Download or read book The Marketplace of Christianity written by Robert B. Ekelund, Jr. and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2008-09-26 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Economics can help us understand the evolution and development of religion, from the market penetration of the Reformation to an exploration of today's hot-button issues including evolution and gay marriage. This startlingly original (and sure to be controversial) account of the evolution of Christianity shows that the economics of religion has little to do with counting the money in the collection basket and much to do with understanding the background of today's religious and political divisions. Since religion is a set of organized beliefs, and a church is an organized body of worshippers, it's natural to use a science that seeks to explain the behavior of organizations—economics—to understand the development of organized religion. The Marketplace of Christianity applies the tools of economic theory to illuminate the emergence of Protestantism in the sixteenth century and to examine contemporary religion-influenced issues, including evolution and gay marriage. The Protestant Reformation, the authors argue, can be seen as a successful penetration of a religious market dominated by a monopoly firm—the Catholic Church. The Ninety-five Theses nailed to the church door in Wittenberg by Martin Luther raised the level of competition within Christianity to a breaking point. The Counter-Reformation, the Catholic reaction, continued the competitive process, which came to include "product differentiation" in the form of doctrinal and organizational innovation. Economic theory shows us how Christianity evolved to satisfy the changing demands of consumers—worshippers. The authors of The Marketplace of Christianity avoid value judgments about religion. They take preferences for religion as given and analyze its observable effects on society and the individual. They provide the reader with clear and nontechnical background information on economics and the economics of religion before focusing on the Reformation and its aftermath. Their analysis of contemporary hot-button issues—science vs. religion, liberal vs. conservative, clerical celibacy, women and gay clergy, gay marriage—offers a vivid illustration of the potential of economic analysis to contribute to our understanding of religion.
Download or read book Selling God written by Robert Laurence Moore and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1994 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a sweeping colourful history that spans over two centuries of American culture, Moore examines the role of religion in America as it appropriated (and was appropriated by) commercial culture. He reveals the centrality of religion, and the marketplace, in American popular culture.
Download or read book Religion and the Marketplace in the United States written by Jan Stievermann and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015-02-12 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alexis de Tocqueville once described the national character of Americans as one question insistently asked: "How much money will it bring in?" G.K. Chesterton, a century later, described America as a "nation with a soul of a church." At first glance, the two observations might appear to be diametrically opposed, but this volume shows the ways in which American religion and American business overlap and interact with one another, defining the US in terms of religion, and religion in terms of economics. Bringing together original contributions by leading experts and rising scholars from both America and Europe, the volume pushes this field of study forward by examining the ways religions and markets in relationship can provide powerful insights and open unseen aspects into both. In essays ranging from colonial American mercantilism to modern megachurches, from literary markets to popular festivals, the authors explore how religious behavior is shaped by commerce, and how commercial practices are informed by religion. By focusing on what historians often use off-handedly as a metaphor or analogy, the volume offers new insights into three varieties of relationships: religion and the marketplace, religion in the marketplace, and religion as the marketplace. Using these categories, the contributors test the assumptions scholars have come to hold, and offer deeper insights into religion and the marketplace in America.
Download or read book Faithonomics written by Torkel Brekke and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: About religion today, but takes "sweeping detours" through the history of religious marketplaces, from the dominance of Catholicism in medieval Europe (achieved through its system of franchising, or "MacDonaldization") to the truly free religious marketplaces that flourished in ancient South-East Asia, before today's Buddhist monopolies set in.
