Can religion spur economic growth?

Last week we had a discussion on how culture, and therefore religion, could have an effect on an economy's performance. Brendan Nevin and I continued the discussion we started in class by email. Here is was we wrote:

"Mr. Vandamme

You may be interested in the article below. R H (Richard Henry) Tawney 1880-1962 was a Christian socialist economic historian who for 30 years until his retirement in 1949 lectured at the LSE. His classic work is 'Religion and the Rise of Capitalism' (1926) which supports and builds upon Weber's thesis. Tawney's work was, however, criticised by the Oxford historian Hugh Trevor-Roper (1914-2003) who was personally militantly anti-clerical and rabidly anti-Catholic. He nonetheless attacked - sometimes vitriolically - the whole Religion and the Rise of Capitalism orthodoxy of Weber and Tawney and pointed out (as also did Weber's contemporary, the economist Joseph Schumpeter 1883-1950), that capitalism did not begin with the Industrial Revolution but in fourteenth century Italy and that Antwerp in the sixteenth century was a major commercial centre of Europe. In addition, predominantly Calvinist Scotland did not enjoy any significant economic growth in the Reformation period and predominantly Catholic Belgium industrialised much earlier in the nineteenth century than did heavily Calvinist Holland, and was indeed one of the centres of the Industrial Revolution in continental Europe.

Weber a Prussian - is known to have been strongly prejudiced against Catholicism whereas Schumpeter was born to Catholic parents and the American philosopher Michael Novak is still a practicing Catholic of Slovak antecedents.

The foregoing encapsulates, I hope, what I was attempting to say on Thursday last but I accept I might have expressed myself better. In any case, I find the cultural aspect surrounding capitalism and industrialisation of particular interest and would venture the opinion that Weber's thesis is perhaps a gross oversimplification of a very complex reality.

With best regards.

Brendan Nevin"

My response:
"I agree with the fact that a country's economic performance cannot depend on a variable as abstract as religion and that this thesis would be a gross oversimplification. However, from what I can recall that's not exactly what Weber says. I his famous book I think he argues that the protestant ethic is at the origin of a particular work ethos which in turn may have been one of the factors leading to economic success, but definetely not the only one. Therefore a different cultural framework in a different time in a different place may of course also have contributed to a country's economic performance. Also, the Belgian example you give is only partly true. Southern Belgium's early industrialisation, and hence impressive economic performance, had more to do with the presence of raw materials than with religion. The fact that Flanders did not have these commodities to exploit and given that it were a catholic region as opposed to protestant Holland (and therefore being the victim of some sort of economic discrimination - the House of Orange indeed refused to invest in infrastructure in most parts of Northern Belgium) probably offer a better explantion why until WWII it has always economically limped behind its Northern and Southern neighbours.

Also, I never said capitalism is a protestant invention, but merely that the protestant work ethos may have been a better match to the incentives a capitalist society gives.

Another interesting author that has widely published on the subject is the controversial Deirdre McCloskey (formerly known as Donald McCloskey). I had the chance meeting her a couple of years ago when she presented her new book "The bourgeois virtues: ethics for an age of commerce" and she is a very interesting lady: http://www.deirdremccloskey.com/

Looking forward to continue this little discussion on Wednesday afternoon!
Kind regards,

Brieuc Van Damme"