The Prosperity Gospel and the Social Gospel

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Postma aas taught that human beings can win jesus favor by carrying out social reforms like the abolition of slavery, workers rights, children's rights, et cetera. So let's talk about this attention you have in quite a bit of your book between the prosperity gospel and the social gospel. Ye the er: This is something thater came in in the american protestant world in starting, i around the 18 eighties,. And then especially on through the nineties and into the early decades of the new century.

In episode 162 of The Michael Shermer Show, Michael speaks with one of the nation’s preeminent experts on economic policy, Benjamin Friedman, about his new book Religion and the Rise of Capitalism — a major reassessment of the foundations of modern economic thinking that explores the profound influence of an until-now unrecognized force — religion.

Critics of contemporary economics complain that belief in free markets — among economists as well as many ordinary citizens — is a form of religion. And, it turns out, that in a deeper, more historically grounded sense there is something to that idea. Contrary to the conventional historical view of economics as an entirely secular product of the Enlightenment, Benjamin Friedman demonstrates that religion exerted a powerful influence from the outset.