The problem of religion and economic relations in Max Weber's work requires reinterpretations of “The Ethics of Protestantism and the Spirit of Capitalism.” To study this problem, it is necessary to elucidate the relationship between “the Protestantism” thesis and the wide range of arguments discussed in Weber's sociological works. In this paper, I point out the following three factors. First, Weber refused to give an essential definition of the concept of “religion,” unlike the concepts of “economy” or “law,” and we can see that his work on the sociology of religion reflected the religious academia of the time Second, his sociology of religion has two directions, historical research and theoretical research, which shows that both were closely related. One historical study is theoretical and uses “the ideal type,” while the other theoretical study included the results of historical research such as “the Protestantism” thesis. Weber's work on the sociology of religion became more sophisticated through the mutual linkage of the two. Third, the argument regarding the theodicy problem can be interpreted as a problem of economic disparity. The theodicy problem is important to understand relations between religion and economy in order to elucidate that religious ethics legitimizes the various logics that drive people toward labor.

At the time of acquisition of modern citizenship in the West, Jews had already established a sophisticated economic community in which they were accustomed to behave in the spirit of the economic morality of bourgeoisie. K. Marx referred to it as a behavior of the ordinary Jew distinguished from the Sabbath Jew. It meant that upon the rigid separation of the sacred and the profane in Judaism, Jews could behave devoutly in the Sabbath days and other holy days, while Jewish economic life had been secularized in ordinary economic transactions on weekdays. This article analyzes the origin and development of this economic view in Jewish legal documents of the Halakhah.

The Bible regarded the acquisition of interest between Jews as a kind of torts which men of power exerted toward the weak and poor people, and then the Mishnah took it as a kind of torts of transaction. In the Middle ages, non-profit money lending was regarded as a greater act than charity, Tsedakah in Hebrew, in the codex of Halakhah of Maimonides. Then in the early Modern period, the authoritative codex of Shulhan Arukh ordained that the transaction of money lending with fair interest between Jews was permissible as well as between Jew and Gentile, because the lender shared the risk of loss with the borrower. Here the dual morality concerning money lending with interest was resolved.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between religion and management from the viewpoint of the management study of religion. In religious studies, the word “management” conveys an odd image. There are two factors at play here. First, the word management instantly brings to mind images of “profit making” or “profit seeking.” Second, the concept of managing a religious organization is inherently different to that of running a business entity. Obviously, however, both religious organizations and companies are socially constructed by human actions. In this sense, these two should be analyzed in the same arena. Therefore, scholars of religion may have something to learn from scholars of company, and vice versa. As a first step, I discuss the perspective of the management study of religion. Next, I discuss the relationship between religious thoughts and management philosophies. Then, I examine the similarities between religious organizations and companies. Finally, in order to deepen discussions on the similarities between the two, I focus on the “secrets of management,” which is a common problem both in religion and companies.

In this paper I have examined meanings and functions of the Robe-selling ritual from two viewpoints: from that of economics and funeral rites. First, the ritual brings economic benefits to a monastery and monks in general. Monks get dividends from the revenue of the auction, and a monastery gets earnings from the pure profit, besides some of the properties of the dead. Since the dead gets the funeral done by a monastery, it should also be pointed out that by placing belongings in a monastery's charge even the dead gets benefit.

Second, seen from a context of funeral rites, the ritual has to do with a renewal of a community from the dangers of death. The ritual is carried out during the time after the most fearful danger of death is gone. The problem left at that moment is how to deal with personal effects left in a monastery, which are easily regarded as representations of death. As the ritual creates a small market for a while, these representations of death can be transformed into mere commercial goods which are bid off or bought by money. So the performance of the ritual, in which the nature of representations of death left in a monastery are transformed, facilitates in a way a renewal of a monastery endangered by death.

Financial statements of religious communities—such as activity plans, reports, budgets, and settlement of accounts—published by various Buddhist sects every year are valuable data showing their current economic condition.

We can also understand economic conditions on the basis of an attitude survey of respective religious communities conducted from the latter part of the 20th century.

In this article, these data (to which attention has rarely been paid in research papers in the past) were used to mainly discuss the economics of Buddhism and Christianity in Japan today. For this purpose, the field surveys conducted by the author himself for 20 years has been analyzed. Buddhist sects, which had managed their communities by dues and such gained from respective temples, worked out countermeasures against difficulties in maintaining them; but drastic reforms focusing on further slow growth and depopulation are not yet accomplished. In Christian societies, even a pension system of their own is difficult to maintain.

If we keep in mind the life of each believer and think of not only the maintenance of respective temples and churches but also that of an entire religious community, drastic reforms will be necessary to take into consideration the reduction of the scale of organizations that were done by incorporated educational institutions and other organizations.

