instinctive reaction that this is not religion but something
else. In conceptual terms, the Religion of the Market is still a hard sell.
This may be partly due to the fact that religion scholars themselves have
not yet developed a coherent framework for analyzing the faith-based
aspects of global economics and consumer capitalism. Indeed, to date there
has been no scholarly consensus on what to call this faith system, or
whether it even exists. This essay takes the position that approaching economics and consumerism from a religious studies perspective is both valid
and potentially helpful. To reach that potential, however, scholars of religion will have to do more to clarify, articulate, and disseminate an appro-
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priate framework of analysis. A good starting point would be to agree on a
name for this aggressively-proselytizing faith system which has rapidly
become global in scope. The term “Religion of the Market” has the advantage of already being familiar to some, as well as succinctly capturing the
nature of the subject in question.
An Evident Reality
It may be wondered why so many are still reluctant to see the new global
ideology as a faith system, when even its most enthusiastic advocates often
describe it in religious terms. The Wall Street Journal frequently employs
religious language when discussing the market, as in an article that implied
that the “globalization gospel” was on the verge of winning over the Vatican (McGurn 2000). American journalist and cultural historian Thomas
Frank, in a 2000 book entitled One Market under God, mentions an advertisement in which IBM appropriates Yahweh’s self-identification from the
Hebrew Bible: “I Am.” Frank then goes on to comment that:
If there was something breathtaking about the presumption of this particular
bit of corporate autodeification, this conflation of God, IBM, and the People,
there was something remarkably normal about it as well. Americans had
already made best-sellers of books like God Wants You to be Rich and Jesus,
CEO. The paintings of Thomas Kincade, the [1990s’] greatest master of
kitsch . . . freely mixed heavy-handed religious symbolism with the accoutrements of great wealth, plunking Bible references down alongside glowing
mansions and colorful gazebos. “The Market’s Will Be Done” was the title
Tom Peters, guru of gurus, chose for a chapter of his best-selling 1992 management book, while techno-ecstatic Kevin Kelly, whose 1994 book, Out of
Control, was a sustained effort to confuse divinity with technology, referred
quite confidently to a list of New Economy pointers he had come up with as
“The Nine Laws of God.” (Frank 2001: 3-4)
Frank gives a special measure of attention to the work of New York Times
columnist Thomas Friedman, a breathless advocate of economic globalization, who concludes his 1999 book The Lexus and the Olive Tree by musing
over how an ideal world created by “a visionary geo-architect” (i.e., God)
would no doubt closely resemble the American system we have today
(Friedman: 298). Frank suggests that Friedman, in making such a bold
assertion, “was virtually asking us to imagine that God was somehow
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behind the reengineering programs at AT&T or GE, that God stood in
solidarity with strikebreakers everywhere, that it was God who told American managers to outsource the job . . .” (Frank 2001: 67).1
David Loy Spells It Out
Jay McDaniel was not the first scholar of religion to describe the structure
of consumer society in religious terms, though he did so with greater clarity than most. Among those who preceded him one may cite Rodney
Dobell (1995) and Michel Beaudin (1995), among others. But perhaps
the strongest articulation of this argument was provided by Buddhist philosopher David Loy in his 1997 essay entitled simply, “The Religion of the
Market.”2
Loy begins his essay by offering a functionalist definition of religion, as
that which “grounds us by teaching us what the world is, and what our role
in the world is” (Loy 1997: 275). He then goes on to point out that “traditional religions are fulfilling this role less and less, because that function
is being supplanted—or overwhelmed—by other belief-systems and valuesystems.” Loy suggests that the first function is performed today mainly by
science, and the second by consumerism. The latter, he argues, is guided by
an economic theory that is more theological than scientific, and as such,
Loy claims that the Market should properly be understood as a religion,
indeed, as “the first truly world religion, binding all corners of the globe
more and more tightly into a worldview and set of values whose religious
role we overlook only because we insist upon seeing them as ‘secular.’”
Signaling the aggressive challenge presented to traditional religions by
this new global faith system, Loy wonders whether the former will even
survive “in any recognizable form.” This, he says, is because the world’s
traditional religions are so overly preoccupied with “outmoded perspectives” (he cites pro-natalism), or so “irrelevant” or “trivialized,” or simply
Later, in a New York Times op-ed piece the day after George W. Bush’s second election
victory in November 2004, Frank listed among the Democrats’ failings that they “declare
themselves converts to the Republican religion of the market” (Thomas Frank, “Why They
Won,” New York Times (November 5, 2004).
