Wealth
WEALTH. The relationship between religion and wealth can be analyzed in various ways. Economists of all persuasions have stressed the negative impact of religion on wealth. Adam Smith believed that clergymen, like lawyers and buffoons, are members of an unproductive, frivolous profession. Today, many argue that religion is one of the principal causes of economic underdevelopment. For example, in places like rural Burma, more than 30 percent of the regional income is spent on monks, monasteries, and religious festivals. In India, belief in karman (the sum of one's actions in successive states of existence), dharma (duties defined by the religious caste system), and saṃśara (a cyclical sense of time and rebirth) has been widely criticized as a major cause of poverty. In Muslim countries, some believe that the Islamic law (sharīʿah), insofar as it sanctifies the religious secular customs of the past, has made modernization difficult and slow.
While the German sociologist Max Weber emphasized the negative role of the religions of the East, he also called attention to the positive impact that religions based on this-worldly asceticism have had on economic development. Weber contended that Calvinism provided the "spirit" necessary for the initial rise of capitalism in the West.
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