socialmedian: Religious stock and the belief crunch

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Religious stock and the belief crunch | Mark Vernon

Source: The Guardian

Nov 05, 2009

Summary

Buy Buddhism, sell Anglicanism? Be careful, because, just as in financial markets, shocks and bubbles can test your faith

Faith markets are perhaps like financial markets. After all, religions have become global: opinions and beliefs are traded every day in the world's cosmopolitan cities, much like stocks and shares. Faith markets might even have their own kind of securities, as people hedge against overpricing in their main faith holding by buying into the practices of a different philosophy – the Christian who reads the astrology columns, the Buddhist who interprets meditation through neuroscience.

Moreover, theologians appear to hold to the faith equivalent of the efficient market hypothesis. They tend to assume that their beliefs can withstand the external shocks of encountering other traditions, and further, that the eternal truth will out – perhaps as economists have believed that markets tend towards equilibrium.

Then again, that last point could be wrong. Rather like the economists who failed to foresee the credit crunch, sociologists failed to see that

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