2)
According to Harold Coward, the term appears to have been coined by economist Rodney Dobell. Coward was the organizer of the colloquia that resulted in both Dobell’s and
Loy’s papers (Harold Coward, personal discussion, May 28, 2006).
1)
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“in bed with the economic and political powers that be,” that they are
unable to respond effectively to the proselytizing campaigns being waged
by adepts of the Religion of the Market, which Loy claims has “already
become the most successful religion of all time, winning more converts
more quickly than any previous belief system or value-system in human
history” (Loy 1997: 276).
Loy’s analysis is hardly neutral. He sees the Religion of the Market as
“the false religion of our age” (Loy 1997: 289), and argues vigorously for
replacing it with “a deeper source of values and meaning than market capitalism can provide” (Loy 1997: 276), suggesting in passing that Buddhism
offers some viable alternative views. Among those scholars of religion who
have taken up Loy’s framework in their recent writings, most have been
similarly polemical. It is interesting to note that in an academic discipline
that has tended over the past few decades to favor a non-judgmental, phenomenological approach, scholars who adopt a neutral stance when discussing the Religion of the Market are a small minority.
The Market God
The Religion of the Market as an analytical framework received its broadest public exposure through a 1999 article published by Harvard Divinity
School professor Harvey Cox in The Atlantic Monthly, entitled “The Market as God” (Cox 1999). Cox notes that the vocabulary and symbolism of
contemporary economics seem quite familiar to one acquainted with the
study of religion. “The lexicon of The Wall Street Journal and the business
sections of Time and Newsweek,” he writes, “bear a striking resemblance to
Genesis, the Epistle to the Romans, and Saint Augustine’s City of God ”
(Cox 1999: 18). He likens “chronicles about the creation of wealth, the
seductive temptations of statism, captivity to faceless economic cycles, and
ultimately, salvation through the advent of free markets” to the “myths of
origin, legends of the fall, and doctrines of sin and redemption” known to
theologians. He refers to the market as a “postmodern deity—believed in
despite the evidence,” and likens apostles such as Alan Greenspan to Paul
of Tarsus, telling us that “true faith is the evidence of things unseen.”
Cox goes on to note the market religion’s salvific sacraments, its calendar of entrepreneurial saints, and its eschatology, in short, “an entire theology, which is comparable in scope if not in profundity to that of Thomas
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Aquinas or Karl Barth” (Cox 1999: 18, 20). Comparing it to Christianity,
he notes that both systems call upon believers to accept on faith what is
obscured from human eyes, promising that by exercising this faith then
true understanding will eventually come. In both systems, future promise
is held out as an explanation and compensation for present suffering.
While Cox acknowledges that historically speaking markets are nothing
new, the elevation of the market to divine status is. Previously “there were
other centers of value and meaning,” so the market “operated within a
plethora of other institutions that restrained it” (Cox 1999: 20). He follows Karl Polanyi in attributing the market’s rise in status to a “Great Transformation” that began only during the past two centuries or so (Polanyi
1957), an analysis also supported by Loy (1997: 278). Once a somewhat
“insecure” deity, like Zeus, the market has come to resemble the Yahweh of
the Hebrew Bible, “not just one superior deity contending with others but
the Supreme Deity, the only true God, whose reign must now be universally accepted and who allows for no rivals” (Cox 1999: 20).
Cox cites the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation and suggests that
the market religion has maintained the sacrament while reversing it: sacred
things (like land, water, air, and even the human body) are transformed
into profane ones so that they can be commodified and put up for sale.
Critics of this trend (such as those who oppose the commercialization of
genetic material) are labeled as followers of “old religions,” doomed to
obsolescence just like the pagans of medieval Europe. Musing that were
the True Cross to be discovered today, “it would eventually find its way to
Sotheby’s,” Cox notes that the Market “is not omnipotent—yet. But the
process is underway and gaining momentum” (Cox 1999: 22).
The market religion is, in Cox’s analysis, properly categorized as one of
the revealed religions. Prophecy is carried out by the financial media which
keep us informed of the market deity’s mood swings—whether it is “jubilant,” “apprehensive,” etc. “On the basis of this revelation,” then, “awed
adepts make critical decisions about whether to buy or sell” (Cox 1999:
22). Anyone who questions or fails to go along with these decisions,
whether individuals or governments, risks marginalization as a heretic and
is threatened with damnation. (And in most cases, one might add, bullied
into compliance and submission by the powers that be.)