Download or read book Spiritual Marketplace written by Wade Clark Roof and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2001-07-02 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In large chain bookstores the "religion" section is gone and in its place is an expanding number of topics including angels, Sufism, journey, recovery, meditation, magic, inspiration, Judaica, astrology, gurus, Bible, prophesy, evangelicalism, Mary, Buddhism, Catholicism, and esoterica. As Wade Clark Roof notes, such changes over the last two decades reflect a shift away from religion as traditionally understood to more diverse and creative approaches. But what does this splintering of the religious perspective say about Americans? Have we become more interested in spiritual concerns or have we become lost among trends? Do we value personal spirituality over traditional religion and no longer see ourselves united in a larger community of faith? Roof first credited this religious diversity to the baby boomers in his bestselling A Generation of Seekers (1993). He returns to interview many of these people, now in mid-life, to reveal a generation with a unique set of spiritual values--a generation that has altered our historic interpretations of religious beliefs, practices, and symbols, and perhaps even our understanding of the sacred itself. The quest culture created by the baby boomers has generated a "marketplace" of new spiritual beliefs and practices and of revisited traditions. As Roof shows, some Americans are exploring faiths and spiritual disciplines for the first time; others are rediscovering their lost traditions; others are drawn to small groups and alternative communities; and still others create their own mix of values and metaphysical beliefs. Spiritual Marketplace charts the emergence of five subcultures: dogmatists, born-again Christians, mainstream believers, metaphysical believers and seekers, and secularists. Drawing on surveys and in-depth interviews for over a decade, Roof reports on the religious and spiritual styles, family patterns, and moral vision and values for each of these subcultures. The result is an innovative, engaging approach to understanding how religious life is being reshaped as we move into the next century.
Download or read book Marketplace of the Gods written by Larry Witham and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-05-05 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two centuries after Adam Smith illuminated the workings of the marketplace, a new movement among economists and social scientists is expanding his insights into a groundbreaking "economics of religion." Using cutting edge ideas from the behavioral sciences, and a deep knowledge of religious history, this new approach is making sense not only of past beliefs, but of religion today.In Marketplace of the Gods, award-winning journalist Larry Witham tells the inside story of this expanding "economic approach" to religion, the puzzles it tries to solve, the controversies it has stirred, and the people who are making it happen. He shows that the economic approach, while evoking images of stock markets or accounting ledgers, actually begins with a simple idea about human beings as rational actors, judging costs and benefits in life. Every life has limits, so human experience is a series of trade-offs, balancing resources to make choices for the best possible benefits. As the economics of religion shows, this model can be applied to the rich story of the human race and its gods. Beginning with the individual, the choices in religion shape households, groups, movements, and entire "religious economies" of nations. On the one hand, this mixing of the profane and the sacred, the economic and the religious, is an exciting exchange of ideas between economics, sociology, psychology, history, and theology. On the other, it has spurred a lively protest. Indeed, for some, the economic approach seems to transform our good angels into grubby consumers.As Witham shows, however, the economic approach to religion has insights for everyone, believers and skeptics alike. He illuminates this approach in a volume rich with ideas, history, contemporary events, and the insights of some of our sharpest modern-day thinkers.
Download or read book The Founding Fathers and the Place of Religion in America written by Frank Lambert and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2010-07-28 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How did the United States, founded as colonies with explicitly religious aspirations, come to be the first modern state whose commitment to the separation of church and state was reflected in its constitution? Frank Lambert explains why this happened, offering in the process a synthesis of American history from the first British arrivals through Thomas Jefferson's controversial presidency. Lambert recognizes that two sets of spiritual fathers defined the place of religion in early America: what Lambert calls the Planting Fathers, who brought Old World ideas and dreams of building a "City upon a Hill," and the Founding Fathers, who determined the constitutional arrangement of religion in the new republic. While the former proselytized the "one true faith," the latter emphasized religious freedom over religious purity. Lambert locates this shift in the mid-eighteenth century. In the wake of evangelical revival, immigration by new dissenters, and population expansion, there emerged a marketplace of religion characterized by sectarian competition, pluralism, and widened choice. During the American Revolution, dissenters found sympathetic lawmakers who favored separating church and state, and the free marketplace of religion gained legal status as the Founders began the daunting task of uniting thirteen disparate colonies. To avoid discord in an increasingly pluralistic and contentious society, the Founders left the religious arena free of government intervention save for the guarantee of free exercise for all. Religious people and groups were also free to seek political influence, ensuring that religion's place in America would always be a contested one, but never a state-regulated one. An engaging and highly readable account of early American history, this book shows how religious freedom came to be recognized not merely as toleration of dissent but as a natural right to be enjoyed by all Americans.
