Abstract
Murdock's Ethnographic Atlas is used to examine the cross-cultural correlates of belief in a high god or supreme creator. The major findings are: (1) economic complexity and political complexity are both strongly related to monotheism; (2) each of them has some effect on monotheism that is independent of the effect of the other, the independent effect of economic complexity being stronger; and (3) a number of other variables are also related to monotheism, but these relationship are largely explained by economic and political complexity. The results are inconsistent with the theoretical perspective of Swanson and Durkheim in that the effects of the economy are not explained through the intervening mechanism of political organization. It is suggested that the results are consistent with Marx and Engels's theory of religion. In this view a high god is a reflection of existing economic and social relationships, presiding, at the ultimate level, over economic and political complexities.
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