Cox shares Loy’s skepticism that the traditional religions will rise to
meet the challenge posed by this new faith. “Most of them seem content
to become its acolytes or to be absorbed into its pantheon,” he writes,
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“much as the old Nordic deities, after putting up a game fight, eventually
settled for a diminished but secure status as Christian saints” (Cox 1999:
23). Like other analysts mentioned below, however, Cox does not see the
new market religion as necessarily either invincible or enduring.
Economic Theology
Loy and McDaniel emphatically see neo-classical economics as a false theology. (Cox, while more subtle, would seem to share their view.) Not so
University of Maryland economics professor Robert Nelson, who celebrates
the religious aspect of the discipline in his 2001 book Economics as Religion.
An advocate of what he calls “economic theology,” Nelson states from the
outset that despite his colleagues’ preference to think of themselves as scientists, they are really “more like theologians,” which in his view makes
their role in society all the more important. “Economic efficiency has been
the greatest source of social legitimacy in the United States for the past
century,” he writes approvingly, “and economists have been the priesthood
defending this core social value of our era” (Nelson 2001: xv).
Acknowledging the central role religious values often play in determining economic activity, Nelson does not hesitate to distinguish between
“good” and “bad” religions. “Achieving a more efficient economy may
depend on having a more ‘efficient’ religion,” he suggests, adding that “the
nations that grow most rapidly may be the nations with the ‘better’ religions . . .” He goes on to caution that “the defense of a market economy
cannot rest on any ordinary religion. It requires a religion with the particular characteristic that it advances the pursuit of self-interest in appropriate
domains but tightly restrains it in others.” Such a religion, he claims, will
“ensure maximal efficiency in the use of the material resources of society,
and thus rapid movement of American society along a route of economic
progress . . .” which Nelson sees as “the path to the attainment of a new
heaven on earth” wherein the Fall will be reversed. “Because the market of
this gospel has such an exalted function,” he concludes, it is the duty of
every follower of the faith to defend the market system . . .” (Nelson 2001:
8-9). Indeed, he does not hesitate to call the laws of economics “the new
word of God.”
Nelson does not question or problematize the basic value concepts
underlying neo-classical economics—for example, “growth,” “efficiency,”
“progress,” and the primacy of self-interest, and gives little attention to
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alternative sources of value or interpretation other than to dismiss them.
(Nor does he give much consideration to the market religion’s many victims, discussed by other writers below.) It would seem that for Nelson,
religion’s proper role is merely to serve as a handmaiden to neo-classical
economic orthodoxy, and “if current religious leaders are not fulfilling the
religious needs of the economy, it may be that economists themselves will
have to move in to fill the gap. Getting the religious aspects of an economy
in working order may be too important to leave to the existing leaders of
institutional churches,” he concludes (Nelson: 262). The danger, apparently, is that inadequate attention to religion on the part of economists will
allow for an unacceptable plurality of competing value systems. By actively
embracing their role as theologians, economists can hope more effectively
to tailor the public’s values to support the market.
Nor are the “outdated” traditional religions the only threat to the “efficient” religion advocated by Nelson: in fact, traditional culture of any kind
(and by implication, any kind of cultural diversity) is likely to prove an
obstacle. Citing the frustrations of economists who “advise” African governments by way of illustration, he argues that “In order for these countries to develop economically, they will need not only a better banking
system but also a ‘better’ value system . . .” (Nelson 2001: 262). “The processes of economic development may,” he continues, “require proselytizing
and religious conversion . . . as much as increased investment in physical
and human capital. Economists may have to be as much priests as engineers” (Nelson 2001: 263).
For all his positivist notions about the market and its centrality in human
society, Nelson ends his book on a tentative note. “If in the future Americans continue to believe in the transformative power of economic progress,
there will be a continuing demand for a priestly class to produce appropriate
religious interpretation and symbolism . . . However, if newer religions take
hold in American society . . . society may seek altogether different groups to
perform in its priestly roles, and the economics profession as we know it
could well disappear altogether . . .” (Nelson 2001: 333). His conclusion,
that “the institutions in society that today derive their legitimacy from the
various religions of economic progress are facing a crisis of authority,” may
not, in the end, be so far from those of Loy or Cox.
