Abstract
The article aims to theoretically intervene in the debate surrounding the supply-side approach in the sociology of religion. While proponents of this paradigm have used economic laws to explain patterns of religious participation, critics have held that such concepts are an inadequate rendering of the religious realm. This article proposes a third way to studying religious markets, analogous to the performative turn in economic sociology. Instead of rejecting the ontology of (religious) markets from the outset, this line of inquiry asks how actors and socio-technical arrangements projecting such an ontology are inadvertently engaged in constructing a reality in tune with economic notions. To illustrate the utility of this approach, the paper uses the case of nineteenth-century evangelical missions to show how a missionary theology, congruous with the tenets of the supply-side paradigm, effectively spawned a religious economy in foreign fields as envisioned by missionaries (and supply-side theorists).
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Notes
Indeed, it is important to note that R. Stephen Warner (1993) himself explicitly refrained from making any universalistic claims in his inaugural paper on the “new paradigm” in the sociology of religion, which cast Finke and Starke as its “most outspoken exponents” (ibid, p. 1055). Rather, he sought to give a common expression to scholars who were examining the distinct features of the American religious system outside of the “old paradigm” of secularization theory. Even though his paper was not formulated as a critique of Stark et al. (but see Warner 1997), it can still be counted among the body of work which in different ways underscores the limits of a purely “economic imagery” (ibid, p. 1051) for a general theory of religion.
For a recent study on how Christian and Muslim “entrepreneurs” in nineteenth-century Burma transformed the religious landscape into a pluralistic religious economy, see Green (2015). Although the author acknowledges the catalytic impact of Christian notions and means of conversion, he refrains from historicizing the economic theory of religion itself. Instead, he continues to operate within the ontology of the market model, pointing to the Buddhist response as a largely universal reaction to market pressures and de-monopolization, and paying only limited attention to how the plausibility of such a market ontology itself is established in this context. For a similar study on Bombay see Green (2011).
It is significant that the authors frequently underscore this argument with references to Grace Davie’s (1990) formula of “believing without belonging,” thus again implying that it is belonging that is ultimately at stake among competing religious suppliers; see, e.g., Stark and Finke (2000, p. 72).
Nelson and Gorski (2014, pp. 14–15) have criticized the supply-side approach for not accounting for “the structure or, indeed, the existence, of the [religious] ‘firm’” and similarly point to “the colonial failure of traditional parochial reproduction” as a source of what they call “de-parochialized” forms of religious organization.
For an equally anti-Catholic and much more favorable interpretation of original Buddhism as “Protestant” reformation of idolatrous and priestly Brahmanism see Almond (1988, pp. 73–75).
Christianity had of course been introduced long before in these contexts, either through migration or through prior missionary influence. However, Coptic Christians in Egypt formed a tolerated ethnic minority without notable missionary ambitions as noted in the text, while missionary activities in India and Sri Lanka had been mostly confined to the maritime provinces under European control before the British occupation; furthermore, such activities had lacked the sustained polemics in the spoken and printed word that nineteenth-century evangelicals aimed at native religions (Frykenberg 2008; Malalgoda 1976; Sharkey 2004).
Religious revivalists were often heavily influenced by Orientalist ideas of a once pristine religion having deteriorated into superstition and ritualism, an idea also maintained by many missionaries, and often saw their own apologetic efforts as part of a broader agenda to “restore” what they imagined as the original teaching of their spiritual tradition (Jones 1976; Numark 2011; Seneviratne 1999).
It is of interest that Woodberry (2012) points to the introduction of many of the evangelistic techniques discussed here in order to account for the finding that countries with previous exposure to “conversionary Protestants” are more likely to exhibit stable liberal democracies. For him, Protestant efforts of enabling the masses to make an informed religious choice were crucial in the development of such democratic institutions as a public sphere, printing, and mass education. Furthermore, Woodberry argues that the (often competitive) emulation of Protestant forms of voluntary association and special-purpose groups firmly established the organizational “idiom” characteristic of civil society activism and political advocacy. From our perspective, then, the repercussions of performatively generating a religious economy may be said to extend beyond the strictly religious realm.
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I am grateful to the three AJCS referees for their constructive comments and suggestions.
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Petzke, M. Performing the religious economy in nineteenth-century evangelical missions: a “third-way” approach to studying religious markets. Am J Cult Sociol 7, 321–349 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41290-018-0062-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41290-018-0062-1