Religion and Politics

David Brat’s Hand of God Economics

In New York Times Magazine, Binyamin Appelbaum explores growing trend in the GOP to claim a relationship between religion and economic growth. Recently reinvigorated by David Brat, who claims that financial systems are successful only when their participants are virtuous, the attribution of economic growth to Protestant ethic is not new in scholarship, Appelbaum argues. “But whereas the Republican Party was once a coalition of capitalists and Christians, it’s increasingly populated by people who profess belief in both”—making Brat’s win a symbol of change in Republican economic thought.

Read at New York Times Magazine

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