The Influence of Religion on Economic Thinking

According to the prevailing view of economic science, this discipline is a product of the Enlightenment and, therefore, has nothing to do with religious ideas. But is this really the case? In this book, Benjamin Friedman shows that religious thought has actually been a powerful force shaping the formation of the modern Western economy and continues to influence it to this day. Friedman argues that an important factor enabling the insights of Adam Smith and his contemporaries were the new and highly controversial directions of religious thought that emerged at that time in the English-speaking Protestant world. Friedman explains that the influence of religion on modern economic thought at the dawn of this scientific discipline had consequences that persisted for centuries, even as the economic context changed, along with the questions that economists sought to answer.