Economists as priesthood - Robert H. Nelson

The economics profession is the priesthood of a powerful secular religion - or, more accurately of a set of secular religions, as they have been developed in the theories of leading schools of economics of the modern age.

Beneath the surface of their formal economic theorizing, economists are engaged in an act of delivering religious messages. Correctly undesrtood, these messages are seen to be promises of the true path to salvation in this world - to a new heaven on earth.

Because this path follows along a route of economic progress, and because economists are the ones - or so it is believed by many people - with the technical understanding to show the way, it falls to the members of the economics profession (assisted by other social scientists) to assume the traditional role of the priesthood.

Robert H. Nelson, Economics as Religion, p.xx

Two traditions in Economics as Religion - Robert H. Nelson

The major theories of economics as they developed in the intellectual history of the West can best be understood in terms of another of the great contrasting traditions of theology: Roman Caholic and Protestant, each dealing with the most profound issues of existence.

One view involves a developmental, rational optimism about human abilities - morally, spiritually and socially - to improve the common condition, and offers an institutionalized set of mediating procedures to make that possible. We find this view in Aristotle, Aquinas and much of Anglicanism, but also in more secular forms in Claude Saint-Simon and John Maynard Keynes.

The second tradition is more pessimistic and radical, sometimes even apocalyptic, for it presumes that a dramatic intervention must occur within persons in the society as a whole and bring about an alleviation of pervasive evil. Otherwise, very little can be changed; improvements are modest and marginal, and real life often involves only a choice for the lessers of evils. Philosophical parallels can be found in Plato, Augustine, Luther, Calvin and the Puritans. This stream splits in the modern age, into several branches, and it can go toward Marxism, toward Social Darwinism, or toward modern theories of economic alienation.

Economics as Religion - Max L. Stackhouse

Many of the classical founders of the field of economics not only were guided by theological assumptions but also viewed the field in messianic terms. They presumed that the primary reason for human pain, suffering, and death is that we are in a state of scarcity.

We can only be delivered from this perilous existence by the overcoming of material deprivation - a prospect that can only come from rightly formulated, rightly believed, and rightly lived principles and policies.

Economics can deliver us, bring about a redeemed state of affairs on earth, and lead us to abundant living - the materially incarnate form of salvation.

Max L. Stackhouse, Princenton Theological Seminar
Foreword to Economics as Religion, Robert H. Nelson, Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001

Confucius

The superior man concerns himself with what is right; the lesser man with what pays.

Self-improvement - Mao-Tse-Tung

War is ten percent fighting, ten percent waiting, and eighty percent self-improvement.