Customer Reviews

Friends of the Unrighteous Mammon: Northern Christians and Market Capitalism, 1815-1860

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

"Friends of the Unrighteous Mammon" is a fascinating account of how thinking Christians engaged with the emerging ideas of capitalism. The topic is important both for an understanding of history and for contemporary reflection. Davenport is a clear and persuasive writer.

This is an important book. In it Davenport shows how the Protestant Christians who dominated academic discussion of political economy in antebellum America came unquestioningly to support the principles of laissez faire. For these `clerical economists',"[Adam] Smith's words had the ring of gospel truth about them. In their minds, the world of commerce was one big harmonious mechanism with the God of Providence and progress behind it, and should therefore be exalted as good, right, and natural rather than maligned by skeptics as something sordid, speculative and immoral. The Creator had obviously designed the mechanism for the good of both mankind and of all creation, and Adam Smith - infidel though he was - had unlocked its mysteries". (pp 55,56)

Believing that their new `science' was entirely consistent with the laws of the created universe, the clerical economists accepted, and indeed justified, its underlying ethical and moral principle as being God given. Their consequent emphasis on individualism and the division of labour was not, however, without its Christian critics. They pointed out that individualism, if unrestrained, was likely to lead to pride, vanity, greed, envy, gluttony, and lust and that the division of labour creates great inequalities between individuals within a nation. All of this was of little avail. Thus was set in motion the course to establish in the public mind until this day that formal economics is a `value free' science.

The Global Financial Crisis has now led, once more, to a questioning of the nature of theoretical economics. Is it an art? or is it a science?. Is it `value free'? Can it adequately deal with moral issues such as poverty and climate change? Davenport has provided an excellent introduction to a re-examination of such questions. I highly recommend his book, along with Donald E Frey's recent work (America's Economic Moralists: A History of Rival Ethics and Economics Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2009), not only to economists but also to theologians who are interested in such `worldly' matters.