Download or read book Religion and the Early Modern British Marketplace written by Kristin M.S. Bezio and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-11-29 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Religion and the Early Modern British Marketplace explores the complex intersection between the geographic, material, and ideological marketplaces through the lens of religious belief and practice. By examining the religiously motivated markets and marketplace practices in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in England, Scotland, and Wales, the volume presents religious praxis as a driving force in the formulation and everyday workings of the social and economic markets. Within the volume, the authors address first spiritual markets and marketplaces, discussing the intersection of Puritan and Protestant Ethics with the market economy. The second part addresses material marketplaces, including the marriage market, commercial trade markets, and the post-Reformation Catholic black market. In the third part of the volume, the chapters focus specifically on publication markets and books, including manuscripts and commonplace books, as well as printed volumes and pamphlets. Finally, the volume concludes with an examination of the literary marketplace, with analyses of plays and poems which engage with and depict both spiritual and material markets. Taken as a whole, this collection posits that the "modern" conception of a division between religion and the socioeconomic marketplace was a largely fictional construct, and the chapters demonstrate the depth to which both were integrated in early modern life.
Download or read book The Market as God written by Harvey Cox and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2016-09-12 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Essential and thoroughly engaging...Harvey Cox’s ingenious sense of how market theology has developed a scripture, a liturgy, and sophisticated apologetics allow us to see old challenges in a remarkably fresh light.” —E. J. Dionne, Jr. We have fallen in thrall to the theology of supply and demand. According to its acolytes, the Market is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent. It can raise nations and ruin households, and comes complete with its own doctrines, prophets, and evangelical zeal. Harvey Cox brings this theology out of the shadows, demonstrating that the way the world economy operates is shaped by a global system of values that can be best understood as a religion. Drawing on biblical sources and the work of social scientists, Cox points to many parallels between the development of Christianity and the Market economy. It is only by understanding how the Market reached its “divine” status that can we hope to restore it to its proper place as servant of humanity. “Cox argues that...we are now imprisoned by the dictates of a false god that we ourselves have created. We need to break free and reclaim our humanity.” —Forbes “Cox clears the space for a new generation of Christians to begin to develop a more public and egalitarian politics.” —The Nation
Download or read book Religion Media and the Marketplace written by Lynn Schofield Clark and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Religion is infiltrating the arena of consumer culture in increasingly visible ways. We see it in a myriad of forms—in movies, such as Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, on Internet shrines and kitschy Web “altars,” and in the recent advertising campaign that attacked fuel-guzzling SUVs by posing the question: What would Jesus drive? In Religion, Media, and the Marketplace, scholars in history, media studies, and sociology explore this intersection of the secular and the sacred. Topics include how religious leaders negotiate between the competing aims of the mainstream and the devout in the commercial marketplace, how politics and religious beliefs combine to shape public policy initiatives, how the religious “other” is represented in the media, and how consumer products help define the practice of different faiths. At a time when religious fundamentalism in the United States and throughout the world is inseparable from political aims, this interdisciplinary look at the mutual influences between religion and the media is essential reading for scholars from a wide variety of disciplines."
Download or read book Heavenly Merchandize written by Mark Valeri and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2014-01-05 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing on the economic culture of colonial New England, Heavenly Merchandize views commerce through the eyes of four generations of Boston merchants, drawing upon their personal letters, diaries, business records, and sermon notes to reveal how merchants built a modern form of exchange out of profound transitions in the puritan understanding of discipline, providence, and the meaning of New England. --From publisher's description.
