Church membership historically functioned as a reliability signal in business

Evidence

In 1904, on a long railroad journey throughout America, the German sociologist Max Weber was sitting next to a traveling salesman when the conversation turned to religion. In a now famous quote, the man said: “Sir for my part everybody may believe or not believe as he pleases; but if I saw a farmer or a businessman not belonging to any church at all, I wouldn’t trust him with fifty cents. Why pay me, if he doesn’t believe in anything?” — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 209

Categorization

• CANDY: The Weber salesman quote—‘if he doesn’t believe in anything’—is a compact, memorable anecdote for elevator conversation.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s Big-God mechanism: belief in anything that places a person under moral constraint functions as a trust cue for strangers.