The Marketplace of Christianity (review)

Was the Protestant Reformation "a successful penetration of a religious market dominated by a monopoly firm" (Roman Catholicism), resulting in "product differentiation" and a multitude of innovative consumer choices (Protestant denominations)? Did Christianity evolve "to satisfy the changing demands of consumers/worshippers" (viii)? Anticipating that many might wince at such a worldly, even profane exposition, the authors endeavor throughout most of the book (save for the problematic final chapter) to avoid value judgments about the faith via reasoned economics. This book builds upon the authors' earlier work, Sacred Trust (1996), which portrayed the medieval Roman Catholic Church as a powerful franchising corporation and ultimately abusive monopoly, commanding the religious market of Europe and exploiting its consumer base. The Marketplace of Christianity likewise summarizes familiar information through vividly provocative interpretation. Finding Enron-style dominance and corruption in the medieval Roman Church, which resulted in continuous marketplace innovation (Reformation) through increased corporate competition (denominations) offering virtually limitless product differentiation in response to continued consumer preferences, may shed light on the past, but definitely explains our world today.

While the authors venture to justify their controversial thesis that religious markets behave no differently than other markets, they do acknowledge their approach does not reduce the complex, personal, and mysterious nature of religion to mere market analysis. Nonetheless, theirs is a decidedly secular lens, as if demonstrable market behavior and economics could not also point to theological reality and objective morality. Their well-connected chapters examine the history of the economics of religion from Adam Smith to the present, the nature and behavior of religious markets according to rational laws of supply and demand, and how economics allows a new understanding of the timing and nature of the Reformation. (Even the Roman Catholic so-called Counter-Reformation is portrayed as a predictable response to Protestant "market entry.") Protestantism, they posit, offered Christian "consumers" a decidedly "cheaper" salvation "product" by faith alone through God's un-earnable grace and Christ's cross—in stark contrast to the more "expensive" Catholic works-based model entrenched in church tradition and dogma. Such economics ostensibly supports the Apostle Paul's theological model in the Book of Romans, except that Paul presupposes divine authority—thus his warnings against the abuse of "cheap grace." Nevertheless, drawing upon denominational variety, the authors assert how, contrariwise to the Catholic strategy to be all embracing and universal, Protestants ushered in a heterogeneous and diverse demand-driven market able to respond to local customs, values, and politics. Rather than viewing division in the church as endlessly problematic, even destructive, this economics model instead proclaims that such "product differentiation" is both predictable and a sign the market remains viable and healthy even today.

Particularly worthwhile and rewarding is how the authors amend Max Weber's long-embattled, often overly simplified premise that the spirit of capitalism, derived from the Protestant ethic, is antecedent to the emergence of capitalism. The authors give Weber new legitimacy by first defining how his approach was only a demand-side argument: Protestantism changed tastes in favor of work versus leisure and saving versus consumption. Having "no quarrel with the demand-side-preference approach to Weber" (p.190), the authors assert that it does not go far enough, and offer a creative supplement that both supply- and demand-side factors affected the timing and extent of Protestant entry; that is, tastes changed but so did constraints. The Reformation essentially reduced the cost of religious services vis-à-vis Catholic extravagance through simpler church structures and religious rituals, elimination of festivals, pilgrimages, shrines, indulgences, etc. This freed up scarce resources (labor and capital) for economically productive activity. This testable premise brilliantly addresses a chief criticism of Weber's hypothesis (that economic growth also occurred in countries that remained Catholic) by showing that Catholic countries engaged in cathedral building, which architecturally signaled the determined entrenchment of the Roman Church, but did not allow resources to be reallocated to more secular, market...