Encyclopedia of World Trade

Religion, as a system of cross-cultural communication, has always been connected to commerce. The connections between the two realms have existed throughout history at changing levels of intensity and with varying dynamics. These links have intrigued both policy makers and those who are active in the realms of religious and academic research. The relationships challenge the scholar with theoretical and practical questions. Should economic activity be subject to religious ethics and morals? What is the attitude toward the accumulation of wealth? What is the role of tradesmen in the expansion of religion?

These problems also relate to the variance between religious and cultural traditions. Since Max Weber’s study on Protestantism appeared, and even before, the issue of the correlation between Protestantism and capitalism in content has been debated. This study sparked a series of inquiries on the economic and political differences between Catholic and Protestant countries and between Christian and non-Christian societies. According to this commentary, the “spirit” of Protestantism was conducive to capitalism. Other religious traditions and the historical activity of religious organizations have raised other questions about the relationship between economic institutions and religious ones.

Religions and Political-Economic Institutions

Links between religious institutions and political-economic institutions, and the impact religion has on individuals’ worldview, values, and actions, could be an alternative organizational explanation to the dynamics between religion and trade. Religious institutions sometimes endorse a certain economic policy, which they prefer to others for various reasons. The endorsement of a certain policy could mean, in practice, legitimacy for a certain regime (or regime type) and mobilization (through the religious institutions) of the believers to support or oppose a variety of policies.

The advent of Protestantism, referred to by the Weberian argument, reflects the diminishing of institutional control by the Catholic Church. The same loss of control, which brought about availability of opportunities in the religious realm, inspired experimentation in new philosophy (Enlightenment), new political ideas (political revolutions and civil wars), and new economic development (age of discovery and imperialist expansionism). Several variables affected the development of both capitalism and Protestantism. The organization of the Protestant churches is more compatible with decentralized economics and politics, with the expansion of trade, and with pluralist forms of organization. Moreover, as in the case of Islam, Protestantism might have attracted the merchants, who viewed the religion as promoting their interests and as providing them more opportunities than other denominations.

Some studies describe the “development” of religions as correlating with the economic development of societies. In other words, the explanation could be found not only in the specific religious tradition but also in its place on an imaginary “development” scale. Hunter-gatherer societies, which are usually not organized in permanent settlements, and nomadic societies tend to have different religious formations than those of agricultural and urban societies.

Islam and Christianity, for example, were founded and followed by people engaged in urban professions. Both of these religions have strong worldviews, firm religious ethics and desired conduct, and norms of institutional behavior in reference to political-economic issues.

Many animistic religions are less concerned with the complexities of urban and transcultural political economy, since they are connected with a localized culture, with its regional settings (i.e., prominent geographical features), and with less complex structures of government and trade. Judaism, which is a dynamic religion that has developed its social and ethic structure over time, evolved from a religion of nomadic shepherds, who traded mainly in livestock, to one of urban dwellers. During the same period, currency replaced barter exchange, trades became professionalized and specialized, and (almost) everything became a commodity.

As a side effect of this complexity, tradesmen are also favored members of religious organizations. Any religious group, principally as it begins to organize, institutionalize, and become more complex, needs resources in order to function. This is when the involvement of the group in economic affairs begins, whether or not that is its original motive. The need for funds might be satisfied when the church obtains a tithe from its devotees. The organization is then reliant on the more well-to-do members for the majority of the contributions. When a member becomes richer, he is not stigmatized, but praised for the product of his work. Those businessmen who donate money are essential for the support of the religion, as the Buddhist example demonstrates.

Most religions founded in the modern era, such as the Baha’i Faith, consider slave trade (and other sorts of trade, such as the trade in arms, prostitution, or drugs) illicit. Religions that devel oped in societies where slaves were part of the social structure regarded slave trade as legitimate until a change in norms occurred. Nowadays, slave trade is banned by most mass religious movements.

Different economic and political theories have had different ideas about the matter and about connections that should exist between religion and trade. Without the separation of church and state, interests of the religious institutions are usually united with those of the state, and these interests and ethics are incorporated in the business world. In classical Islam, for example, there was no distinction between religious and political authority. However, because the interests of Caesar, the secular regime, and God, the spiritual authority, were different, tensions between the two institutions on questions of desired economic policies, trade conduct, and financial institutions emerged.

These tensions intensify in regimes that are perceived by the religious authorities as hostile or anticlerical. The religious authorities might institute alternative organizations that challenge the political authority and aim to undermine its influence and legitimacy.

In communist countries, the church and the regimes are antagonistic and the economy is supposed to be controlled by the state. However, since the church provides an alternate source of authority in many communist countries, the authority of the regime, also over the economy, is undermined. The most significant example of the power of religious institutions is Poland, where the Catholic Church was the main alternative to the regime and played a central part in undermining the totalitarian regime and in supporting an independent trade union, Solidarnosc (Solidarity). In other communist countries, the church was less significant, but also played a part in democratization and transformation to a market economy.

Marxism, as a social and political interpretation of the world, rejects religion as a conceptual element, even in its post-Enlightenment, separated-from-the-state, form. Karl Marx said religion is the opiate of the masses. However, his analysis of the relationship between religion and political economy does not incorporate that famous metaphor. According to Marx, religion is a mechanism produced by society and the state to divert the attention of those oppressed by the system from their miseries, “Religious suffering is at one and the same time the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world and the soul of soulless conditions.”

