Go Directly to Church. Do Not Pass Go.

I sometimes get asked, given the work Doug and I are doing, whether my interests are in "the economics of religion." The economics of religion uses economic tools to study organized religion as a market or an industry, but uses those tools to ask questions like "why do more women attend church then men?" While this overlaps some of what Doug and I are working on, it really isn't central to our work.

However, the tools of the economics of religion were on display today in the Wall Street Journal (no link available). A front page article raises the question as to whether some flickering embers of Christian revival in deChristianized Europe may be due to the collapse of the state-church systems (think Church of England, Church of Scotland, Lutheran churches in Scandinavia). These European countries, so the argument goes, are only now discovering what Americans knew in 1789: religion thrives on competition in the religious marketplace, not with a monopoly provider.

It's a intriguing argument, but the article is mainly anecdotal in connecting all the dots. Nevertheless, it provides good reason to recall the various fundamental Constitutional provisions involving religion and the state: "the non-establishment" clause, the "free exercise" clause, and the "no religious tests" clause. There seems to be an urban legend around that our founders were a bunch of Enlightenment deists determined to put a non-religious wall around our new government. While some of our elites were deists (think Franklin and Jefferson), deism was a waning influence. The U.S. in the 1775 -1789 period was feeling the maturity of the First Great Awakening (remember "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God"). The Revolutionary War was known to some in Britain as the "Presbyterian Rebellion" because of the fervor with which these "frozen chosen" volunteered for service in the Continental Army. And one of the most important members of the Continental Congress and later of the process of ratifying the Constitution was John Witherspoon, President of Princeton Seminary.

The fact is, regardless of what we believe about the correctness of recent Supreme Court interpretations of these clauses, it was a very religious America that decided not to allow the establishment of a monopoly religion. If the economic model is correct, then the collapse of religious monopolies in Europe is a hopeful sign.