Over the last decade, an increasing body of research in political science has been examining the cognitive and emotional factors that influence behavior in political settings. Such work has, for example, studied how the decision-making of citizens or political elites deviates from the predictions of rational choice theory. This so-called Behavioral Political Science—a label coined by Alex Mintz, Nicholas Valentino, and Carly Wayne (2022) in Beyond Rationality—has demonstrated its empirical relevance by now. Still, in his masterful The Divine Economy, Paul Seabright convincingly shows that adopting a principally economic, rational choice approach can also be of immense value.

The Divine Economy focuses on religion: the broad range of human activities that involve, in direct or indirect ways, contact with invisible spirits who influence events in the world and who may respond to appropriate calls from humans (p. 36). The book is structured along three big questions about religion: What does it look like in the world today? How do religions gain their power? And how do religions use and abuse their power?

Seabright’s discussion of the development of religion from our ancestors to the modern age debunks the widely held view that individual religiosity is declining. Notwithstanding a decrease in religiosity in some countries (e.g., Ireland and Spain) and in North America, on a global scale, individual religiosity is rising. Seabright also shows that because they have developed organizationally, including how they communicate with their members, the two fastest-growing religions—Islam and Christianity—are unlikely to lose their standing or growth potential any time soon.

To explain how religions have gained their power and how they use or abuse this power, Seabright’s core argument is that religious movements must be seen as special kinds of businesses: platforms. Religious movements are businesses in that they compete over economic and human resources—foremost, money and commitment—to survive and flourish. They are platforms because they enable relationships that would not exist without them: communities in which members share narratives and individual and collective acts of prayer and ritual and in which they can engage in practical reciprocity (p. 22).

Viewing religious movements as platforms means that the behavior of a diverse set of actors is strategic. From the poor young woman we get introduced to on the book’s opening pages, who donates over 10% of her minimal income to her church, to politicians who instrumentalize religion, and to religious movements that pursue violence against rival movements or within their own: the behavior of all of them can be explained by rational calculus (even if they may not view it that way themselves). For example, political leaders may decide to share legitimacy with a religious movement as a vote-seeking strategy, aiming to appeal to those voters who follow their religious leader when casting their vote. Or they take this decision rather for policy-seeking reasons, namely, to help legitimate tough decisions about war or repression through a religious narrative of ‘sacrifice and loss’ (p. 13). When religious leaders are willing to support such political causes, they typically do so out of self-interest, so they act strategically. Through historical examples, Seabright shows that this shared legitimacy typically does not end well for both political leaders and religious movements: while there may be short-term gains to collaboration, these come with long-term costs (deteriorating political standing, declining membership).

The platform model of religion is especially insightful in explaining religiously motivated violence. It explains both why religious communities turn to violence—namely, for strategic purposes—and to whom this violence is oriented. Violence is, for example, directed against members of their own community when community norms are violated and against a distant rival religious community (e.g., different world religions) when there is competition for material assets (land or business opportunities) or political ones (access to power) (p. 253). The higher the competition between specific religious communities, the higher the probability of violence.

With its focus on three big questions on religion, Seabright covers a lot of ground. Next to the—prominent—economic perspective that informs the platform model, the book draws also on numerous insights from history, anthropology, sociology, psychology, political science, and biology. While this is certainly a major strength of the book, it also comes with the price that arguments are at times somewhat underdeveloped. This holds, for example, for the argument—supported by current developments—that politicians in the United States have been instrumentalizing religion (p. 262). This country is in a process from religion being politically neutral to it being politically partisan, so Seabright argues. Since the latter is argued to be only attractive for the conservative side of the political spectrum, this will result in further declining levels of religiosity until a relatively low level of 30% to 40% (which will take time). This is an observational implication that can, in due course, be tested. What is theoretically less clear is why politicians in the United States have started to instrumentalize religion on a more massive scale when the share of the population for whom religion is (very) important had already started to decline and not earlier. This leads to questions like: Under which conditions do politicians turn to instrumentalization, and with what effects? Are these conditions and effects different across countries? Seabright’s economic, rational choice angle reveals its limits here. Relatedly, if politicians strategize carefully, why have they then not learned from the ample historical examples that demonstrate the long-term costs incurred by political leaders or regimes that have turned to religion? For such answers, complementing this work with insights from behavioral political science would be useful.

This caveat aside, the value of Seabright’s economic approach to religion is beyond doubt. Paul Seabright’s The Divine Economy makes for an amazing read for experts and the wider public alike. Very warmly recommended.