Sacred laissez-faire

An economist makes a cogent argument for a free market in belief and religion

Religion is, of course, sacrosanct. Quite literally. Even among many academics, it is treated with exaggerated respect, its various claims given a respect that other such claims would not be accorded; and in countries like India, where the law essentially criminalises open discussion of religion, this deference is even more marked. Meanwhile, most rationalists tend to be so infuriated by religion that they spend ages pointing out what seems obvious to them: namely that religious beliefs are not possible. In the process, people’s religious beliefs and behaviour tend not to be analysed the way that, say, their spending or eating habits would be. 

Torkel Brekke, a Norwegian academic, is not prone to this tendency. On some level, as he explains early on in Faithonomics, this is not surprising. He is, after all, Norwegian, from one of the most irreligious parts of the world. Further, he was born into a Communist family, which allowed him to see how the rhythms of religion resound even in an environment that denies them. Also, he spent his youth in a Roman Catholic choir, so religion did not have a strangeness to him that otherwise it might have had. Finally, he thinks like an economist, which is frequently an advantage if you want to strip away pretension from any discussion.

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In Faithonomics, he makes a deceptively simple argument: we know how the free market works; we know how government intervention distorts market outcomes; if religious choices are like other choices, which they are, why should we not apply the same principles to studying religion?

The book that emerges as a consequence of this insight is, in parts, revelatory and, in other parts, deeply satisfying. And, if read with an open mind, Brekke’s analysis leads inexorably to one conclusion: for absolute freedom of religion. For, in other words, religious laissez-faire.  

The first part of the book sets up the argument, outlining how the market for religion can in fact be analysed as you would the market for any other product. It begins, as most Western analytical philosophy would, with Adam Smith and David Hume. Hume famously argued that priests should be paid a salary by the state, so as to depress their enthusiasm and decrease the fanaticism they can engender. Smith argued that as long as there were enough creeds —  if the conditions of perfect competition were met — they would be forced into moderation. You can disagree with either argument, but Brekke’s point here is different: that even Smith and Hume could use essentially “economistic” methods of analysis when it came to discussing religion. 

Later on in the first part, he implicitly sets this kind of analysis against the thinking that he associates with Jean-Jacques Rousseau and particularly Emile Durkheim (in a section titled “It’s All the Anthropologists’ Fault”). Rousseau — who is enjoying a bit of a renaissance at the moment, thanks to inveterate anti-modernists such as Pankaj Mishra — believed a civil religion was essential for well-ordered societies. Durkheim, Brekke argues, “planted” the idea that “all societies must have religion in some form”. Both these descriptions are something of an oversimplification, but they get the job done — as an economist would say, infuriating an anthropologist. Brekke devotes the book essentially to attempting to refute the views he attributes to Durkheim. 

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But first, he takes a detour through the East — and through the past. Through, in particular, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and medieval Christianity. Why? In order to answer what he fears would be “the main objection against the application of the economic perspective to religion”. And that is that such application “presupposes a modern and specifically Protestant idea of religion, which is foreign to other religions and to other periods of history”. Protestantism, this argument would claim, is based around the idea of picking your belief. In other societies and at other times, you couldn’t choose. 

Brekke’s arguments on the non-Western, non-modern applications of his idea are difficult to summarise, and easy to disagree with in bits. He points to Sufi strands in Islam as a market developing within an overall orthodoxy, for example. He suggests devotional strands in Hinduism helped break the stranglehold of caste (“A Hindu could keep his or her caste identity while at the same time shopping around among Hindu sadhus and Muslim saints for religious goods”). And he explains why we should see the Roman Catholic church as “the most successful business venture in world history”. 

But, as with any part of a book that’s put in mainly to answer possible objections, this is not the strongest bit. That comes after, in the last part, where Brekke warns against the sins of government intervention in the religious marketplace. Just as government can “crowd out” private investment, state religions can crimp private religious enterprise, for example. Monopolies can form, which hurt religious consumers. Rent-seeking can flourish, with priests seeking the favour of the state instead of providing to the religious needs of their followers. And so on and so forth. He uses these insights to explain other problems associated with religion: discrimination, for example, or the transformation of religion “into an object”, or the tendency for other religions to imitate Protestant Christianity. (Note: atheists aren’t spared the Brekke treatment. The last chapters examine how atheism, today, has learned to imitate religious rituals and assurances — in essence, to provide religious goods.

If Brekke has one argument to make, it is this: let belief truly be free, if you wish it to flourish. This is a particularly cogent argument in India, at a time when a society which has traditionally allowed for considerable “shopping around” is trying to close off its markets. “Love jihad”, for example, is considered an awful threat to national harmony. Religious conversion, ditto. (I recently almost missed a flight at Delhi’s Terminal 3 because I made the mistake of standing behind two Mormon missionaries trying to exit the country who were harshly and lengthily quizzed by the immigration officers.) Many supposed market liberals are big fans, today, of an ersatz “religious freedom” that does not allow for choice. Brekke demonstrates that this is not just morally wrong, but also inconsistent — and ultimately, like most forms of statism, self-defeating.

Author: Torkel Brekke  

Publisher: Hurst & Co, 2016

Pages: 298

Price: $29.95