Wealth

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WEALTH

WEALTH . The relationship between religion and wealth can be analyzed in various ways. Economists of all persuasions have stressed the negative impact of religion on wealth. Adam Smith believed that clergymen, like lawyers and buffoons, are members of an unproductive, frivolous profession. Today, many argue that religion is one of the principal causes of economic underdevelopment. For example, in places like rural Burma, more than 30 percent of the regional income is spent on monks, monasteries, and religious festivals. In India, belief in karman (the sum of one's actions in successive states of existence), dharma (duties defined by the religious caste system), and saṃśara (a cyclical sense of time and rebirth) has been widely criticized as a major cause of poverty. In Muslim countries, some believe that the Islamic law (sharīʿah ), insofar as it sanctifies the religious secular customs of the past, has made modernization difficult and slow.

While the German sociologist Max Weber emphasized the negative role of the religions of the East, he also called attention to the positive impact that religions based on this-worldly asceticism have had on economic development. Weber contended that Calvinism provided the "spirit" necessary for the initial rise of capitalism in the West. His argument, which has been criticized by many as being misinformed and ethnocentric, has nevertheless inspired many attempts to find analogies of the Protestant ethnic in successful non-Western countries. Some scholars who have accepted Weber's general thesis have modified its logic. For example, R. H. Tawney, who was reluctant to talk about the causal impact of Calvinism, recognized its importance as a "tonic" in the building of capitalism. Other scholars have found fault with Weber's idea that the rise of capitalism is necessarily accompanied by a decline in religion and magic. While Weber credited sectarianism with a positive role in the rise of capitalism, Liston Pope and others have pointed out the political conservatism and economic passivity of such groups in the southern United States.

If, on the other hand, scholarship on the impact of wealth upon religion is examined, one finds this impact characterized both positively and negatively. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels believed that Protestantism was the "most fitting form of religion" for the capitalist and that in the religions of the masses one could hear the "sigh of the oppressed creature." Along similar lines, twentieth-century scholars have drawn attention to the influence of economic deprivation on the spread of messianic and millenarian movements. Both Marxists and Weberians believe that an increase in wealth discourages a truly religious spirit. Some scholars, however, argue that a comfortable income seems to encourage piety and have drawn attention to the "de-churching" of the working classes.

Finally, there are scholars who have addressed the differences between religion and economics rather than their interrelationship. Emile Durkheim, for example, contrasted the centrifugal impact of economic life with the centripital or integrating force of religion. Historians and sociologists of a materialistic bent have tended simply to ignore the problem of religion.

Characteristic Relations between Religion and Wealth

There is no simple way to characterize the relationship between religion and wealth in light of the determinate role played by the specific historical and social context. Religion's effect on the wealth or poverty of a country is usually achieved through, or in conjunction with, a complex of other social factors including secular institutions, modal personality systems, and values in general. Among the possible relations between religion and wealth, one that is generally overlooked is the ability, or inability, of religion to step out of the way of economic development. In such a relationship, religion plays the quiescent part of laissez faire, laissez passer that classical economics assigned to the state. Examples of this kind of passive collaboration with economic development can be seen in civilizations like Europe or Japan in which religious law does not absolutize or sanctify secular conditions of the past, it can also be seen when religious leaders do not interfere in the work of development; when religion abandons traditional, communitarian values; when it ignores the ethical problem of the unequal burdens imposed by development; or when its rituals and taboos passively give way before the requirements of industry. It could be argued against Weber that the most significant contributions made by Protestantism to the development of capitalism were its general indifference to the social problem of poverty, its hostility to the labor movement, and its assumption that individualism is as "natural" in economics as it is in religion.

Since the relation between religion and wealth changes from one type of society to another, one must also attend to the historical stage and specific socioreligious traditions involved. In primitive, archaic, or prehistoric societies, religion tends to be diffuse and undifferentiated from the "material" side of life. Ownership and wealth are woven into a rich tapestry of myth, ritual, and values. Taboos and religious sanctions ensuring the common good and survival of the group put limits on possessions, competition, and market functions. Primitive myths and rituals often express the importance of a proper "ecological" relationship between nature and possessions. In hunter-gatherer societies, the lord of the animals not only guarantees a good hunting season, but also protects the animals from extinction. As the technological base of society changes—from, for example, hunting to agriculture—new religious symbols begin to appear. While hunters revere the symbols of animals (often their blood and bones), seeds and plants become the foci of the magic and religion of the cultivator. Since religion and wealth were so closely related in prehistoric societies, it has been strongly debated whether the "laws" of modern economics and the alleged natural instincts of "economic man" can be directly applied to people in less developed societies.