English and Advertising professor James B. Twitchell would appear to be
another advocate of the Religion of the Market. Twitchell, who has written
extensively on the “triumph” of materialism, sees consumerism as a force of
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empowerment by which humans can define themselves and their values
(Twitchell 1999, forthcoming). Twitchell’s enthusiastic assessment of comsumerism’s place in modern society is even less nuanced than Nelson’s.
On the more moderate side, theologian Max Stackhouse has been at the
forefront of scholars attempting to identify the religious elements associated with the process of globalization (Stackhouse 2000-). Stackhouse’s
pro-active approach sees in this process an opportunity to inject “positive”
influences while drawing upon religious ethics to reject others. Another
theologian exploring the linkage between religion, capitalism, and globalization is Peter Berger, who developed a summer course on Religion and
Economic Globalization at Boston University in 2006.
Schematizing the Faith
One scholar who, in contrast to the opposing polemics of Loy and Nelson,
has taken a purely descriptive approach to analyzing the market religion is
University of South Florida religious studies professor Dell deChant in his
2002 book The Sacred Santa: Religious Dimensions of Consumer Culture.
DeChant goes further than any other writer to date in schematizing this
new faith system, focusing on its structural aspects such as its myths
(Michael Jordan as heroic model), its rituals (shopping), and the “liturgical
calendar” of major North American shopping days. His analysis is based
mainly on a study of annual sales records in the United States, and the fact
that he does not refer to the Religion of the Market as such or cite those
religion scholars, such as Loy or McDaniel, who attempt to describe it
(though he does make liberal use of such social theorists as Jean Beaudrillard, Jacques Ellul, and Juliet Schor), seems so glaring as to have been
perhaps deliberate. Nevertheless, deChant’s description closely mirrors
theirs, minus the value judgments.
A major theme of deChant’s analysis is the contention that in departing
from the transcendentalism of mainstream Christianity, the contemporary
“cosmological” (i.e., worldly) religion of consumerism actually represents a
return to the kind of archaic religion which infuses every aspect of daily life
with ritual and sacred meaning. “As the ancients saw nature as the ultimate
sacred power and worshipped it in all of its various expressions,” he writes,
“so we today see the economy as the sacred power of our culture and worship
it in an even wider array of manifestations” (deChant 2002: xiv).
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Guided by the meta-myth of success and affluence “gained through a
proper relationship with the economy” (deChant 2002: 37, 41), the postmodern culture of consumption is, according to deChant, religious in its
very essence. Seen in this light, every act of acquisition is a ritual performance. The sacred experience is heightened during the collective ritual of
mass shopping throughout the “high holy days” such as the day after
Thanksgiving and the period leading up to Christmas. In the piously consumerist United States, as in primal societies, “religion is indistinguishable
from culture itself, indistinguishable from the normative way of life and
living, which it legitimates as an expression of the sacred order” (deChant
2002: 39). For those living inside the culture, the religious nature of these
beliefs and rituals may not be immediately apparent; “It is just the way
things are” (deChant 2002: 40).
DeChant concludes his book by tracing the historical transformation of
Saint Nicholas from a fourth-century Christian saint into a postmodern
god of consumerism, Santa Claus. He suggests that Jesus and Santa are
best understood not as representing secular versus religious expressions of
the Christmas holiday, but rather as symbols of two competing religious
systems.
Economics as Sleight-of-Hand
What exactly is the unseen reality that the Religion of the Market asks us
to believe in? This mystery aspect of the market religion is explored by
Mark C. Taylor in his 2004 book Confidence Games: Money and Markets in
a World without Redemption. Taylor introduces his discussion by recalling a
family dinner table conversation during the stock market crash of 1987
when his son asked the obvious question, “Where did the money go?” The
point, of course, is that it was technically never there to begin with: the
modern economy exists largely because we believe in it.
Taylor sees a major shift dating from Richard Nixon’s 1971 decision
to take the US dollar off the gold standard, a standard which had previously served to anchor the US economy to some form of material reality.
“It is no exaggeration, he writes, “to insist that going off the gold standard was the economic equivalent of the death of God.” However, Taylor
notes, “God did not simply disappear but was reborn as the market”
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(Taylor 2004: 6). Within a few years, the Religion of the Market had
become the new orthodoxy.
