The Faith Instinct

by Wade, Nicholas

  Reconciliation must then follow, further repairing the social fabric: “The wronged man then blesses him by spitting or blowing water on him and says that it is nothing and may the man be at peace. He thereby removes any resentment he may have in his heart. Nuer say that God sees these acts and frees the man from the consequences of his fault.”239

  In modern societies, religions are not the only component of trust civic associations, custom, law and many other aspects of culture also contribute-but religious faith has surely not shed its role as the guardian of morality. Leaders from Washington onward have seen religion as an essential part of the social fabric. In his farewell address of 1796, George Washington said:Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked: Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.240

  Dwight Eisenhower, who seems to have had no great personal interest in religion, came to much the same conclusion. “Our government makes no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith—and I don’t care what it is,” he is reported to have said.241 Though he had not attended church in his adult lifetime, on becoming president he joined the National Presbyterian Church in Washington and announced he would attend services there on his inauguration day and every Sunday thereafter, so as to set an example for others.242

  The quality of the social fabric is hard to measure, and for that among other reasons is often ignored by economists. In their view, society is a collection of self-interested individuals who seek only to maximize their profit, subject only to a few laws safeguarding property rights and contracts. In his book Trust, the political scientist Francis Fukuyama argues that, to the contrary, economic life is deeply embedded in social life, and depends integrally on the network of norms, rules and moral obligations that knit a society together. The denser this network, the higher the level of trust, which he defines as “the expectation that arises within a community of regular, honest and cooperative behavior, based on commonly shared norms, on the part of other members of that community.”

  Trust may rarely figure in neoclassical economists’ accounts of society, but in Fukuyama’s view trust is what enables people to build social capital, the network of associations that bind a society together. Where trust is highest, as in communities of shared ethical values, organizations are most effective. “A nation’s well-being, as well as its ability to compete, is conditioned by a single, pervasive cultural characteristic: the level of trust inherent in a society,” he writes.243

  Of the many cultural factors that contribute to trust, few are more significant than moral values and the religions that shape them. In Fukuyama’s view, “Traditional religions or ethical systems (e.g., Confucianism) constitute the major institutionalized sources of culturally determined behavior.”

  Social capital is easier to destroy than rebuild, and there is some evidence its level in the United States has decreased in recent decades. Asked if “most people” could be trusted, 58 percent of Americans said yes in 1960, but the percentage had declined to 37 percent by 1993. A diminution in social capital, as measured by membership in organizations like bowling leagues, has also been recorded by the political scientist Robert Putnam in his book Bowling Alone.

  Fukuyama traces the drop in social capital to a loosening of Protestant values. In the mid-twentieth century, the American corporate world was much more homogeneous than the population as a whole. Almost all the managers and directors were Anglo-Saxon Protestants who “knew each other through their interlocking directorates, country clubs, schools, churches, and social activities, and they enforced on their managers and employees codes of behavior that reflected the values of their WASP backgrounds. They tried to instill in others their own work ethic and discipline, while ostracizing divorce, adultery, mental illness, alcoholism, not to mention homosexuality and other kinds of unconventional behavior.”

  As other ethnic groups went through the WASP school system, they assimilated the same values, particularly the Protestant art of forming associations of all kinds. But the balance between individualism and community-building has shifted dramatically toward the former in the last 50 years, Fukuyama says. A profusion of lobbyists and special interest organizations have put private concerns ahead of community. Groups demanding rights for specific sections of the population have also undermined community in unintended ways. The upshot is that “communities of shared values, whose members are willing to subordinate their private interests for the sake of larger goals of the community as such, have become rarer. And it is these moral communities alone that can generate the kind of social trust that is critical to organizational efficiency.”

  Fukuyama’s conclusion is that the role of religion in generating social capital has been undervalued. “Given the close relationship between religion and community in American history, Americans need to be more tolerant of religion and aware of its potential social benefits,” he writes. “Many educated people have a distaste for certain forms of religion, particularly that of Christian fundamentalists, and believe themselves above such dogmas. But they need to look to religion’s social consequences in terms of promoting the American art of association.”244

  Contemporary societies have developed many ingenious ways of establishing the trust that religious bonds once provided. Merchants on Amazon or eBay seek customers’ ratings as evidence of their trustworthiness. Credit rating agencies provide assessments of people’s finances and likely ability to repay loans. The sophistication of these procedures and their narrow goals contrast with the simplicity and effectiveness of the religious system—any observant coreligionist, at least in a demanding faith, is naturally trustworthy.

  Religion and Economics

  Beyond its general role in creating the conditions for morality and trust, religion affects economics directly in several aspects, some positive, some otherwise.

