The Wealth of Religions: The Political Economy of Believing and Belonging

Economists McCleary (Global Compassion) and Barro (Macroeconomics) set out to explore the “economic costs and benefits” of religion in this slapdash work. The authors lay out an ambitious plan to discuss religion in the world at large—particularly Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism—in order to explore how economic growth and government regulation of the “religion market” (a phrase they never define) affect religious participation. Unfortunately, the book delivers on none of its promises. While the authors provide sound economic analysis, they seem to have only the loosest grasp of many of the religions they discuss—they equate the establishment of Anglicanism (a state religion) with a requirement for Anglican belief, completely omit Judaism from their list of world religions, and describe Buddhism as a “salvific” religion. Often, their sources are oddly out of date; they cite Bernard Lewis’s 1993 Islam in History, a volume which has been largely discredited as Islamophobic and supplanted by the work of other scholars. This sloppy work is a disappointment and reintroduces some ideas that are far better left behind. (May)