The Blessings of Business

Ye cannot serve God and mammon the Bible says. But conservative American Protestants have for at least a century been trying to prove that adage wrong. While preachers activists and politicians have all helped spread the gospel Darren Grem argues that evangelicalism owes its strength to the blessings of business. Grem offers a new history of American evangelicalism showing how its adherents strategically used corporate America-its leaders businesses money ideas and values-to advance their religious cultural and political aspirations. Conservative evangelicals were thus able to retain and expand their public influence in a secularizing diversifying and liberalizing age. In the process they became beholden to pro-business stances on matters of theology race gender taxation free trade and the state making them well-suited to a broader conservative movement that was also of by and for corporate America. The Blessings of Business tells the story of unlikely partnerships between champions of the evangelical movement such as Billy Graham and largely forgotten businessmen like R.G. LeTourneau; he describes the backdrop against which the religious right''s pro-business politics can be understood. The evangelical embrace of corporate capitalism made possible a fusion with other conservatives he finds creating a foundation for the business-friendly turn in the nation''s economy and political culture. But it also transformed conservative evangelicalism itself making it as much an economic movement as a religious one. Fascinating and provocative The Blessings of Business uncovers the strong ties Americans have forged between the Almighty and the almighty dollar.