With the advent of cities, settled agriculture, writing, and the historic religions (e.g., Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Christianity, and Islam), the relation between religion and wealth changes. To coordinate societies and economies that were increasingly complex, sacred kings appeared who had in their control not only political power, but also magical power over the well-being of crops, society, and the cosmos itself. Literate priestly classes created sacred texts and laws on the proper use and distribution of wealth. From Africa to the Far East, ancestral spirits were worshiped in order to bring wealth and prosperity to the family. Other deities appeared who had specific functions as gods of wealth and good fortune; by offering tokens of their wealth to these gods (or to priests), people hoped to receive still more wealth and good luck. This ritual exchange is expressed in the sacred Latin formula do ut des ("I give to you so that you will give to me") and in the Sanskrit phrase dadami se, dehi me, which has almost the identical meaning. In general, the traditional religions sanctioned the family ownership of wealth, not individually owned private property. In Israel and Greece, religious authority guaranteed the integrity of family property with inviolable sacred landmarks and herms (phallic representations of Hermes). In the ancient Near East, and later in the Far East and Catholic Europe, religious institutions themselves became powerful landlords, controlling trade and the use of large tracts of land.

Reflecting the structure of society, ethical relationships (whether in ancient India, China, or the first-century Roman empire) were both hierarchical and reciprocal. Louis Dumont has called this an ethic of "hierarchical complimentarity." Masters and slaves, husbands and wives, older and younger brothers, teachers and students, rulers and the ruled all had responsibilities for each other. This responsibility included the distribution of scarce resources. In Islam, for example, an alms tax (zakāt ) was used to support the poor (as well as to spread and defend the faith).

Hinduism

Throughout the ancient world, scattered proverbs and "wisdom literature" served as the only ethical guides to economics. Because traditional society was based on a zero-sum economy, greed was roundly condemned in scripture, myth, and folklore. As time passed, more specific guidance was offered. In India, Kauṭilya's Arthaśāstra (c. 300 bce to 300 ce) described an economy based on agriculture, guilds, family ownership, and a bureaucratically centralized state. Most interesting is the way that this text elevates the pursuit of wealth and power (artha ) above traditional duty (dharma ). Like the much earlier Code of Hammurabi in the Near East, the Arthaśāstra recognizes the taking of interest on loans. In contrast, the Laws of Manu, which took final shape during the period from about 200 bce to 200 ce, reverses the relationship between artha and dharma and idealizes a more or less static economy based on caste duties (varṇa dharma ). Generally insensitive to economic opportunity, the Laws of Manu limits moneylending to the vaiśya caste, allowing brahmans and the kṣatriya to lend money only for sacred purposes and then only "to a very sinful man at a small interest."

Buddhism

While Buddhism has often been regarded as an "otherworldly" religion, it was first propagated by merchants and depended for its existence upon the financial support of lay householders. Sacred texts specified for the laity "right livelihoods," which excluded the caravan trade, trafficking in slaves, weapons, poisons, or alcohol, and tanning, butchering, and other occupations, and directed how to make, reinvest, and share their wealth with others. Donations to the monastic community (saṃgha ) became the layperson's primary way of building up merit. In Mahayana Buddhism, the aspirant to Buddhahood, the bodhisattva, was sometimes described as a rich man who provided material and spiritual sustenance for others. As was the case in the Hindu tradition, it was not wealth, but the "attachment" to wealth that was believed to be an impediment to enlightenment.

Confucianism and Daoism

In China, Confucianism and Daoism tended to favor a primitive system of "private" property that has been described as "free enterprise." This description, however, must be qualified. The Confucians were generally opposed not only to state monopolies but also to competition for profit. The development of a free labor market was delayed by the strength of the family and by the belief that each person should follow the rites, morality, and etiquette (li) of his family. As in medieval Catholicism, the merchant was assigned a lowly role. However, Chinese society did have some of the rudiments of a laissez-faire system. The Confucian historian Sima Qian (145 bce to c. 90 bce) claimed that government intervention in the economy would be unnecessary if farmers, merchants, and other workers fulfilled their duties. The Daoists, emphasizing frugality and voluntary simplicity, were also opposed to the direct intervention by the state. The succinct expression, "the more laws are promulgated, the more thieves and bandits there will be," is found in the Dao de jing.

Judaism and Islam

In Judaism and Islam, wealth was regarded as part of creation and therefore as good. Since God was the "owner" of the world, absolute property rights were impossible. Wealth was a sign of divine approval and poverty was thought to be the result of sin. The identification of wealth and righteousness, sin and poverty was disputed by only a few religious leaders, such as the prophet Amos, who spoke of the poor as "the righteous." Because property was deemed inalienable, it could not be taken from a family even by the king. The biblical custom of the Year of Jubilee (Leviticus 25) indicates that religious tradition established limitations on the possession of land and slave. In both Judaism and Islam, religious laws concerning usury restricted markets in money.

Christianity

The New Testament radically inverted the traditional attitude toward wealth and power. In the Magnificat (Luke 1:52), it is stated that with the coming of the Son of man, God has "put down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of low degree." Some pericopes, such as James 5:1-4 and Revelation 18, express an openly hostile attitude toward the rich. Soon, however, leaders like Clement of Alexandria (c. 150–c. 213) began to soften the hard sayings of Jesus about riches to accommodate well-to-do converts. The problem with wealth now became one of "attitude," a position that was not unlike the Hindu and Buddhist problem of "attachment."