Taylor describes the information age as an increasingly virtual world
where “everything is a copy of a copy or a sign of a sign,” where in the
world of trade transportation networks have been superseded by electronic
ones. He illustrates his thesis with frequent references to the world of art,
where forgeries typically create a “crisis of confidence.” In the world of
finance, the shift from Keynes to Friedman which began under Ronald
Reagan and the corresponding attempt to remove state intervention from
the economy have resulted in a de-anchoring of economic activity from
reality, with the result that overall insecurity and instability have been
greatly exacerbated.
Taylor makes a similar point to deChant in characterizing the tension
between proponents and adversaries of market ideology as representing a
conflict of competing faith systems. Observing that “the spread of global
capitalism has been accompanied by the rise of global fundamentalism,”
he points out that religious fundamentalism in non-Western contexts most
often serves as a means to articulate resistance to the American-led imposition of market religion. By contrast, in the United States “religious fundamentalism tends to legitimize market fundamentalism and sanctify
American power” (Taylor 2004: 12-13, 306).
Without explicitly saying so, Taylor’s analysis seems to support Loy’s
contention that the Religion of the Market is a false faith. But unlike Loy,
he does not seem to find anything essentially wrong with this. Rather, he
suggests that if the world we now live in is becoming increasingly a virtual
one, then the kind of religion we need is one that mirrors the complexity
and ambiguity of our new reality. Like Robert Nelson, he seems willing to
advocate an entirely new religious vision tailored to the needs of our
changed circumstances:
Instead of providing certainty, clarity, and security, religion can engender
creative uncertainty, which leaves things productively fuzzy. If reality turns
out to be virtual, who can really be sure what is real and what is not? Far from
posing a threat to be avoided, uncertainty and insecurity are traces of the
openness of the future, which keeps desire in play. Life in all its complexity
remains a confidence game in which the abiding challenge is not to find
redemption but to learn to live without it. (Taylor 2004: 13)
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At the same time, Taylor’s idealized vision, like Nelson’s, could be said
to have overlooked the market religion’s sacrificial aspects of worsening
global poverty and environmental degradation, which are not virtual at all
but indeed are very real. For all his deep understanding of how and why
confidence games work, Taylor seems largely unconcerned by the fact that
such schemes benefit a very few at a very real cost to the many.
Not a Uniquely Western Phenomenon
The affinity between the market religion and art trafficking suggested by
Mark C. Taylor is echoed by art critics Jack Miles and Douglas McLennan,
who describe the Religion of the Market as being even more dangerous
than the perverted Islam of Afghanistan’s Taliban regime. “Sadly,” they
write, “the evidence was overwhelming, even before the bombings [of the
Bamiyan Buddha statues], that the most dangerous religion in the world,
at least for art, remains the ‘religion’ of the market. After the fall of the
Najibullah regime in 1992, the victorious mujahedeen (Muslim holy warriors) went first for the gold in the national museum and only later discovered that foreigners would also pay for pots and statuary” (Miles and
McLennan, n.d.). Miles’ and McLennan’s remarks highlight the fact that
the conflation of market ideology with other religious fundamentalisms is
not a uniquely Western phenomenon.
The case of Islam is more fully explored in a short 2005 volume by
French political scientist Patrick Haenni, entitled L’islam du marché: L’autre
revolution conservatrice. Focusing largely on Egypt, Turkey, Indonesia, and
on the youth culture of North African Muslims in France, Haenni argues
that the largely unnoticed emerging trend among young Islamic activists is
not towards militancy as much as towards marketing. He cites such examples as the newly thriving Islamic fashion industry (Dawahwear, Muslim
By Nature, Muslim Classic), “Islamic” rap music (Kery James, Abd Al
Malik, Sami Yousef ), American-style televangelists (Aa Gym, Amr Khaled), and religious talk-shows (Emad Adib, Mona Abdel-Ghani).
Haenni’s hypothesis is that the Islam which is emerging as an alternative
to militant extremism is not the liberal, humanist version many Westerners
are hoping for, but rather a globally-networked Islamic conservatism that
mirrors the American blend of piety and techno-friendly materialism. “In
place of the fatalistic and parochial universe of traditional Islam,” he writes,
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“the new religious entrepreneurs offer a religiosity that is market-friendly,
bourgeois, cosmopolitan, and pro-active, meant to ‘breathe the spirit of
capitalism into the umma’” (Haenni 2005: 59-60).
