"Nelson provides a huge service to students of religion in his attempts to place economics . . . in conversation with theology." —The Christian Century

"Market economics is best understood as a religion. When I first read this claim in a book by Robert Nelson . . . I had doubts. . . . [But] the more one thinks about the function of market economics in modern society, the stronger the case gets for treating it as a religion." —The Financial Times

"In his groundbreaking study, Robert Nelson explores the genesis, the prophets, the prophesies, and the tenets of what he sees as a . . . religion of economics that has come into full blossom in latter-day America." —America: The National Catholic Weekly

"As a history of modern neoclassical economic theory, [Nelson's book] is exemplary. An exceedingly well-written book." —Journal of Economic Issues

"Nelson does not regard 'theology' as a cuss word, and so his detailed study of the theology underlying Samuelsonian and Chicagoan economics is not a put-down. It's a way of seeing the rhetoric of fundamental belief—what has been called vision. Nelson . . . speaks with authority from within the field. . . . His grasp of modern economics is broad and firm. And so in theology, too. It's an important, even an amazing book: Luther meets Smith." —Deirdre McCloskey, University of Illinois at Chicago

"I've been reading a wonderful book which I recommend to all of you interested in public policy. It's by Robert H. Nelson, Professor of Public Affairs at the University of Maryland, called Economics as Religion: From Samuelson to Chicago and Beyond. ...
He attacks the idea of economists who believe—or want to believe—their work to be value free. He became convinced that clashes in policy, although overlaid with secular rhetoric, were in fact religious in character. They were replacing God, or they were making a god, of the marketplace. There was a priesthood. You had to have the true faith and be a believer in order to be saved.

Very profound assumptions about ultimate issues of life are inevitably built into the arid economic policies that shape how we live. He concludes, therefore, that economists of today are more truly the heirs of Thomas Aquinas and Martin Luther— not of scientists like Isaac Newton or Albert Einstein. What Nelson wants is that economists—as well as ethically alert citizens and socially active believers in religious traditions—recognize these profound assumptions, which are part and parcel of public policy, including the most purportedly scientific variants.

I won't go on about this deeply enriching and fascinating book, because I hope you're going to read it." —Adrienne Clarkson, Governor General of Canada, Speech to the Institute for Research on Public Policy, Ottawa, Canada, May 28, 2002.