Analytical Synthesis: Religion and Economic Ethics

Abstract

Abstract This concluding chapter to the Oxford Handbook of Religion and Economic Ethics presents three major findings. First, it traces the convergence of these religions’ teachings and practices on economic life to similarities in their foundational cosmologies and anthropologies. Socio-economic life is embedded within a much larger natural and divine economic order, which can be partly discerned in natural law. Second, it explains how these religious teachings are antithetical to modern market practices, mainstream economic thinking and policy, and even the public’s economic ethos. Third, this chapter also finds that the direction of contributions is not unidirectional, such as religion shaping economic life. Rather, it is a two-way causation with economic life improving religious practice and faith formation. Religious beliefs and practices can indeed lead to a much-improved economic life with strife, competition, and inordinate desire replaced by cooperation, temperance, and mutual solicitude, at least in theory. Economic life, in its own turn, can also lead to the furtherance of religious beliefs and practices by providing the temptations, challenges, adversity, and occasion that can drive believers to a deeper appreciation and appropriation of their faith. Indeed, there is a surprising symbiotic relationship between religion and economic life.