America's religious freedom and toleration is unique in world history. We have an agreement to live and let live.

But in most countries throughout world history, some form of religion binds the community together, giving it shared values and purpose. This raises the question: Does America have a substitute religion that attempts to address these issues? A recent book suggests that American society attempts to place economics in this role of substitute religion.

In Economics as Religion: From Samuelson to Chicago and Beyond, Robert H. Nelson of the University of Maryland argues that economics offers a gospel of progress and the salvation of prosperity. Nelson's thesis is that the economics profession constitutes the new priestly class of the modern, materialistic, scientific world.

There are three distinct claims implicit in his argument.

First, the religion of the modern world is scientific materialism. The modern world trusts only what it can see through the natural senses and what it can verify scientifically. Nonmaterial explanations and indeed, even nonmaterial phenomena, are inadmissible and must be explained away or ignored. Second, the older ministerial classes of Christianity are no longer relevant to the modern world. Finally, the modern world needs some form of priestly class to give people plausible reasons to believe in its religion of materialism and to follow the tenets it prescribes.

For example, according to the modern gospel of progress, the source of evil in the world is poverty.

Properous people will not be motivated to rob, steal and cheat. Satisfied people will be able to get along with one another, be generous and avoid conflict. Therefore, we solve the problem of sin by eliminating poverty and satisfying material wants. We can redeem ourselves if we can only solve the problem of poverty. Economists become the new high priests of the modern world, because they alone can plumb the mysteries of the marketplace and help to bring about the heaven on earth of wealth and plenty.

In my judgment, Nelson's provocative book provides an accurate description of both the state of American society and the role of the economics profession within it. At no time, however, does he claim that this secular religion is in any sense, “true” or even a satisfactory substitute for traditional religions. Indeed, Nelson seems highly skeptical that this is the case.

As Catholics, we can be quite confident that material abundance does not solve the problem of sin and evil. The opening chapters of Genesis take an exactly contrary position. Adam and Eve had everything they could have wanted. Whatever else might have been the problem in the Garden of Eden, it certainly was not scarcity. The author of Genesis points us in a different direction altogether and offers an alternative explanation.

The problem of sin is profoundly related to the problem of human freedom. Adam and Eve knew what God wanted them to do. They had every reason to love him and to trust him to know what was really in their best interests. The snake appeals to their pride, and tells them, “you shall be as gods.”

If they were going to disobey God, no material cause would work, since all their material needs were satisfied effortlessly.

Nothing in the environment prompted them, compelled them or induced them to take this risk. Only some intellectual sin, such as pride or envy, could provide a sufficient motivation for recklessly risking all the material benefits that God provided them.

Genesis locates the source of sin squarely within the human psyche. The disorder in the human condition proceeds from the inside out, not from the outside in.

Now, as a good economist and empiricist, I want to look at these two competing accounts of sin to see which one has better explanatory power.

Look, for instance, at one of the reflexive responses to the Sept. 11 hijackers. Why do they hate us? It must be because of poverty. But this explanation dissolves when we realize that most of the hijackers were from affluent families. What should we do to make the Muslim world less hostile toward us? Most of the explanations revolve around some form of material resources: land from Israel, wealth from us, better (meaning more Western) education. But Muslim anger seems to stem from nonmaterial causes: indignities inflicted at Israeli checkpoints, embarrassment at being left behind by history when they were once the most vigorous empire in the world.

Addressing material conditions, however helpful it might be in a humanitarian sense, will not eliminate this source of anger. Wounded pride, not poverty, is a better explanation for “why they hate us.”

The theory behind the Great Society was that we could eliminate poverty by giving money to poor people. The theology of progress says that poverty is the root cause of violence, crime, spouse abuse, child abuse, drug use and other dysfunctions. If we give people a chance to survive in some kind of material comfort, they will no longer be as desparate and criminally inclined. But few people today believe this any longer. It seems equally likely that bad choices cause poverty rather than poverty causing bad choices.

Who are we? Why are we here and where are we going? What do we stand for? What won't we stand for?

These questions do not simply disappear, even if everyone supports a tacit agreement that it is bad manners to talk about them in public. The American religion of perpetual progress does not adequately answer these questions. We should be satisfied with a more modest economics profession that helps us solve our material problems. We would be better off letting religion do what only religion can do, which is to help us find the meaning of life and to figure out how a good person ought to live.

Economics is doing a fine job doing economics but a lousy job of doing religion.

Jennifer Roback Morse is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author of Love & Economics: Why the Laissez-Faire Family Doesn't Work (Spence, 2001).