Haenni cites a “theology of prosperity” promoted by media stars such as
the Indonesian Abdullah Gymnastiar (popularly known as “Aa Gym”) who
claims “Islam teaches us to be rich . . . the Prophet Muhammad was rich, as
were his companions,” and the Egyptian Amr Khaled who declares that he
wants to be rich “so that people look at me and say, ‘you see, a rich religious
person,’ and come to love our Lord through my wealth” (Haenni 2005:
64). Just as in the North American context perhaps the most convincing
capitalist is a reformed hippie liberal, the Islam of the Market now boasts
activists who have abandoned intellectualism and asceticism for material
gain. In the words of a former member of Egypt’s Muslim Brothers, “Do
you think they’re going to listen to you because you’ve read this or that?
You have to have the signs of power, your car, cultivate your look, your
income . . .” (Haenni 2005: 67).
Haenni sees many similarities between pro-business religiosity in the
Muslim world and that in the United States. Both seek to replace state
intervention with pious philanthropy (“faith-based initiatives”), emphasize
free enterprise, individual success, and personal virtue, and tend to see
poverty as a moral failing. Indeed, suggests Haenni, “Converted to the
virtues of privatization and the market . . . the Islam of the market would
seem to be the Americans’ ideal partner, not only in their Middle East
policy, but also in the conflict of modernity which places it in opposition
to the European Enlightenment and statist secularism” (Haenni 2005:
108). Strong evidence, it would seem, of the Religion of the Market’s universalizing power and cross-cultural appeal.
An Absolutist World Faith
Indeed, Austrian theology professor Jozef Niewiadomski has characterized
the market as a new “supra-religion” which subsumes all others in the context of contemporary inter-religious encounter. In an article entitled,
“Encounter of Religions in the Context of World Civilization,” he writes:
The most important area for the query for a successful design of life in the
context of our “global village” is provided by the market and its characteristics.
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The soteriology of the supermarket defines the boundaries of economic, political, cultural, and religious—in a more narrow sense of the word—pluralism.
Yet it also suggests the illusion that every community and every individual can
reach their own self-defined level of happiness. However, it closes our eyes to
the violence of the logic of the market itself and to the fact, that this market
has long since taken over the function of a supra-religion. Within its own
framework, the market allows for a lot of variations; it is only when alternatives to the logic of the market itself want to assert their right of existence that
the market deems them unbearable and refuses them this right. The radical
nature of the confessional statement, “Extra ecclesiam nulla salus,” has therefore not vanished, it simply shifted its focus somewhere else, so that it now
runs: “Extra mercatum nulla salus.” (Niewiadomski 2002: 50)
Though Niewiadomski is apparently unaware of the other authors mentioned in this study, none of whom he cites, his observation that market
ideology constitutes the dominant global faith system today seems perfectly in keeping with a Religion of the Market analysis. Seemingly in
accord with the market religion’s opponents, he does not fail to take note
of its absolutist character and its fundamental injustice.
A Sacrificial Religion
The rather innocuous portrayal of consumer religion found in the studies
of Taylor, Nelson and deChant could strike some as incomplete. For
example, Max Meyers, reviewing deChant’s book in the Journal of the
American Academy of Religion, notes that “His analysis never asks where
the money used to purchase commodities and participate in this religion
comes from, what kind of working conditions some people have to endure
to earn just a little of it, or why some people have much, much more than
they need while others cannot afford even such necessities as nourishing
food or health care” (Meyers 2005: 1201). In fact, numerous critics have
expressed the view that the Religion of the Market is at best a shallow
faith system, and at worst an unjust one which causes great social and
ecological harm.
These damaging effects are the focus of a recent book by the FrenchCanadian writer Nelson Tardif, Au nom du marché: Regards sur une dimension
méconnue du liberalisme économique: sa violence sacrificielle (Tardif 2003).
Somewhat like deChant, Tardif sees in the Religion of the Market a return
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to ancient religiosity. However, developing an approach first articulated by
his teacher Michel Beaudin at the University of Montréal, Tardif focuses
specifically on this archaizing religion’s sacrificial aspect.
For Tardif, a social justice activist grounded in the liberation theology of
Gustavo Gutierrez and Leonardo Boff, it is precisely the sacrificial nature
of the market religion—requiring that massive numbers of impoverished
and disempowered humans be sacrificed at the altar of the market—that
makes it unacceptable. He notes that “in the biblical tradition, sacrifice is
rejected in God’s plan, given that it comes out of idolatry and that it threatens His plan for human life” (Tardif 2003: 21). Tardif thus criticizes the
market religion on the basis of its sacrificial violence.
