Faith in Markets: Christian Capitalism in the Early American Republic (Columbia Studies in the History of U.S. Capitalism)
Author: by Joseph P. Slaughter (Author)
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Publication Date: 2023-11-14
Language: English
Print Length: 400 pages
ISBN-10: 0231191111
ISBN-13: 9780231191111
Book Description
In the first half of the nineteenth century, the United States saw both a series of Protestant religious revivals and the dramatic expansion of the marketplace. Although today conservative Protestantism is associated with laissez-faire capitalism, many of the nineteenth-century believers who experienced these transformations offered different, competing visions of the link between commerce and Christianity. Joseph P. Slaughter offers a new account of the interplay between religion and capitalism in American history by telling the stories of the Protestant entrepreneurs who established businesses to serve as agents of cultural and economic reform. Faith in Markets examines three Christian business enterprises and the visions of a Christian marketplace they represented. Shaped by Pietist, Calvinist, and Arminian theologies, each offered different answers to the question of what a moral, Christian market should look like. George Rapp & Associates operated sophisticated textile factories as the business side of the model community the Harmony Society, which practiced communal living in pursuit of a harmonious workforce. The Pioneer Stage Coach Line provided transportation services only six days a week to keep Sunday sacred, attempting to reform society by outcompeting less pious businesses. The publisher Harper & Brothers sought to elevate American culture through commerce by producing virtuous products like lavishly illustrated Bibles. Drawing on a wide range of sources, Faith in Markets explores how the founders and owners of these enterprises infused their faith into their businesses and, in turn, how distinctly religious businesses shaped American capitalism and society.
Review
The long history of free enterprise in the United States cannot be understood without reckoning with the history of religion. Wherever a marketplace emerged it did so in loud engagement with Protestants who sought its use for varied theological and social ends. A critical intervention in the history of capitalism. — Kathryn Lofton, author of
Consuming ReligionIn
Faith in Markets, Slaughter expertly explores how early American Protestants grappled with the moral implications of capitalism. Neither fully embracing nor rejecting a laissez-faire market model, his protagonists sought to transform capitalism into a tool of moral uplift. This is a must-read book for anyone seeking to understand the roots of American Christianity’s relationship with capitalism. — Sharon Murphy, author of Banking on Slavery: Financing Southern Expansion in the Antebellum United StatesSlaughter’s study of ‘Christian business enterprises’ is a timely, readable, and searching account of the long-standing entanglement of religion and business in early national America. Few recent works have done as much to demonstrate the connections between specific forms of Christian theology and market capitalism. — Seth Perry, author of
Bible Culture and Authority in the Early United States Faith in Markets is a masterfully researched, lucidly written, and analytically keen study of the relationship between Protestantism and business in nineteenth-century America. Through compelling accounts that demonstrate a new approach to religion and capitalism, Slaughter shows the reader the wonders and diversity of what he aptly labels as early forms of Christian business enterprises. — Mark Valeri, author of Heavenly Merchandize: How Religion Shaped Commerce in Puritan America
About the Author
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