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    Friends of the Unrighteous Mammon: Northern Christians and Market Capitalism, 1815-1860
    Friends of the Unrighteous Mammon: Northern Christians and Market Capitalism, 1815-1860
    Friends of the Unrighteous Mammon: Northern Christians and Market Capitalism, 1815-1860
    Ebook254 pages6 hours

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

    By Stewart Davenport

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    What did Protestants in America think about capitalism when capitalism was first something to be thought about? The Bible told antebellum Christians that they could not serve both God and mammon, but in the midst of the market revolution most of them simultaneously held on to their faith while working furiously to make a place for themselves in a changing economic landscape. In Friends of the Unrighteous Mammom, Stewart Davenport explores this paradoxical partnership of transcendent religious values and earthly, pragmatic objectives, ultimately concluding that religious and ethical commitments, rather than political or social forces, shaped responses to market capitalism in the northern states in the antebellum period.

    Drawing on diverse primary sources, Davenport identifies three distinct Christian responses to market capitalism: assurance from clerical economists who believed in the righteousness of economic development; opposition from contrarians who resisted the changes around them; and adaptation by the pastoral moralists who modified their faith to meet the ethical challenges of the changing economy. Delving into the minds of antebellum Christians as they considered themselves, their God, and their developing American economy, Friends of the Unrighteous Mammon is an ambitious intellectual history of an important development in American religious and economic life.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press
    Release dateSep 15, 2008
    ISBN9780226137087
    Friends of the Unrighteous Mammon: Northern Christians and Market Capitalism, 1815-1860

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    • 4/5
      This is an important book that helps explain how religious people in the Antebellum U.S. adjusted to the Market Revolution. As the book introduction notes, this is a subject that has recieved relatively little attention from scholars. This is intellectual/social history where one should have a strong basic knowledge of history to enjoy.

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    Friends of the Unrighteous Mammon - Stewart Davenport

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