Although the early church fathers rarely addressed the issue of economic justice, they shared the antichrematistic outlook of the New Testament and often taught a Stoic indifference (apatheia ) to the things of this world. Another Stoic idea in their writings would have important consequences for radical sectarians much later on: the notion that the earth is a "common treasury" given by God to all people. Laboring under fervent eschatological expectations, the early Christians were more concerned about the injustice experienced by the oppressed than about the philosophical definition of the justice that was their due. Poverty, as the result of pride and greed, could be alleviated only by the voluntary charity of the church. Soon bishops became administrators of elaborate welfare systems. Only a few Christians, such as Ambrose (339–397), Victricius (c. 400), and Gregory I (c. 540–604) imply that poverty is a matter of justice. When the Parousia failed to occur as expected and as the Roman empire began to collapse, the church was forced to deal more positively with a world that had not come to its expected end. As part of a strategic compromise, the church borrowed deeply from such pagan doctrines as Stoic natural law, which provided a quasi-secular theory of juridical equity. Later, in the scholastic period, the distribution of wealth was treated from a point of view that combined scripture and the writings of the church fathers with the works of Aristotle and Islamic thinkers. One result of the synthesis was a hardening of the church's position against usury.

While the Protestant reformers were generally stricter in matters of economic morality than the casuists of the late scholastic period, they were followed by others who opened the door of compromise. Usury became legal in Protestant countries, which were fast becoming the most economically advanced in Europe. Protestants repudiated indiscriminate almsgiving and took repressive measures against the indigent. It is debatable whether concern for their own election or simple indifference to poverty contributed more to the economic success of the Protestant nations. Methodists, Baptists, Pietists, and other sectarians developed an economic rigorism that was similar to the medieval Catholic doctrine of "good works." Although by the nineteenth century English Methodists and Dissenters had risen to the level of the prosperous middle class, some supported political reforms that would primarily benefit the victims of economic development. Most Dissenters and Nonconformists assumed a conservative, antilabor stand or a position of indifference. This was especially true when they themselves became the majority or the "Establishment," as in the American South.

Contemporary Religious Attitudes toward Wealth

In modern times, traditional religious attitudes toward wealth and power have come under heavy criticism. This is largely due to structural changes in society's industrial base, especially the growth of competition and rapid social mobility, and to the spread of possessive individualism and hedonism in consumer-oriented economies. In communist societies, religious values have been attacked as feudalistic or bourgeois. But in capitalist countries too, modern social roles make the ethics of brotherhood and the spirit of "hierarchical complementarity" seem unrealistic. Traditional charity seems to put the poor at the mercy of the rich. Other traditional attitudes, such as the eschatological indifference of the New Testament and the otherworldly asceticism of the Middle Ages, seem incredible if not irresponsible. Considerations such as these have led to a secularization of economic values in both capitalist and socialist countries. R. H. Tawney claimed that the religious ethic has declined because the church has ceased to think, but it could be asked whether even a "thinking" religion has anything significant to say about contemporary economic problems. The Social Gospel movement of the early twentieth century had some impact on the clergy and on intellectuals but failed to make contact with the working class itself. The "liberation theology" coming out of Latin America and other developing areas has been sympathetically received by only a few in the industrialized West. Many have criticized it as Marxism disguised as Christian social concern. In Asian countries, several forms of "Buddhist socialism" have appeared. Muslims have developed various forms of "Islamic socialism" (which generally recognizes private property rights) and other kinds of "Islamic economics," often based on the welfare state and religio-nationalistic idealism. Such relatively recent movements in Islam have vehemently rejected Western hedonism and exploitation.

In North America, popular religious groups generally emphasize spiritual inwardness or salvation techniques, ignoring questions about economic and social justice in this world. The secularization of social and economic thought in the academic world is all but absolute. Theories that have the greatest impact in contemporary professional circles usually have the least explicit religious content. This lack of religious influence is especially poignant since religious ethics, both in the East and in the West, have sometimes been the last repositories of the common good.

Bibliography

Max Weber sets forth the major issues on wealth in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1930; New York, 1958), Ancient Judaism (1952; New York, 1967), The Religion of India (1958; New York, 1967), and The Religion of China (1951; New York, 1968), all originally published in German between 1904 and 1920. Important modifications of Weber's ideas are found in Ernst Troeltsch's The Social Teachings of the Christian Churches, 2 vols. (1931; Chicago, 1981) and R. H. Tawney's Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (1926; Harmondsworth, 1980). Robert N. Bellah's Tokugawa Religion (New York, 1957) is an application of the insights of Max Weber and Talcott Parsons to Japan. Global Economics and Religion, edited by James Finn (New Brunswick, N.J., 1983), contains insightful essays on religion and the economies of developing nations. Jacob Viner's The Role of Providence in the Social Order (Princeton, 1972) contains important information about Western religious thought on economics, as does his Religious Thought and Economic Society, edited by Jacques Melitz and Donald Winch (Durham, N.C., 1978). Joseph J. Spengler's Origins of Economic Thought and Justice (Carbondale, Ill., 1980) deals with the ancient economies of Mesopotamia, India, China, and Greece.