“Whenever there is a process of absolutization or sacralization of certain
realities, we inevitably see a ‘relativization’ or ‘sacrifice’ of other realities,”
Tardif observes. “From this perspective, the flip side of the sacralization of
the market and of those values deemed admissible within that paradigm
will be the ‘inevitable’ sacrifices” (Tardif 2003: 64). The absolutized aspects
of this new reality are therefore given a sacred status, and “the Divine is
simply another term for the representation of the real that emerges from
the process of absolutization-sacralization” (Tardif 2003: 65). While
the new reality presents itself as being all-encompassing and inevitable,
in fact “there is nothing to it,” writes Tardif. “It is an illusion.” Nevertheless, “whoever opposes this way of representing reality . . . is perceived as an
enemy of the natural order since that order is seen as a divine product.
Even so, we fail to see that it is a human construction and, accordingly,
that what we have is a god fabricated in the image of this particular construction of reality” (Tardif 2003: 65).
Tardif ’s critique of the Religion of the Market is thus two-pronged: it is
a religion of idolatry (i.e., à la David Loy, a false religion), and it is a religion
of violence, in that it “sacrifices” hundreds of millions of innocent victims.
Christian activism, he says, must show solidarity with those being brutally
sacrificed to the market religion’s system of domination. Christians
who seek to legitimate the dogmas of the market have adopted an “antievangelical position,” he claims, and are bearing “false witness” whether
consciously or not (Tardif 2003: 180).
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Voices of Resistance
In a 1999 conference speech, South African president Thabo Mbeki
referred to the forcibly imposed development policies of the IMF, the
World Bank, and the WTO as a “new catechism . . . that will only produce enormous poverty.” Similarly, former Haitian president Jean-Bertrand
Aristide writes in his book Eyes of the Heart that “Among the poor, immeasurable human suffering, among the others, the powerful, the policy makers,
a poverty of spirit which has made a religion of the market and its invisible
hand. A crisis of imagination so profound that the only measure of value is
profit, the only measure of human progress is economic growth” (Aristide
2000).
South Africa-based religion scholar David Chidester places such sentiments into the context of those seeking alternatives to the dominant globalization narrative, alternatives which are often expressed in religious
terms:
Often, these interventions have been explicitly religious, whether seeking to
recover the indigenous integrity of a local religion or to produce a local, mixed,
or hybrid version of a global religion. In these religious initiatives, people are
not merely consumers of religious signs, symbols and images; they are also
acting as producers of knowledge. At the local level, therefore, religion can
represent a diverse array of resources and strategies for producing alternative
meanings for being human (Chidester 2000: v).3
Indeed some religious organizations have begun to take up the call to
arms against the Religion of the Market, which they properly see as a
rival faith system. An online publication by the World Council of
Churches, while admitting that “many NGOs and also churches are
tempted not to look for alternatives any more, but to accept the [market ideology] framework as such,” urges its readers not to “swim with
the mainstream” but to “renounce the new religion” and “confront the
ideology of the market.” The writers go on to insist that “Being insensitive to the consequences it has for the poor who are marginalised and
excluded in the process, the neo-liberal model must be profoundly
3)
More recently Chidester has conflated the religion of the market with money itself, suggesting that “As a system of symbols, money might be regarded as a religion, even as the
‘religion of the market” (Chidester 2005).
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challenged from the biblical perspective of justice and of economic,
social and cultural human rights . . .” (WCC, n.d.).
In a similar spirit, Australian pastor Kim Thoday writes in an online
essay that “The contemporary culturally friendly religion of the market
god is the same religious phenomenon that Jesus of Nazareth defined true
faith against. It was this hard-boiled religion that Jesus defied. The market
god and his high priests thought they’d won too as Jesus was finally executed” (Thoday, n.d.).
A more humorous but no less poignant resistance to the Religion of the
Market can be seen in the recent activities of New York-based performance
artist Bill Talen, who for the past several years has played the role of
Reverend Billy, charismatic pastor of the Church of Stop Shopping.4 Emulating the crowd-frenzying techniques of Christian evangelists and accompanied by the Stop Shopping Gospel Choir, “Reverend Billy” has preached
fiery anti-consumerist sermons in the mega-stores of New York’s Fifth
Avenue, “exorcised” cash registers at Starbucks, and led a cross-country
anti-shopping march from the day after Thanksgiving (“Black Friday”—
statistically the highest volume shopping day of the year) right up to
Christmas.
