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Religions help economies thrive This emptiness contrasted sharply with the prosperous bustle around us in the streets. England's economy is booming, as it embraces free market economics with a vengeance. The resulting prosperity has made London a magnet for enterprising young people from all over Europe. Why be surprised at full cyber cafes and empty churches?, many would ask. The hallmarks of the contemporary world include an information-based economy and a post Judeo-Christian morality. Why not expect that, as a nation's economy heads for the stratosphere, its churches and synagogues will become little more than historic sites? It's certainly true that a society can produce and consume lots of cell phones and SUVs while its religious underpinnings fade away. But can this state of affairs last forever? Can the norms and institutions on which a free market economy depends endure without the moral and social order that religion supplies? The sociologist Max Weber was among the first to observe that Western societies' economic prosperity is in good measure a function of their religious heritage. (Every college sociology major knows Weber's "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.') Recently, however, Jonathan Sacks, chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the British Commonwealth, has brought Weber up to date, with a twist. Writing in the journal First Things, Sacks draws on the Jewish experience to suggest that today's unparalleled prosperity may eventually falter if religious practice dwindles. Sacks begins by reviewing how Judaism helped create the unique conditions that allowed a market economy to emerge in the West. He notes, for example, that the Jews, unlike other ancient peoples, recognized and revered individual property rights. As the religion of a people born into slavery, Judaism rejected the traditional view that rulers could regard the property of the tribe or people as their own. At the same time, Judaism embraced the revolutionary concept that labor is not a burden the poor must endure, but a fundamental religious duty for all, including the wealthy and powerful. Perhaps Judaism's most important contribution to modernity was its unique view of time as linear, rather than cyclical. Most ancient peoples saw time as endlessly repetitive, like the seasons, and human society as similarly constricted. But the Hebrew prophets--with their hope of a messiah--saw time as a journey toward a destination, and human society as a story with a beginning and an end. With this notion, Judaism helped give rise to the very idea of progress itself. The vigorous free market economy that sprang, in part, from Judeo-Christian roots has largely erased poverty in the developed world. But, as Sacks points out, this powerful economy is now threatening to get out of hand. Widespread affluence is beginning to corrode the moral norms, and family and community bonds, that form the foundations of our social order. Increasingly, we in the West view life as little more than a succession of consumer choices. In this crisis of modernity, it is again religion--which helped create free market economies-- that aids in confining the market to its proper sphere. As Sacks observes, the domain of the holy is precisely the place where a thing's worth is not assessed according to its market price. Judaism exemplifies religion's power to ensure that the market remains our servant, rather than becoming our master. Because Judaism views man as made in the image of God, rather than a purely economic being, it has developed rituals that mark certain human activities as sacred, and thus beyond the market's sphere. The Sabbath--center of Jewish ritual observance--is the symbolic boundary that Judaism draws around economic activity. (The ancient Greeks found the concept of a religiously mandated day of rest so unintelligible that they dismissed the Jews as simply lazy.) But the Sabbath exists to remind Jews that there are central truths of the human condition that have little to do with work or economics. The Sabbath is "the still point in the turning world," a day for worship, study, and renewing attachments to family and community. Marriage and the family are similarly sacrosanct. According to Sacks, it is not Jewish marriage law, which permits divorce, that fosters strong families. Rather, it is the Jewish practice of centering many of the supreme moments of ritual life in the home, structuring them as a dialogue between husband and wife, or parents and children. (Non-Jews might think of the family-centered Passover celebration, or the portrayal of the Sabbath meal in "Fiddler on the Roof.") By placing the home at life's sacred center, Judaism creates an elaborate network of rituals that bind family members together, ensuring that primary relationships are based on mutual giving, not economic calculation. Today, ironically, the greatest threat to Western democracies comes not from without, but from within. It is the tendency of market forces to overwhelm the norms and institutions that gave those societies their birth. In Sacks words, "When everything that matters can be bought and sold, when commitments can be broken because they are no longer to our advantage, when shopping becomes salvation and advertising slogans our litany, then the market is destroying the very virtues on which in the long run it depends." Whether we are Jewish, Christian, Muslim or none of the above, we can recognize that today's consumer society--while a source of great prosperity--can also be dehumanizing. Strong religious institutions give industrialized societies the capacity to say to the market: This far, and no farther. |