  One of the best-known links between religion and economics is that posited by the German sociologist Max Weber in his book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, published in article form in 1904 and 1905. Weber asked why Germany’s managerial class—“business leaders and owners of capital, as well as the higher grades of skilled labour, and even more the higher technically and commercially trained personnel of modern enterprises”—were overwhelmingly Protestant, not Catholic. His treatment bore on the wider question, in which he was also interested, of why capitalism first arose in the West and not elsewhere in the world.

  Calvinism, Weber suggested, worried the faithful no end with its doctrine of predetermination, which held that some people were selected for salvation, others for damnation. In the Catholic view, salvation could be obtained simply by confession of sins and acceptance of the church’s authority, but how was a Calvinist to know to which fate he had been allotted? The idea developed that worldly success was a sign of divine favor. Calvinists and their Puritan descendants developed an ethic that combined hard work and asceticism—the accumulation of more and more wealth along with an asceticism that forbade spending it. Nothing could have been more conducive to amassing capital. The emphasis on success in a worldly calling as proof of faith “must have been the most powerful conceivable lever for the expansion of that attitude toward life which we have here call
ed the spirit of capitalism,” Weber wrote.245

  Why did Western culture alone produce rational science out of alchemy and astrology and summon rational economics, meaning capitalism, out of the business of everyday life? In subsequent works Weber argued that in China, despite many factors favoring capitalism, Confucianist mandarins opposed new technology and other necessary institutions, while in India the Hindu caste system was inimical to the rise of a business class.

  As a founder of sociology, Weber’s widely known thesis on the Calvinist ethic and capitalism has had broad influence, even though he provided almost no data to support it. Economists, however, have had little use for his ideas. Since people the world over are utility-maximizing individuals, in their view, the answer to questions about the rise of capitalism and why the Industrial Revolution started in England in 1790 must be sought in institutions, like education or the availability of capital, which differ from country to country, and not in the clonelike populations of identical human units that inhabit them.

  Strange to say, the attempt by economic historians to find an institutional explanation for the Industrial Revolution has not yet produced any generally satisfactory answer. Could it be that Weber was right after all, at least to the extent that the answer to the origin of capitalism lies not in institutions but in people and their beliefs, attitudes and behavior?

  Whatever the relationship between Protestantism and capitalism, religion in general performs an essential role even in modern economies, that of creating circles of trust, whether in society in general or among particular religious groups. Jews and Parsees have built businesses based on the ties between coreligionists in distant cities. Islam is said to have spread through Africa as a vehicle of trade and trust. Its high price of entry—the Ramadan fast, no alcohol, going on pilgrimage to Mecca-encouraged trust among its members.

  “Today, as in the past, handshakes, Yiddish, and trust still close the multimillion dollar deals,” writes Renee Rose Shield of the diamond selling trade in New York.246 Centered on New York’s Forty-seventh Street, the business is run by a close-knit community, mostly Ultra-Orthodox Jews, among whom one’s word is one’s bond. A shared religion is a major component of establishing the trust that is necessary to let another dealer have a consignment of stones worth several million dollars and be confident he will not abscond with them.

  The strength of religion-based trust is nowhere more evident than in schemes that exploit that trust. Fraudsters have learned that an effective way to part people from their money is to pretend to belong to the same group, and specifically the same religious group, as do their marks, an approach known as affinity fraud. “Affinity frauds can target any group of people who take pride in their shared characteristics, whether they are religious, ethnic, or professional,” warns the Securities and Exchange Commission. Its Web site describes schemes that targeted Jehovah’s Witnesses, members of African American churches, Baptists and born again Christians.247

  The most spectacular recent case of affinity fraud was the $50 billion Ponzi scheme run by Bernard Madoff. Jewish himself, Madoff targeted many of his coreligionists, as well as Jewish charities and educational institutions. His marks were educated and sophisticated people, yet they ignored salient red flags such as an opaque investment scheme and returns that seemed too good to be true. Religion induces so powerful an urge to trust members of the same faith that rational calculation can be swept aside. “He really undermined the fabric of the Jewish community, because it’s based on trust,” said Rabbi Burton L. Visotsky of the Jewish Theological Seminary. The rabbi went on to explain that “There is a wonderful rabbinic saying—often misapplied—that all Jews are sureties for one another, which means, for instance, that if a Jew takes a loan out, in some ways the whole Jewish community guarantees it.”248

