The Wealth of Religions
Edited by Rachel McCleary and Robert Barro
Princeton, 160pp, £24/$29.95
I can only assume that I am the target of an elaborate practical joke. A time machine seems to have transported me back several decades and the theories of Max Weber (epitomised by his The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, first published in English in 1930) are still being taken seriously.
You’ll know the gist of Weber’s audacious, brilliant and entirely bonkers idea. It’s the one where religion doesn’t really have much to do with God or faith and focuses a great deal on functionalism and inventive sociological analysis.
