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