  There are many other instances of coreligionists doing business together, particularly in long-distance trade networks before the advent of modern banking. By establishing a separate community, whether defined by dress, diet, or onerous duties, small religious groups can cheaply and effectively monitor the behavior of all their members, notes the anthropologist Richard Sosis. Anyone who cheats another member pays no end of penalties. “Because ruined reputations affect not only business opportunities but also one’s social life, including diminishing the marriage prospects of one’s children and siblings, these threats help to maintain cooperative exchanges,” he notes. The sanctions are so severe, in his view, that it is inexact to speak of trust as the force that holds these business links together. This is not the open-ended trust between people who are powerless if a deal goes wrong, but rather behavior controlled by a heavy threat of ostracism and social ruin, reinforced by supernatural sanction.249

  Religious behavior is a way of committing members of a community to a common goal. But these goals, set essentially by the wisdom of society in preceding or current generations, sometimes have adverse effects. Offsetting the positive economic role of raising levels of morality and trust in a society, the three monotheisms probably retarded economic growth for centuries by their prohibitions on charging interest. Judaism barred internal interest rates: Deuteronomy, after banning prostitution and sodomy, stipulates that “Unto a stranger thou mayest lend upon usury; but unto thy brother thou shalt not lend upon usury.” Christians interpreted a ban on interest to arise from Luke: “But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again.” The first Council of Nicaea in A.D. 325 barred clergy from lending money on interest. A thousand years later the charging of interest was no better regarded: Dante put usurers in the seventh circle of hell.

  Muslims, similarly, were admonished that “Allah permitteth trade and forbiddeth usury.”250 But both religions gradually found ways of evading the ban on charging interest. Usury came to be defined as excessive interest. Islamic lawyers developed a series of legal maneuvers to give tacit acceptance to charging interest.

  With its communal ideas—“Sell all ye have and give to the poor”—and its strong ascetic strain, early Christianity was not a sound basis for capitalism, and its prediction of an imminent wrap-up of all worldly affairs doubtless did little to encourage long-term investment. Nonetheless, after many centuries and false starts, Christian countries, whether because of their religion or despite it, did stumble upon a set of social attitudes particularly conducive to capitalism.

  Morality Without Religion

  With the rise of capitalism, many civil institutions came into being and took over roles long performed by religious bodies, from education to welfare. States became increasingly secular and, since the Second World War, church attendance in all European countries has decreased. Growing numbers of people express no interest in religion, describing themselves as agnostics or atheists.

  Was Locke correct that atheists cannot be trusted? Atheists and others insist this is not the case. “Though equating morality with religion is commonplace,” writes the biologist Marc Hauser, “it is wrong in at least two ways: It falsely assumes that people without religious faith lack an understanding of moral rights and wrongs, and that people of religious faith are more virtuous than atheists and agnostics.”251

  Richard Dawkins, the evolutionary biologist, endorses Hauser’s arguments that religion is unnecessary for generating moral judgments. “We do not need God in order to be good—or evil,” he writes. He ridicules the idea that people are good through fear of divine punishment. A believer who would commit murder if he thought he was no longer under divine surveillance is surely not a very moral person, Dawkins argues. “It seems to me to require quite a low self-regard to think that, should belief in God suddenly vanish from the world, we would all become callous and self ish hedonists, with no kindness, no charity, no generosity, nothing that would deserve the name of goodness,” he writes.252

  Neither argument is fully convincing. The issue is not whether atheists understand moral rights and wrongs but whether or not they will act on this understanding if they harbor no fear of divine pun
ishment. As the Roman poet Ovid confessed: “Video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor—I see the better course and know it’s right, but I take the worse one.”

  Hauser and Dawkins are in principle correct that atheists are just as moral as other people. But the reason is presumably that atheists take at least as good care as everyone else to abide by their community’s moral standards. And religion surely plays a leading role in shaping and enforcing the community standards that both atheists and believers observe.

  Hence the fact that atheists are as moral as anyone else does not means that religion is unnecessary, as some atheists contend. In most European countries less than half the population attends church regularly. But people seem to treat one another with much the same level of concern as when churchgoing was de rigueur. It may be that it requires only a small number of people to establish what moral standards should prevail. The opinion leaders certainly include religious believers, though need not be confined to them. In this way communities achieve consensus on how members should behave toward one another; morality is not an area where diversity within a society is particularly welcome. just as a vaccine may achieve what immunologists call herd immunity, by immunizing merely enough people to break a pathogen’s chain of transmission, religion can help create a moral community if enough people either are believers or behave as if they were.

  An interesting question is whether a society composed entirely of atheists could generate ties of morality and trust strong enough for the community to operate effectively. The test of such a society would be whether it could maintain order and civility not just during times of peace and prosperity but also under stressful conditions, such as war and depression. But a large society composed only of atheists may not be available for observation any time soon. Given that religious behavior is part of human nature, such a society is no more likely to emerge than one in which no one plays or appreciates music.