Pat Gunning writes:  
  
"Hmmmmmm. Religious economics? Perhaps it can find a haven within   
heterodox economics?  
  
It is difficult for me to make sense of the notion that there is some   
special branch of economics called "religious economics." We must   
acknowledge that many of the contributors to economic thought were   
ministers of a church and, like Adam Smith, moral philosophers. BUT   
DIDN'T ALL OF THIS END BEFORE THE TURN OF THE 20TH CENTURY?"  
  
(My emphasis.)  
  
No, not really.  
  
J.D. Rockefeller, a hard-shelled Baptist, bankrolled the U of Chicago and  
made another such Baptist, Wm. Rainey Harper, the first president. Harper  
selected the first Chair of Economics, who bent the twig, with results we  
still see today. Those wanting to share in Rockefeller's bounty got the  
message - after all, doesn't positive economics teach one to follow the  
money?  
  
Richard T. Ely's old text was the bread-and-butter one for decades. Ely  
professed Christianity, and was active in church affairs.  Ditto for J.B.  
Clark.  
  
Popes Leo XIII and Pius XI issued influential encyclicals reviving Thomism,  
which worked its way into FDR's policies.  FDR hired lots of economists, who  
helped control prices, organize neo-guilds in labor, industry, and farming,  
issue cheap credit, etc.  
  
After the Palmer Raids, anti-communism became a religion of blind faith,  
with an urgent need to combat Marx's anti-clericalism. Today if you work for  
Bush, or any of the subsidized think-tanks who preach (a religious term)  
sanctity (another religious term) of contract and property, you'd better not  
question the Texas-style fundamentalism that suffuses his speeches - but now  
it's turned against Islam instead of Marxism. Oh, yes, for a brief period it  
was the anti-drug campaign, and let's remember Prohibition, and ...  
Americans have to be crusading (a religious term) for or against something.  
Politicians know it, and politicians hire economists, who follow the money  
and jobs, because that is what their religion (modern economic theory) tells  
them good people do.  
  
High in our ivory towers there may be a non-theistic economics that is  
unaffected by all that, but somehow what passes for modern micro-theory  
bends students' minds against egalitarianism, progressive taxation, property  
taxation, death duties, and all those things that Bush doesn't like.    
  
Where, by the way, is the modern positive economist who objects to the  
tax-exemption of churches?  
  
Mason Gaffney