Religion, in Marxist theory, provides logic about the world around us and makes sense of the injustice and domination. Indeed, many religious traditions attempt to explain societal systems, which are neither equal nor “just” in the Marxist view. Classical Hinduism, for example, explained the nonegalitarian caste system as part of a holistic worldview. Some Protestant groups explained poverty as a heavenly “punishment,” while during some periods Catholicism explained the same phenomenon as leading to divine grace.

Many religious systems provide justification, and encouragement, for the accumulation of wealth and for trade. Therefore, religion is a “false” system of meaning. It provides the believer with a false consciousness and with the false hope of salvation that turns the perception of oppression upside down. The believer, therefore, either has not “found himself” yet or has “already lost himself again.” The fight against religion is the struggle against the inversion of the consciousness to achieve “real” happiness, not one that is derived from the illusions of religion.

At the organizational level, religion and trade were also sometimes unified in their interests. Religion and trade were forces that brought about intercultural communication between Asian and Western (European) people. The mission of the imperialists, for example, bound religion (or the mission to convert the “savages”) with trade (or the need to exploit those same savages to yield profit).

Correspondingly, it has also been found that increased involvement of religious authorities in politics can hinder economic development. As mentioned before, several studies have been conducted on the way in which different religious traditions affect economic performance and attitude in a society.

For example, a negative correlation has been found between the level of church attendance and economic growth. Yet, it has been found in other cases that progress in trade and industry acts positively in response to some religious traditions. Specifically this could mean that the greater the power of the religious institutions (if attendance depends on this power), the lower the chance of a high rate of economic growth.

The link between religion and political economy is also significant in religion’s support for preserving the current social order. Religion serves as the basis of conservative politics, which represents a preference for the existing order of society and an opposition to all efforts to bring about essential or fundamental changes. According to some economic theories, the existing economy and its related inequalities are well justified. Religion and the religious leadership give legitimacy to the existing social order, in which some are more fortunate than others in the accumulation of wealth, some have higher status by merit of birth (aristocracy), and some inherit the fortunes of their parents.

This support for stability rather than change, for conservatism rather than reform, also affects religion’s attitude toward trade. Tradesmen fear that reform might label their commerce illicit and create political instabilities that would cause rapid change of trade partners. However, this support of the religious institutions for conservative economics, although usually favorable for the merchants, could also hinder tradesmen’s causes, for example, if state control over some potentially profitable market were removed or new markets opened up.

This attitude of religious institutions, in conjunction with the fact that most religious doctrines are ambivalent on the question of the accumulation of wealth, was a major contributing element to the creation of religious sects. Dissatisfaction with the “pragmatic” attitude of religious institutions encourages the creation of sects. Many studies find that most followers of sects and new religious groups were those who were not successful in accumulating wealth and who were looking for an alternate system, one that upheld “true riches,” which would be achieved at salvation and not prioritized according to the “corrupt” accumulation of wealth in this world. The followers who came from the underprivileged and alienated strata were likely to identify those things they were deprived of as evil or, at the very least, as insignificant and disagreeable. The rejection of those unfavorable earthly values and commodities would bring about “true” salvation, in the form of the second coming of a messiah and a better life in paradise (this is especially evident in some sects of Hinduism, which attracted the poor and underprivileged, promising them a better life in the hereafter). It should be mentioned, however, that recent studies find that many of those who join new religious groups belong to the middle classes, rather than the lower classes, and are not necessarily those who are economically or culturally marginalized.

Individual Religiosity and Trade in the Modern Period

The diminishing power of religious institutions in the modern period, as influenced by the Enlightenment and the separation of church and state in many Western countries, created the perception that with secularization the influence of religion over trade and its links with trade have also weakened. However, the impact of religion on the individual is less affected by the decreasing power of institutionalized religion. Trade, which is conducted by individuals but subjected to institutional regulations, continues to be affected by religion. First, at the normative level, religion still affects the worldview and values of the individuals who engage in commerce. Individual religiosity also affects a person’s position regarding current economic trends, such as liberalization and globalization, which are widely opposed by religious groups. Individual religiosity still expresses itself in the commercial activity of religious organizations. Some of these organizations have adopted modern marketing techniques such as using modern and global media and modern consumerist methods to attract new believers to their religions.

Another way in which religion and economics are tied are the linkages between religious activity and trade in religious objects, especially during pilgrimages and religious festivals. The trade in Christmas paraphernalia reaches to trillions of dollars each year. In the United States alone, each adult spends close to $1,200 each year (on average) on holiday-related shopping. Similarly, the number of sheep sold to Saudi Arabia in each hajj month constitutes an important portion of sheep consumption in the Muslim world.

Other profits include travel expenses for pilgrimages, specialized food (e.g., kosher food and especially wine and matzo for the Jewish holiday of Passover, when as much as 40 percent of annual kosher food sales take place), icons, amulets, sacrifices, books, and many other items of commerce that are linked to traditions and religions.

Individual religiosity and commerce are also connected in the regulations that many modern states impose on the relationship between the business world and religious activity. Most human rights and national revolutions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries advanced a prohibition on discrimination on the basis of individual religiosity. Religious organizations are also regulated by the state. In the United States, as well as many other countries, religious activities are not supposed to yield profits, and churches are considered nonprofit organizations.

Tamar Gablinger

See also: Buddhism; Christianity; Hinduism; Islam; Judaism.

Religion

Religion as a Construction of Social Reality

Religious Values, Business Values, and the Rise of Capitalism

Religions and Political-Economic Institutions

Religion as a Regulator of Trade

Individual Religiosity and Trade in the Modern Period

Bibliography