Nathan Nunn: belief

Transcript context

…How important a role do you assign to Christianity in the economic and scientific rise of the West? I would say I’m similar to Joe. It’s not so much Christianity . . . Actually, maybe I’m not so similar to Joe Henrich. I think the biggest effects were on these medieval policies of the Catholic Church that broke down lineages and extended family units and created the individual. I think that’s important. Joe also talks about moralizing gods and an afterlife being important. I’m still undecided about how important that is compared to these policies of the Catholic Church that created an individualistic psychology. I would also say, if we think of just purely economic development today in the contemporary period, I definitely don’t think it’s the case that one needs to convert to Christianity to be successful. I think that would be confusing causality or confusing correlations we observe historically with causality today. But wouldn’t converting to Christianity, at least predictively, be important today in the sense that it would predict ties to the West? You could dispute which is cause and which is effect. But if you just saw a particular African country or region have a lot of conversions to Christianity, as happened, say, in Ghana, wouldn’t you become more optimistic about that region?…

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