Introduction

This chapter provides a brief intellectual framing for the chapters that will follow. We often think of the relationship between religion and democracy in terms of the public square, which we imagine as a political space where church and state interact. However, often the relationship between religion and democracy is mediated through commerce. Indeed, the “free market” in religion has been an organizing idea in American history, and often legal battles over “church–state” issues occur in the context of government regulation of market activity by religious believers. However, in discussions of democracy and religion, the role of markets and commerce has garnered very little explicit attention. This volume of essays tries to think more explicitly about the relationship between democracy, religion, and the market.