The original application of market language as a motif for interpreting religious growth and decline comes from Peter Berger. He established “pluralism” as the necessary twin of secularism. Basically, when a government sponsored faith monopoly is broken, society enjoys greater religious participation. Demand does not cease, but the supply changes from state subsidised monopoly to a competitive market of religious pluralism. “The key characteristic of all pluralistic situations, whatever the details of their historical background, is that the religious ex-monopolies can no longer take for granted the allegiance of their client populations. Allegiance is voluntary and thus, by definition, less than certain. As a result, the religious tradition, which previously could be authoritatively imposed, now has to be marketed. It must be ‘sold’ to a clientele that is no longer constrained to ‘buy’. The pluralistic situation is, above all, a market situation. In it, the religious institutions become marketing agencies and the religious traditions become consumer commodities. And at any rate a good deal of religious activity in this situation comes to be dominated by the logic of market economics.” (Berger 1979, 137). Pluralism leads to secularisation because it stimulates concerns over the credibility of belief structures.
“Supply-side” refers to this change in religious supply. Demand has remained constant, but the supply changed modes from monopoly to competitive market. Berger promoted the secularist model, Fink and Stark argue, because he maintained the “superior organisational power of monopoly faiths: by providing the people with a single plausibility structure, the monopoly religion can inspire the kind of deep faith we often associate with the medieval village.” (Finke and Stark 1988, 42). This assumption Finke and Stark describe as filled with “nostalgic errors.” On the one hand, like any monopoly, religious firms become lazy, confident that the existing market will remain intact. On the other hand, no monopoly can “shape its appeal to precisely suit the needs of one market segment.” No religious economy can cater to the special interests of all the market segments, meaning with “this underlying differentiation of consumer preferences, religious economies can never be successfully monopolised, even when a religious organization is backed by the state.” Finke and Stark argue for the positive stimulation for religion which occurs within a competitive environment. “The more pluralism, the greater the religious mobilization of the population — the more people there are who will be committed to a faith.” Within a competitive market religion is chosen by way of a “rational choice”: “Within the limits of their information and understanding, restricted by available options, guided by their preferences and tastes, humans attempt to make rational choices.” (Stark and Finke 2000, 38). In short, within a competitive market context, each organisation is motivated to cultivate a distinct niche, and so to direct their particular message to the needs of a particular social group. Such niche concerns establish boundaries which makes demands upon adherents, expecting greater commitment to the service provider, and ensure clear identity markers to stimulate ongoing competition with alternate providers.
One should note the dominance of this theory in much of the strategy around theories of Christian revitalisation. There is also some ambiguity. For example, Mission-shaped Church observes how Western culture is a “consumer culture” and the link between identity and consumption. Everything reduces to a consumer product that fits and shapes one’s identity. It understands this, however, in a somewhat ambiguous determination: “In one sense there is no alternative to a consumer society. That is what we are, that is where we are and that is where we must be church and embody the gospel. To fulfil our Lord’s prayer for the Church (John 17:15-18) we are called to be church ‘in’ consumer society, but we dare not let ourselves be ‘of’ consumerism.” (2004, 10). What is asks “What can the church do to challenge a consumerist approach to life and faith, while also following the good missionary principle of meeting people where they are? It seems to position the Fresh Expression agenda within the supply-side model, without any engaged theological reflection on the potential issues that might develop. (2004, 14). For a criticism along these lines, see: “The consumerist network culture exists and needs to be addressed, but it should not be embraced, for it cannot be embraced without doing serious damage to our understanding of church and gospel.” (James 2006, 4).
Criticisms
1. Is the language of the market the best way to describe religion? Do the metaphors of ‘markets’, ‘commodities’, ‘exchange-value’, ‘capital’ even work in the analysis of religion? Include within this is an evaluative judgment, that “consumer” spirituality lacks “the moral depth and social cohesiveness of more traditional religion”
- Carrette, J., and Richard King. Selling Spirituality: The Silent Takeover of Religion. Routledge, 2004.
Though this point is being made at a sociological level, one might reiterate it from a theological perspective.
- Bryant, Joseph M. “Cost-Benefit Accounting and the Piety Business: Is Homo Religiosus, at Bottom, a Homo Economicus.” Method & Theory in the Study of Religion 12, no. 1/4 (2000): 520–48.
2. Definition of rationality: “The religious market model seems to be limited to teleological, goal-oriented rationality only.” (Gooren 2006, 41).
3. It fails to analyse the range of factors influencing any actor: belief, community, socio-cultural, aesthetic, gender, sexuality.
4. The model of religion is thoroughly individualistic: “[T]the frame of reference is always the individual rational actor.” (Gooren 2006, 42).
