What's the Difference Between Religion and Capitalism?

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The two key words and the cover of your book their religion and capitalism. The issue isn't protestantism pushing back on anything, this is the question of what kind of protestants did these people want to be? So some people who've started to read the book have asked me things like, well, how about the catholics? How about the jews? You know, it so happens. I know a little about the catholic economics. It won't surprise you that i know something about jewish views on economics. But that's not the world in which the people live. These lived in the english speaking, protestant world. And that means the world of calvin and

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.