The Marketplace of Religions is Still Open

I have suggested here many times, somewhat with togue in cheek, that Sunday School lessons include a factual history of Christianity. This could include other great faiths like Hinduism and Islam. This history would include that there have been hundreds, probably thousands, of religions in human history. All of the previous ones died. The gods people worshipped in these dead religions died when that set of believers died off.

One fact of life that must have been true of all the dead religions is that their death, and the death of their gods, happened after they ran out of money. That is not to say believers or their shamans were out only for money, but money is and always has been necessary to keep gods alive. I have never read a better summary of the marketplace for religion than this one.

The academic discipline called economics dates to 1776 when the book, The Wealth of Nations, by Adam Smith was published. Smith spent considerable time discussing the economics of Christianity. Smith wrote a lot about religions. He pointed out that new religions with fresh ideas that better fit the times and what people were talking about currently will attract people away from old preaching.

During Smith's time Methodists were making inroads into Scotland, Smith home country. An orthodox preacher was angry at the new upstart and popular Methodists. He was quoted as saying about Methodist spellbinding preacher John Smythe

...how dare you go about preaching, setting the whole neighborhood out of their senses, and thinning my congregation.

Adam Smith noticed that preachers in successful churches of his time, the 1700's, to be quite comfortable and secure in their positions. They were not especially good at filling their churches. How better can we describe today's conservative Protestant and Catholic denominations. A book written by a pastor in the Lutheran Missouri Synod noted that while to denomination's members plummet, its finances are sound. This is discouraging, the pastor wrote, because the leaders will be less likely to allow modernization. Adam Smith and the discipline of economics still apply.