What Political Economist, Barry Shelley, Says about “Blinded by Progress”

For the past decade Barry Shelley and I have shared treasured experiences. My only complaint is that they’ve been too few. As I go into detail about in my book, Blinded by Progress, Barry helped me see that the current economy functions as one of the world’s leading religions. More precisely, the leading religion.

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Listening to Symbols That Describe the Idolatry of Multi Earth Economics

After making the connection between “functional religion” and economics, I decided to continue working on a description of the Multi Earth economy’s deities, how that worldview understands salvation, sin, and human nature; who its priests, teachers, and evangelists are; what its rituals are and where to find its holy places.

I had handed out an abbreviated version of this “overview of Multi Earth theology” when I presented my paper at the Nurturing the Prophetic Imagination conference. But following the conference, I fleshed these out in more detail, again grateful for the introductory start given by Barry Shelley back in 2004, when he created a quick and dirty chart on newsprint, identifying components of religious function in the economy. That chart was my launch pad for what will follow in several subsequent blog entries as I give an overview of the economic religion that shapes Multi Earth living. 

Quotes from French philosopher Paul Ricoeur and the Hebrew seer Isaiah, though separated by 2800 years, add dimension to Cavanaugh’s “functional religion.” I use them here to preface my introduction to the economic religion and theology of Multi Earth living.

In our time we have not finished doing away with idols and we have barely begun to listen to symbols. 

— Paul Ricoeur, French philosopher (1913-2005)

Their land is filled with silver and gold, and there is no end to their treasures; … their land is filled with idols. 

— Isaiah, Hebrew seer, 8th century B.C.E.

Commodify What's Sacred; Sacralize the Profane

When the time came for Barry Shelley and me to lead our session at the Solidarity Economy Network Forum (2009), I told how I was coming to see that Spirit was inherent in economics. I elaborated by pointing out how economies continually propose to satisfy not only our material needs, but the yearnings of our souls. Economic activity brings meaning to much of what we do. Advertisements often speak to our anxieties and feelings of inadequacy, and then proclaim the good news that their commercial product will satisfy our needs and longings.

I also pointed out how economies can take what is ordinary and promote it into a cultural icon, elevating a widget no one needs to sacred status beyond its real value. This sacralizing of the ordinary gives economics a sacramental power exercised by religions. Such sacralizing adds a numinous quality to other material things, making them also more attractive to us.

Conversely, economies also have the power to de-sacralize. For example, an economy can take an ecosystem we appreciate for its beauty, inspiration, and soul-nourishing wonders, but then turn it into a landscape whose only meaning is the economic value of what can be extracted from it or built on it. Multi Earth economics prefers the sign “For Sale” to a sign reading “Mystic River Park.” To be able to commodify the sacred is an inverse and perverse form of religious power. 

Harvey Cox: The Religion of the Market

My dive into jubilee economics took me into many other important waters of change. In 2004, I heard Barry Shelley, a political economist with theological training, give a presentation to the Sabbath Economics Collaborative on economics as religion. Barry explained that approaching economics as religion was not just a quaint idea, but was being used by other economists, academics, and writers in their critiques of capitalism, markets, and consumer behavior. They use religion as a frame in which to view economics in order to better understand the powerful grip economic assumptions and practices have on people, governments, and business models. 

Then in 2009, Barry and I were invited to co-lead a session on “Economics and Spirituality” at the Solidarity Economy Network Forum in Amherst, MA. As we prepared for the session, Barry shared with me several articles on economic religion that fueled my interest. One, entitled “The Market as God,” written by Harvey Cox, who at the time was part of the Harvard Divinity School, had appeared in the Atlantic Monthly (March, 1999). Cox describes his own discovery of “business theology,” and how “current thinking assigns to The Market a wisdom that in the past only the gods have known.” Cox’s surprise at how economics and theology tracked with one another was matched by his conviction that he had uncovered a huge, damaging religion. He wrote: 

Discovering the theology of The Market made me begin to think in a different way about the conflict among religions. Violence between Catholics and Protestants in Ulster or Hindus and Muslims in India may dominate the headlines. But I have come to wonder whether the real clash of religions (or even of civilizations) may be going on unnoticed. I am beginning to think that for all the religions of the world, however they may differ from one another, the religion of The Market has become the most formidable rival, the more so because it is rarely recognized as a religion.