Stories Economists Tell: Studies in Christianity and Economics.

• Author: Hill, P.J.
• Position: Book review

* Stories Economists Tell: Studies in Christianity and Economics By John P. Tiemstra Eugene, Ore.: Pickwick, 2012. Pp. xiii, 191. $18.40 paperback.

A wide range of people from diverse backgrounds, perspectives, and worldviews practice the discipline of economics. When there is enough commonality among some practitioners, they may coalesce into an organized group for both fellowship and discussion of the academic discipline they practice. Such is the case with economists who adhere to the Christian faith. For some time, there has been robust interchange among Christian economists as to the relevance of the Christian faith to economics. In 1982, a formal organization, the Association of Christian Economists (ACE), was formed and now counts some four hundred members. It publishes a journal, Faith and Economics, and sponsors sessions at the Allied Social Science Association meetings, and its members often organize conferences that take up the intersection of Christianity and economics.

John Tiemstra has been a longtime member of ACE (as have I) and the most outspoken critic of how Christian economists do economics. It is very useful, therefore, to have a compilation of many of his writings. Stories Economists Tell consists of fifteen short essays Tiemstra published between 1988 and 2009. With them, one is able to follow his thinking over twenty years. The chapters are organized into four categories: Christian theology and economic methodology; government, business, and society; economy and the environment; and globalization and competitiveness.

The first section on methodology is the most interesting because it is here that Tiemstra has been the most vocal critic of much of other economists' work, especially Christian economists. His methodological problems with economics have remained quite consistent over time. He believes that Christian economists should do economics, but they should do it differently from other economists. His primary criticism is the restrictive assumptions of the rational-choice model. Thus, he proposes a Christian economics that uses many of the standard tools of economics (p. 36) but moves beyond the standard neoclassical paradigm because, by "accepting as data only observed economic behavior, and not introspective reports concerning motives, values, and the like, economists have cut themselves off from an important source of information" (p. 23).

There are two responses to Tiemstra. First, the ability to explain...