5. It presupposes that religious demand remains an anthropological constant
6. It is located in the American Experience. If secularisation reflected the European experience, then rational-choice appears linked to the US. John Simpson describes the whole approach as “gloriously American,” with “the autonomous, pragmatic actor who both uses and adjusts to each situation…a unit constantly on the prowl for rewards.” (Simpson 1990, 71).
General Bibliography
- Beyer, Peter. “Religious Vitality in Canada: The Complementarity of Religious Market and Secularization Perspectives.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 36, no. 2 (1997): 272–88.
- Blasi, Anthony J. “A Market Theory of Religion.” Social Compass 56, no. 2 (2009): 263–72.
- Bruce, Steve. “Religion and Rational Choice: A Critique of Economic Explanations of Religious Behavior.” Sociology of Religion 54, no. 2 (1993): 193–205.
- Bruce, Steve. Choice and Religion: A Critique of Rational Choice Theory. Oxford University Press, 2000.
- Bryant, Joseph M. “Cost-Benefit Accounting and the Piety Business: Is Homo Religiosus, at Bottom, a Homo Economicus.” Method & Theory in the Study of Religion 12, no. 1/4 (2000): 520–48.
- Chaves, Mark and David E. Cann. “Regulation, Pluralism, and Religious Market Structure: Explaining Religion’s Vitality.” Rationality and Society 4, no. 3 (1992): 272–90.
- Finke, Roger and Rodney Stark. “Religious Economies and Sacred Canopies: Religious Mobilization in American Cities, 1906.” American Sociological Review (1988): 41–49.
- Finke, Roger. “Religious Deregulation: Origins and Consequences.” Journal of Church and State 32, no. 3 (1990): 609–26.
- Finke, Roger and Rodney Stark. The Churching of America, 1776-2005: Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy. Rutgers University Press, 2005.
- Gauthier, François, Tuomas Martikainen, and Linda Woodhead. “Acknowledging a Global Shift: A Primer for Thinking About Religion in Consumer Societies.” Implicit Religion 16, no. 3 (2013): 261–76.
- Gooren, Henri. “The Religious Market Model and Conversion: Towards A New Approach.” Exchange 35, no. 1 (2006): 39–60.
- Hill, Jonathan P. and Daniel V. A. Olson. “Market Share and Religious Competition: Do Small Market Share Congregations and Their Leaders Try Harder?” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 48, no. 4 (2009): 629–49.
- Houtepen, Anton. “Conversion and The Religious Market: A Theological Perspective.” Exchange 35, no. 1 (2006): 18–38.
- Iannaccone, Laurence R. “The Consequences of Religious Market Structure: Adam Smith and the Economics of Religion.” Rationality and Society 3, no. 2 (1991): 156–77.
- Iannaccone, Laurence R. “Religious Markets and the Economics of Religion.” Social Compass 39, no. 1 (1992): 123–31.
- Martin, Bernice. “Pentecostal Conversion and the Limits of the Market Metaphor.” Exchange 35, no. 1 (2006): 61–91.
- Robertson, Roland. “The Economization of Religion? Reflections on the Promise and Limitations of the Economic Approach.” Social Compass 39, no. 1 (1992): 147–57.
- Sharot, Stephen. “Beyond Christianity: A Critique of the Rational Choice Theory of Religion from a Weberian and Comparative Religions Perspective.” Sociology of Religion 63, no. 4 (2002): 427–54.
- Stark, Rodney. “From Church-Sect to Religious Economies,” In The Sacred in a Post-Secular Age, edited by Phillip E. Hammond, 139–49. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985.
- Stark, Rodney and Laurence R. Iannaccone. “A Supply-Side Reinterpretation of the ‘Secularization’ of Europe.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 33, no. 3 (1994): 230–52.
- Stark, Rodney and Roger Finke. Acts of Faith: Explaining the Human Side of Religion. University of California Press, 2000.
- Stark, Rodney and Roger Finke. “Beyond Church and Sect: Dynamics and Stability in Religious Economies,” In Sacred Markets, Sacred Canopies: Essays on Religious Markets and Religious Pluralism, edited by Ted G. Jelen, 31–62. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2002.
- Warner, R. Stephen. “Work in Progress Toward a New Paradigm for the Sociological Study of Religion in the United States.” American Journal of Sociology 98, no. 5 (1993): 1044–93.
- Warner, R. Stephen. “Convergence Toward the New Paradigm: A Case of Induction,” In Rational Choice Theory and Religion: Summary and Assessment, edited by Lawrence A. Young, 87–101. Routledge, 1996.
- Young, Lawrence A., ed. Rational Choice Theory and Religion: Summary and Assessment Routledge, 1996.
- Ritzer, George F. The McDonaldization of Society. SAGE, 2004.
Other Posts in this Series
- Internationalising Secularisation
- Classic Secularization Theory and its Critics
- Individualisation Thesis
