John Nye: belief

Transcript context

…What is it you think we know about religion and economic growth, if indeed anything? I think, to the extent that what we think of as modern economic growth began in the West and was a very uniquely Western phenomenon in the modern sense, only later adapted by Japan and then more recently by many Asian economies, it’s clear that Christianity played a very big role. And I think one of the things that, say, Fukuyama mentions in one of his recent books, and others have mentioned, is the role the Catholic Church played in promoting the nuclear family: banning cousin marriage without special permission, focusing on trying to unify romantic love with formal marriage, asking for the consent of women in the marriage vows, focusing on the need for celibacy and the need for monogamy, discouraging polygamy and the extended family. All these things were part and parcel, or at least supported what we think of as the underlying institutions that nourish capitalism. Whether or not, say, for example, a more Eastern version of capitalism would have arisen under China with polygamy, with very soft pantheistic religions, that’s a separate question. But as we think of the way in which modern economic development has occurred, it’s also co-evolved with the rise of the Western state, which is tied to the rise of the way in which Christianity played out, both as a secular force as well as a spiritual one. The French author Michel Houellebecq, his novel Submission — why is that an important book?…

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