Download or read book Evangelicals Incorporated written by Daniel Vaca and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2019-12-03 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new history explores the commercial heart of evangelical Christianity. American evangelicalism is big business. For decades, the world’s largest media conglomerates have sought out evangelical consumers, and evangelical books have regularly become international best sellers. In the early 2000s, Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Life spent ninety weeks on the New York Times Best Sellers list and sold more than thirty million copies. But why have evangelicals achieved such remarkable commercial success? According to Daniel Vaca, evangelicalism depends upon commercialism. Tracing the once-humble evangelical book industry’s emergence as a lucrative center of the US book trade, Vaca argues that evangelical Christianity became religiously and politically prominent through business activity. Through areas of commerce such as branding, retailing, marketing, and finance, for-profit media companies have capitalized on the expansive potential of evangelicalism for more than a century. Rather than treat evangelicalism as a type of conservative Protestantism that market forces have commodified and corrupted, Vaca argues that evangelicalism is an expressly commercial religion. Although religious traditions seem to incorporate people who embrace distinct theological ideas and beliefs, Vaca shows, members of contemporary consumer society often participate in religious cultures by engaging commercial products and corporations. By examining the history of companies and corporate conglomerates that have produced and distributed best-selling religious books, bibles, and more, Vaca not only illustrates how evangelical ideas, identities, and alliances have developed through commercial activity but also reveals how the production of evangelical identity became a component of modern capitalism.
Download or read book Religion in a Free Market written by Barry Alexander Kosmin and published by Paramount Market Publishing. This book was released on 2006 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the pulpits to the op-ed pages, several messages about religion in the U.S. are heard again and again: It's said that Americans are flocking to churches and other religious institutions in greater numbers than ever before, that non-Christian faiths are growing rapidly, and that a new religious fervor among the young is filling up the pews. All of these frequently heard messages are incorrect, according to this book. The book, by professors Barry A. Kosmin and Ariela Keysar of Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., is based on a major national survey which they conducted. The U.S. Census is prohibited from asking questions about religion, so this survey, the American Religious Identification Survey, contains the most complete and reliable source of data on religion in America today. This book argues that religion in America can best be understood as a product on offer in the marketplace of ideas. It says that "religious ferment in America is as strong as it has ever been, so whatever you learned about religion in the U.S. a generation ago is out of date."
Download or read book Religion and the Marketplace in the United States written by Jan Stievermann and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2015 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays focuses on the diverse interactions between religious and commercial practices in U.S. history. Studying religion and the marketplace from various angles, each chapter offers insights into a long and intimate relationship between two aspects of American culture.
Download or read book Religion Families and Health written by Christopher G. Ellison and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a compilation of population-based research on the relationships of religion to family life and health.
Download or read book Religion and the Culture of Print in Modern America written by Charles L. Cohen and published by Univ of Wisconsin Press. This book was released on 2008-07-09 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores how a variety of print media—religious tracts, newsletters, cartoons, pamphlets, self-help books, mass-market paperbacks, and editions of the Bible from the King James Version to contemporary “Bible-zines”—have shaped and been shaped by experiences of faith since the Civil War
Download or read book The Marketization of Religion written by François Gauthier and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-09-10 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Marketization of Religion provides a novel theoretical understanding of the relationship between religion and economy of today’s world. A major feature of today's capitalism is ‘marketization’. While the importance that economics and economics-related phenomena have acquired in modern societies has increased since the consumer and neoliberal revolutions and their shock waves worldwide, social sciences of religion are still lagging behind acknowledging the consequences of these changes and incorporating them in their analysis of contemporary religion. Religion, as many other social realities, has been traditionally understood as being of a completely different nature than the market. Like oil and water, religion and the market have been mainly cast as indissoluble into one another. Even if notions such as the marketization, commoditization or branding of religion and images such as the religious and spiritual marketplace have become popular, some of the contributions aligned in this volume show how this usage is mostly metaphorical, and at the very least problematic. What does the marketization of religion mean? The chapters provide both theoretical and empirical discussion of the changing dynamics of economy and religion in today’s world. Through the lenses of marketization, the volume discusses the multiple, at times surprising, connections of a global religious reformation. Furthermore, in its use of empirical examples, it shows how different religions in various social contexts are reformed due to growing importance of a neoliberal and consumerist logic. This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal Religion.
