he rise and fall of civilizations and the economic study of religion are just two subjects for the cutting-edge scholarly research being supported by the Foundation’s $3.7 million Spiritual Capital Research Program. (Click here for a list of the 2006 Spiritual Capital Grants) Building on recent research into “Social Capital,” the term “Spiritual Capital” refers to the economic and social consequences of religion and spirituality.

In 2005, three distinguished scholars each received grants of $500,000 to lead teams of researchers in creating the basis for this new, interdisciplinary field. The grants are administered through the Metanexus Institute on Religion and Science and have a 30-month duration.

The first of the “Spiritual Capital” winners, Laurence Iannaccone, Koch Professor of Economics at George Mason University, is using economic analysis to study religion from a new perspective. His project, called, “Creating an ‘Ecology’ for the Study of Religion, Economics, and Spiritual Capital,” has already identified some important insights, many of which have not been previously addressed by other disciplines. “The economic approach to the study of religion has highlighted the value of competition and pluralism in the religious marketplace,” says Iannaccone. “As with other forms of competition, religious competition can be very salutary. It can result in more religion, more choices of religion and religious leaders who are more sensitive to providing choice.”

Looked at another way, successful religious leaders in America must be in-step with the same free-market realities that Starbucks and Wal-mart confront: If they are not meeting the needs of their parishioners, the parishioners will find another congregation.

Iannaccone and his research team believe competition, or its absence, is exactly what marks the difference between the vibrant religious marketplace in the United States, with approximately 1,400 choices, and the decline of participation in organized religion in Europe. By studying denominational growth, church attendance and religious giving, among other factors, he and his team have found that over 40 percent of the U.S. population attends church services weekly, compared to less than ten percent in countries such as Sweden, Norway and Denmark. “When you look at the United States over the last 200 years, a great many people predicted that the result of not having a tax-supported, official government church, was going to be a nation of nonbelievers. At the time, 1770-80, the examples everyone looked at were in Europe where you always had one main dominant church: the Catholic Church, the Church of Sweden and the Church of England. These churches were extensions of the governments and they were run by civil servants… What we ended up with in this country is religiously more dynamic and dedicated than virtually any European counterpart. In Europe, what religious vitality there is happens at the margins in the free churches that have no government support. If we know anything, we know about the inefficiencies of government-run monopolies. We’ve seen it everywhere from the post office to public schools. In recent years, this is one of the great insights of economics, that the same dynamic applies to religion.”

Iannaccone’s grant will culminate in several publications as well as scholarly gatherings. As the Director for the Center for the Economic Study of Religion at George Mason University, he is planning on parlaying this work into accelerating the development of the field of the economic study of religion as a whole. “For me,” Iannaccone says, “the chance to think about this field on a whole different level is pretty exciting.”