Christianity Needs to Take Economics 101


Christianity, especially Christian churches and denominations are declining and need new strategies to hang on. They might help themselves by acknowledging churches and denominations are businesses in a crowded market and adjust accordingly. They have wrongly assumed they are monopolies and conduct their business as it they had the market power true monopolies have.

A monopoly, of course, is a market where there is only one supplier. Sometimes monopolies exist because there is some rare product that one firm owns and no one else has access to is. If there was only one source of uranium, for example, that firm would have a monopoly. I've read there are rare metals needed for electric car batteries. 

Even a company owning something rare has to be on the lookout for others searching for the same product or a substitute product. It needs what is called "barriers to entry." These might be laws or permits preventing other firms from finding the rare product. 

The ancients who wrote the Bible knew about monopoly power. They told readers bad things would happen to them is they did not do as advised. There was only one provider of what they needed. That is the definition of monopoly. Billions of people have believed the one supplier was the only supplier and they felt forced to buy there. The providers of the product, the ancient writers, warned not to buy from competitors because the competitors' products were inferior. 

One can see the remnants of the monopoly on websites today. "Come to Jesus." "Jesus is the one," "Jesus saves." etc. The problem for Christianity is people are now buying from competitors. People buying happiness can get it for free by ignoring the Bible and the preachers. When people buy from the competitors they find the product to be a good one. 

Those in the industry do not fully appreciate how good the competition is. If they realized the atheists have a good product they could up their own game to better compete. Economics 101 could help. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Maybe the "Original Sin" Should be Reassigned

Image
We can all agree most Catholic priests are fine people and not guilty of sexual abuse. What Catholics must face, however, it that their church harbors executives who are dishonest . There is an incredible story about the Argentine Bishop Zanchetta. The Pope worked with him in Argentina and they are considered friends. Around 2015 Zanchetta sent nude pictures of himself and they began circulating world wide. He also was too friendly with young seminarians and some left because of him.  Three different officials say they made formal complaints to the Vatican about Zanchetta between 2015 and 2017. Yet, in 2018, the Vatican claimed it was unaware of any complaints about Zanchetta. This might be a good time to repeat the Catholic hierarchy claims to have the sole authority handed down from Jesus to what the faith stands for. It condemns as sinners those who practice birth control, have abortions and gay sexual relationships. Handing the hierarchy this responsibility would make som
Read more

The Religious Capitol Invaders May Yet Win

Image
So much about U.S. society and religion can be learned from the Civil War and what happened afterwards. After its defeat, the South started a myth about the unethical soldiers from the North. The South fought for principles of God and states rights. The North did not. It was the South, this propaganda told the country, that had the high moral ground.  The Capitol invaders, encouraged by Trump, swallowed the myth that Biden's election was stolen. Thus, they think they held and still hold the high moral ground. This was reinforced by the cross and prayers during the invasion. Even with Trump is gone, we will see political opportunists like Senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley stroking crowds and feeding the same lies as Trump. Like "the South will rise again" these gullible followers will talk of victory over the unclean. After the Civil War the South rallied around the phrase, Lost Cause. For decades, and maybe to this day, there are ceremonies remembering fallen martyrs, Re
Read more

Father Frank Pavone, the Ultimate Crook

Image
Recently, the Vatican defrocked Frank Pavone. His diehard fans are outraged. This is because he cleverly manipulated his fans and the press all the while living well from donations and, apparently, abusing some women. By making abortion the "sin" of the century, and himself the main opposition to this one sin, he himself could get away with any sin he pleased.  As the link points out, Pavone was the perfect priest for the Trump era. Trump is so self-important laws have no role in his life. He felt accountable to no one. Women were there to be had. Pavone and Trump are interchangeable.  Pavone was very successful raising money. In his mind, abortion was so important in Catholic beliefs and he was so important in anti-abortion the money he raised opposing it was his to do with what he liked. The Catholic Church, the brand name he used to raise this money, thought the money belonged to it. When he gave the Vatican the bird, it gave him walking papers. With polls showing the majo
Read more