Since the early 20th century, economics has been the dominant discourse in English-speaking countries, displacing Christian theology from its previous position of authority. This path-breaking book is a major contribution to the interdisciplinary dialogue between economics and religion. Oslington tells the story of natural theology shaping political economy in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, emphasising continuing significance of theological issues for the discipline of economics. Early political economists such as Adam Smith, Josiah Tucker, Edmund Burke, William Paley, TR Malthus, Richard Whately, JB Sumner, Thomas Chalmers and William Whewell, extended the British scientific natural theology tradition of Francis Bacon, Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton to the social world. This extension nourished and shaped political economy as a discipline, influencing its theoretical framework, but perhaps more importantly helping legitimate political economy in the British universities and public policy circles. Educating the public in the principles of political economy had a central place in this religiously driven program. Natural theology also created tensions (especially reconciling economic suffering with divine goodness and power) that eventually contributed to its demise and the separation of economics from theology in mid-19th-century Britain. This volume highlights aspects of the story that are neglected in standard histories of economics, histories of science and contemporary theology. Political Economy as Natural Theology is essential reading for all concerned with the origins of economics, the meaning and purpose of economic activity and the role of religion in contemporary policy debates.

Political Economy as Theodicy: Progress, Suffering and Denial proposes that political economics operates within a theological symbolic order that dictates modern sociopolitical and economic life as a whole. This book revisits the work of key figures in the history of political economy and economic thought – primarily Adam Smith, Bernard Mandeville, David Hume, Thomas Malthus, W. Stanley Jevons, Alfred Marshall and John Bates Clark. Theodicy is a constitutive element of an international political economy (IPE) that often disavows moral evil, while it conversely redefines such evil as an actual good within economic life. Beginning with the Enlightenment thinkers and continuing through to the modern neoclasscial economists, this book traces the initial emergence of a natural theological basis for political economic thinking and concludes with a discussion of its application in modern IPE. Relying upon a postcolonial framework, the author seeks to provincialize economics, creating space for alternative modes of being and doing. This book will appeal to scholars and advanced students of IPE, political theology, international relations and postcolonial studies.

The new interdisciplinary field of Christianity and economics deals with the important and difficult questions that cluster at the boundary of these disciplines, drawing on contemporary theory and empirical findings in both fields, with roots in older discourses. This landmark volume surveys the field and advances the discussion. It deploys historical, economic, and theological analysis to search for answers.

This work details the theological sources and moral significance of the life and work of the Scottish moral philosopher Adam Smith (1723–1790). The panel of contributors deepens our understanding of Adam Smith in his religious and theological context and the significance of this understanding for contemporary moral, economic, and political challenges to modern social life. The chapters cover a broad range of disciplinary and historical concerns, from Smith’s view of providence and his famous "invisible hand" to the role of self-interest and benevolence in Smith’s social and economic thought. A better appreciation for the moral and theological dimensions of Smith’s thought provides not only a better understanding of Smith’s own context and significance in the Scottish Enlightenment but also promises to assist in meeting the perennial challenges of properly connecting economic realities to moral responsibility. The book is of interest to advanced students and scholars of the history of economic thought, historical and moral theology, intellectual history, political science, and philosophy.

Political economy and Christian theology coexisted happily in the intellectual world of the eighteenth century. During the nineteenth century they came to be seen as incompatible, even mutually hostile. In the twentieth century they went their separate ways and are no longer on speaking terms. These fourteen essays by Anthony Waterman serve as snapshots of the history of this estrangement, and illustrate the gradual replacement of the discourse of theology by that of economics as the rational framework of political debate. Others have recently shown that both political economy and Christian theology are important, though somewhat neglected elements in modern intellectual history. This book is the first to combine these two lines of inquiry.

This book is the first English-language monograph about Bishop Joseph Butler (1692–1752) by Japanese scholars. It is an especially interesting and controversial message coming as it does from Japan, a well-developed secular economic state where less than 1% of the population are Christians and opposing the recent trend of curtailing the eighteenth-century political economy into religiosity and theology. This multidisciplinary edited book presents a different and new perspective from the recent work of Oslington et al., which seeks to reduce the political economy of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain to religiosity and theology, triggered by the writings of A. M. C. Waterman. Unlike those works, the present one aims to re-examine the largely forgotten Butler, who was said in the nineteenth century to be the most influential cleric and preacher in the Church of England of the previous century— not just as a clerical ideologue, but mainly as a proto-political economist before Adam Smith. In order to achieve this goal, first, the authors clarify that Butler's theory of conscience and probability, which began with passion and selfishness, was created with the development of eighteenth-century commercial society in mind. Second, the manner in which Butler's discourse was directed not at anti-Anglicans or eminent intellectuals, but at the majority of ordinary secular society, is explored. How it was consistent with and defended their sentiments and economic behavior, not only in Analogy but mainly in Fifteen Sermons, is also investigated and explained. Finally, readers see that Butler's antirational grasp of humanity and empiricist epistemology, based on “probability” presented in these inquiries, can in fact be considered a pioneering expression of the methodological premises of modern economics.

The Oxford History of Anglicanism is a major new and unprecedented international study of the identity and historical influence of one of the world's largest versions of Christianity. This global study of Anglicanism from the sixteenth century looks at how was Anglican identity constructed and contested at various periods since the sixteenth century; and what was its historical influence during the past six centuries. It explores not just the ecclesiastical and theological aspects of global Anglicanism, but also the political, social, economic, and cultural influences of this form of Christianity that has been historically significant in western culture, and a burgeoning force in non-western societies today. The chapters are written by international exports in their various historical fields which includes the most recent research in their areas, as well as original research. The series forms an invaluable reference for both scholars and interested non-specialists. Volume three of The Oxford History of Anglicanism explores the nineteenth century when Anglicanism developed into a world-wide Christian communion, largely, but not solely, due to the expansion of the British Empire. By the end of this period an Anglican Communion had come into existence as a diverse conglomerate of often competing Anglican identities with their often unresolved tensions and contradictions, but also with some measure of genuine unity. The volume examines the ways the various Anglican identities of the nineteenth century are both metropolitan and colonial constructs, and how they influenced the wider societies in which they formed Anglican Churches.

The Oxford History of Anglicanism is a major new and unprecedented international study of the identity and historical influence of one of the world's largest versions of Christianity. This global study of Anglicanism from the sixteenth century looks at how was Anglican identity constructed and contested at various periods since the sixteenth century; and what was its historical influence during the past six centuries. It explores not just the ecclesiastical and theological aspects of global Anglicanism, but also the political, social, economic, and cultural influences of this form of Christianity that has been historically significant in western culture, and a burgeoning force in non-western societies today. The chapters are written by international exports in their various historical fields which includes the most recent research in their areas, as well as original research. The series forms an invaluable reference for both scholars and interested non-specialists. Volume three of The Oxford History of Anglicanism explores the nineteenth century when Anglicanism developed into a world-wide Christian communion, largely, but not solely, due to the expansion of the British Empire. By the end of this period an Anglican Communion had come into existence as a diverse conglomerate of often competing Anglican identities with their often unresolved tensions and contradictions, but also with some measure of genuine unity. The volume examines the ways the various Anglican identities of the nineteenth century are both metropolitan and colonial constructs, and how they influenced the wider societies in which they formed Anglican Churches.