In this study, Robert H. 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. Nelson does not see ''theology'' as a bad word, and his examination of the theology underlying Samuelsonian and Chicagoan economics is not a put-down. It is a way of seeing the rhetoric of fundamental belief--what has been called ''vision.''