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The Business Turn in American Religious History

2018; Oxford University Press; Volume: 105; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/jahist/jay021

1945-2314

Ken Fones‐Wolf,

American Constitutional Law and Politics

American religious historians have rediscovered capitalism, it seems, but are no longer trapped by the formulations of Max Weber. The Business Turn in American Religious History offers several chapters exploring older but nonetheless timely themes concerning Protestantism and business and contains chapters on Catholics, Mormons, Jews, Asian Indians, and American Indians, revealing how encompassing the business turn can be. Beginning with Robert E. Wright's challenge that historians probe the link between theological tenets and church coffers or that they apply public choice theory to the study of religious groups, this collection is a bold attempt not only to provide samples of the current scholarship but also to spur new work. The first three chapters, by Daniel Vaca, Timothy E. W. Gloege, and David P. King, examine the relationship of evangelical Protestantism and business, but with new twists. Vaca focuses on the case of the Zondervan publishing house to interrogate just who was evangelical. He demonstrates how business ultimately determined the authority of conservative evangelicals who, in turn, used their authority to sacralize a neoliberal regime and the free markets upon which they rested. Gloege traces the transformation of evangelicalism, not as a reaction to modern capitalism but as a conviction that “owes its existence to modern business” (p. 48). Procorporate evangelicals battled both plain-folk fundamentalists and mainline modernists for the soul of Protestantism. The rise of the business-backed National Association of Evangelicals, according to Gloege, signaled the triumph of a respectable conservative Protestantism that drew on the techniques of consumer capitalism to put evangelicals perfectly “in step with our present moment” (p. 65). King extends the arguments of Vaca and Gloege, arguing that the triumph of conservative evangelicalism—aided by U.S. business—is now marketed overseas. Christian missions and humanitarianism, King asserts, benefit from the same flow of resources as American capitalism and make possible the global spread of Christianity.