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The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Economic Ethics

Online ISBN:
9780191915369
Print ISBN:
9780192894328
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
Book

The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Economic Ethics

Roy C. Amore (ed.),
Roy C. Amore
(ed.)
Political Science, University of Windsor
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Roy C. Amore is Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Windsor in Ontario, Canada. His books include Religion and Politics in the World’s Hot Spots and three co-edited Oxford University Press textbooks on world religions.

Albino Barrera (ed.)
Albino Barrera
(ed.)
Economics, Providence College
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Albino Barrera is Professor of Economics and Theology at Providence College, RI. His books include Biblical Economic Ethics, Market Complicity and Christian Ethics, Globalization and Economic Ethics, Economic Compulsion and Christian Ethics, and God and the Evil of Scarcity.

Published online:
23 January 2024
Published in print:
25 January 2024
Online ISBN:
9780191915369
Print ISBN:
9780192894328
Publisher:
Oxford University Press

Abstract

This Handbook presents what world and regional religions teach about economic morality. It also compares the major religions, especially the Abrahamic faiths, in their positions on various social, business, and policy themes, such as feminism, competition, and the ecology, among others. The concluding chapter is an analytical synthesis that presents and explains the patterns that emerge from the various religions in this Handbook. Readers will find a remarkable convergence in religions’ teachings on economic morality, despite their wide differences in dogma, ecclesial structures, and social practices. This confluence can be traced to similarities in the underlying anthropologies and cosmologies of these faiths. Readers will also discover that these religions’ economic teachings are the antithesis of contemporary market ethos, policy, and praxis. This Handbook underscores a symbiosis between religion and economic life as they mutually enrich each other. On the one hand, religion improves the efficiency and efficacy of economic life by lowering the frictional and monitoring costs of market operations. Virtuous market participants internalize norms of good economic conduct and behave accordingly. On the other hand, socio-economic life offers manifold enticements, comforts, and overindulgences that paradoxically push devout adherents to invest themselves even further in their beliefs. Socio-economic life provides an opportunity for religions to build strong faith communities and for believers to reify their religion in their economic conduct. This Handbook presents the richness, nuances, and rationale of religions and their economic ethics based on their vision of a natural and divine order. It shows that they share far more in common than whatever divides them, at least when it comes to economic morality.

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