By Shadi Hamid (a columnist and member of the Editorial Board at The Washington Post and Assistant Research Professor of Islamic Studies at Fuller Seminary),

Until recently, it may have seemed as if religion were on the way out. As people grew richer and more educated, the thinking went, they would begin to rely less on the solace and meaning provided by faith. That is what happened in much of western Europe, where church membership rates have cratered over the last century. According to a 2018 Pew study, only 11 percent of people in western European countries say religion is a very important part of their lives. Proponents of so-called modernization theory see religion as a defense mechanism, a hedge against chaos and depredation; religions would invariably lose adherents in a safer, more ordered and comfortable world. As recently as 2020, the political scientist Ronald Inglehart claimed in these pages that religion was in global decline. “As societies develop, survival becomes more secure,” he noted, adding, “And as this level of security rises, people tend to become less religious.” But a wider look at trends in religiosity reveals a more complex reality. The story of religion over the past century is not one of contraction but of continued growth and consolidation. That, at least, is the contention of the British economist Paul Seabright’s new book, The Divine Economy, in which he insists that “the world is coming to be dominated by a handful of religions to an extent that has never been seen before.”

Christianity and Islam—effectively the Walmarts and Apples of today’s religious marketplace. ... religions succeed and spread because they provide “goods” that humans need and want. The data bear this out: religious people tend, on average, to be happier, more fulfilled, and more connected with their fellow citizens than those who do not. ... religions have a built-in advantage: they are concerned with ultimate meaning in a way that secular ideologies are not. Communism and fascism, for example, failed in a way that Christianity and Islam cannot.

... In the real world, the effects of losing the scaffolding that religion provides are clear enough. The rise of so-called deaths of despair in the United Stateshas been most concentrated in the areas that have seen the largest decreases not in religious belief but in religious participation.... So they channel it elsewhere—increasingly into partisan politics. One might call this the paradox of secularization: that even if religion matters less for individuals, it can still matter more for society at large. Like love or friendship, religion can make its presence felt through its absence.

If there were a world in which people cared only about calculating their economic self-interest, the power of religion would be significantly blunted. But the world does not quite work that way—and, if Seabright’s analysis is any indication, it won’t any time soon.

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