“Americans are instructed that our way of life is shopping,” Reverend
Billy notes. “That our democracy is shopping. Citizenship is shopping.”
Whereas, he points out, “We can be so much more than consumers . . .
Make time to spend with your loved ones that doesn’t involve shopping
or corporations or logos . . . It’s like getting off alcohol and noticing that
you’re not drunk anymore when you stop letting a corporation direct your
desires” (Benner 2005). To date there seems to be little evidence that Reverend Billy is winning converts, but like the campaigns of Vancouver-based
Adbusters, his media-friendly approach does appear to be injecting an anticonsumerist voice into the popular North American media.
Whither the New Faith?
The diverse sources cited above should be sufficient to quell any doubts
that the Religion of the Market can be understood as a faith system in a
4)
The group maintains the following website: .
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very real, and not merely metaphorical sense. As such, and given its phenomenal proselytizing success throughout the world today, the Religion of
the Market is surely worthy of broader attention from religion scholars
than it has been getting up to now. The choices and actions of its acolytes—who include many or most of the world’s political and economic
leaders—affect all of us. But for all its universalist appeal and apparent success in winning converts from all cultural backgrounds, is the Religion of
the Market the inevitable dominant faith system of our collective future?
The imperative of never-ending growth is one of the central dogmas
of today’s globalizing market ideology. Oddly, the logical impossibility of
this tenet is rarely questioned, as if the earth and all its resources were
physically expanding apace with human economic activity. As with the
mystery of the Christian trinity, no amount of scholarly explanation seems
to obviate the need for a leap of faith; indeed, even the most sophisticated
economic arguments when carefully scrutinized seem little more than
variations on US President George W. Bush’s stated aim to “make the pie
higher.”
The most visible spokesperson for the forces seeking complete global
conversion to the Religion of the Market, President Bush has on numerous
occasions made clear (whether wittingly or not) the faith dimension of this
world-wide evangelical enterprise. Perhaps the most striking instance was
in the course of his first televised address to the US public following the
tragedy of September 11, 2001. With millions of Americans waiting to
hear from their leader how they should best respond to the crisis, Bush
issued a clear directive in the strongest terms possible: Go out and shop! To
stay home from the malls would only provide the terrorists with the outcome they sought, namely, to undermine the American way of life (a way
of life Bush’s father, as President at the time of the Rio Earth Summit in
1992, stated unequivocally was “not up for negotiation”).
What careful listeners were able to discern was the undertone of panic
underlying Bush II’s urgent plea. As Harvey Cox had noted in his article
three years earlier, “The Market that stops expanding dies” (Cox 1999: 23).
In fact the global economy is precisely the kind of large-scale confidence
game described by Mark C. Taylor, a Ponzi scheme on a global scale. The
expansion of wealth is only an illusion: its appearance is generated by continuing to find people who will pay in, and once the requisite number of
contributors is not found, the entire system collapses since there is nothing
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really holding it up but faith. (This occurred on a national scale in Albania
during the 1990s, when an estimated eighty per cent of Albanians lost
their life savings to a pyramid scheme run by a few unsavory individuals.)
The American President’s advisors and speech writers, if not necessarily
Bush himself, implicitly understand that for the global economy to continue to function it must maintain the appearance of constant growth,
which can only happen by bringing more paying members into the church.
If this can only be accomplished by force, then so be it.
On the other hand, the same logic that recognizes the impossibility of
infinite expansion within a finite system will quickly conclude that the
promises of the market religion must ultimately remain unfulfilled, and
that the falling away of masses of faithful may not be far off. While the
nature of religion is such that many of its most basic claims cannot be
incontrovertibly proven to be true, one of the distinctive features of the
Religion of the Market would seem to be that so many of its claims are
demonstrably false. As more and more of the faithful become disillusioned
by its unfulfilled promises, one might predict that a growing wave of skepticism could bring about the market religion’s very rapid demise. One can
only speculate, however, as to what new, revived, or refashioned system of
beliefs, values and rituals will arise to fill the enormous vacuum that is sure
to be left in its wake.
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