The theoretical core of the economics of religion is the rational choice theory of religion that follows the principle that individuals act rationally, weighing the costs and benefits of potential actions, and choosing those actions that maximize their net benefits. The economics of religion insists that the advantage of this principle of rational choice is that it makes it clear that religious behavior is often quite rational, rather than a consequence of mere ignorance, superstition, or wishful thinking. This paper assesses the validity of the theory of the economics of religion by comparing it with the Pascal's wager. Pascal showed that a rational person who compelled to bet on whether God exists or not should bet on the existence of God. The argument over the Pascal's wager helps us to examine the concept of rationality in the economics of religion. In conclusion, this paper acknowledges the significance of the economics of religion as far as it hypothetically presents the logical rationality of the believers in religions found from the viewpoint of external observers. However, the economics of religion is at fault to assert that religious behavior is rational on the grounds that the economics of religion can find the rationality in that way.

This study deals with the transition of the term “oikonomia” from the ancient Greek, and aims to locate its meaning in early Christianity. Oikonomia in Greek denoted a household, that is, managing one's own house and belongings. In stoic thought, the original meaning of the “house” was extended to the universe, and oikonomia came to mean the administration of the world. Similarly, in early Christianity, it was thought that God controlled creatures. One of the reasons why this general word has come to acquire a theological meaning has its roots in the question as to whether evil coexisted with God's administration of the world. The Gnostics assigned its administration to the imperfect Demiurge; however, the patristic fathers demonstrated that it belonged to God through the theory of Christ the Logos.

The commercial practice of Islamic finance, which is based on religious beliefs, started in the 1970s, and has since rapidly penetrated all over the world. Prior to the rise of this practice, those who desired the revival of the Islamic economic system in the modern world formulated two agreements on the practice as an ideal structure of the Islamic financial system. One is “mudaraba consensus,” that is, all financial products should be provided through profit-loss sharing modes; the other is “interest-riba consensus,” that is, any rates of interests should be prohibited in Islamic finance because interest and riba are considered synonymous. However, when we trace back the history of Islamic finance, it is clear that both agreements have not been fully implemented in practice. Islamic finance has always struggled with a gap between ideas and reality. Recently, some “heretical” scholars started a new discussion that reconsiders these agreements for bridging the gap. Such an attempt has great potential to open up a new horizon for Islamic finance in the post-capitalist era, although it could break the very identity of Islamic finance.

This paper examines the space of folk religious practice re-formed in the central part of Amdo, which is undergoing transitional modernization under state-led development.

The “Development West” project on the contemporary Tibetan Plateau started in 2000 and has continued now for over 16 years. As part of this project, the infrastructure network comprising huge dams, the power network supplied by hydroelectric power stations, highways and airports, the Qinghai-Tibet railway, and the 3G broadband networks are now widely covering the Tibetan rural communities. The complex of modernity spread by this state-led development has had an extensive influence on the holy places in Tibet that were previously isolated from society by being located in inhospitable natural environments. Such entangled situations where religiosity and modernity are deployed intricately in the physical space of a holy place cannot be sufficiently grasped by a traditional Buddhism-centered approach, which has analyzed the structure of the holy place by examining the cosmological framework given to the natural space.

In this article, after acknowledging the fundamental fact that the holy place is a physical space, I examine how the structure of the holy place that was materialized by interpreting “natural space” as “pure land” is influenced by a market-oriented modernity that pervades the holy place from the outside.

This article is a survey that clarifies the theoretical development and historical significance of “workplace spirituality.” There has been much debate on this topic since the start of the 21st century, mainly in business management studies written in English. Workplace spirituality has been presented as a multi-dimensional construction of the data collected from managers and employees, and at the same time, as a set of values of communitarian ethics of virtues. Its components consist of the amelioration of alienation, respect for the diversity of employees, and intolerance against corporate injustice. On the other hand, critics point out the danger of corporatism, the instrumentalization of spirituality, the resemblance to cults, and increasing lawsuits regarding religious freedom. These debates reflect the historical process of trial and error to reconcile economic activities with religion. One can regard workplace spirituality as a contemporary form of nurturing spiritual capital that has been transmitted against the current of secularization and modernization. Finally, I propose some topics related to workplace spirituality to be studied in Japanese society.

The aim of this paper is to discuss theoretically the transformation of modern religion in consumer society from the viewpoint of the market, focusing on the influence of consumerism on society. First of all, R. Stark's famous economic market model in the theory of sociology of religion shall be critically discussed. Instead of his model, I will pay more attention to W. Roof's “spiritual market place” and “psychological quest orientation.” These ideas can be useful in analyzing religious trends in advanced industrial societies, even though these concepts were originally drawn from the analysis of the religious consciousness and behavior of Baby Boomers. Then I will discuss a concept of “therapeutic self,” and religious tourism seemingly targeting that self, referring to the argument of consumption theories. Finally, I would like to suggest that when karui-shūkyō, or “floating religion” emerges in the situation where the religious and non-religious market merge, the dichotomous theoretical argument―either secularization or sacralization―is not useful for examining religious transformation in consumer society.