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Published by EH.NET (January 2004)  
 
Mark A. Noll, editor, _God and Mammon: Protestants, Money, and the Market, 
1790-1860_. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. xii + 313 
pp. $49.95 (hardback), ISBN: 0-19-514800-2; $22.95 (paperback), ISBN: 
0-19-514801-0.  
 
Reviewed for EH.NET by Donald E. Frey, Department of Economics, Wake Forest 
University  
 
  
 
This book's primary title, _God and Mammon_, evokes the scriptural 
injunction that one cannot serve God and Mammon, which suggests an 
either-or choice. Yet, the book is not about people torn over such a 
choice. On the contrary, the subjects of this book are portrayed generally 
as fully participating in the American economy, even shaping the economy, 
while holding to their faith with no sense of contradiction. Specifically, 
two chapters are devoted to refuting Charles Sellers' thesis (The Market 
Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815-1846) that a strain of American 
frontier religion aligned itself in a culture-war against expanding 
capitalism.  
 
By default, the sub-title (_Protestants, Money, and the Market, 1790-1860_) 
bears the weight of describing the book's content, but comes up wanting. 
Despite the title, the book is more narrowly focused on the era's 
_evangelical_ branch of American Protestantism, not Protestantism in 
general; going further, fully four out of thirteen chapters are devoted to 
early Methodism, as the exemplar of such evangelicalism. The title's 
reference to "money and the market" leaves unanswered whether the book 
deals primarily with _intellectual_ interaction of religion and economics 
or with _practice_. In fact, the various chapters deal with both ideas and 
practice and with cases where influence runs in either direction. The book 
generally finds that evangelical Protestantism remained true to its 
religious roots even while engaging the economic life of the era and 
utilizing its opportunities.  
 
The chapter by David Paul Nord on the evangelical publishing societies, 
which loomed large in the publishing industry of the era, documents how 
these organizations grasped new economic methods and opportunities, while 
adhering to their religious goals. The Bible and tract societies built 
"truly national institutions (some of the first modern business firms, 
really) with national reach" (p. 164), while reaching people of all means 
with their literature. At the same time as these publishers developed and 
used the methods of capitalism, they rejected the secular, demand-driven 
publishing that resulted in "the literature of wickedness, sensation, 
dissipation and error" (p. 164).  
 
Looking at doctrine, the book finds little deviation of the new evangelical 
thought from the historic Protestant traditions regarding economic life. 
Mark Noll concludes the "main developments" of the evangelical encounter 
with the burgeoning economy may be regarded "as a _continuation of historic 
Christian, Protestant, and Reformed attitudes_ ..." (emphasis added, p. 
273). Although these principles were adapted better to fit the emerging 
market economy and the disestablishment of religion, "there is little 
evidence" that the evangelicals were "coopted by market reasoning," which 
remained "subordinate to intrinsically religious convictions" (p. 273). 
Thus, Noll concludes, evangelicals interacted with the market without 
abandoning core principles. (Other authors conclude that evangelicals did 
not define their position by blind opposition to the market.)  
 
Richard Pointer authors a chapter on Presbyterians, the only chapter 
covering a denomination other than the Methodists. Presbyterians, if the 
Sellers thesis is correct, would be an interesting study in contrasting 
attitudes toward the market, between the Old School Calvinists and the more 
evangelical New School Presbyterians. And, yet, Pointer argues that the New 
and Old School pulpits of Philadelphia sounded very similar when teaching 
about the economic virtues. He speaks of "the sweeping convergence of Old 
School and New School thought, not only on work values, but also on 
economic ethics in general" (p. 178). If this is so, then whatever the 
evangelicals' adaptations to the emerging market, their core values 
remained comparable to earlier Protestants. Such continuity raises the 
question why the book chooses to concentrate on the evangelical era at all, 
for it was apparently not unique, at least in terms of doctrine. The answer 
may be that the book is at least in part a rejoinder to Sellers, who argued 
that the era _was_ unique.  
 
Richard Cardwine's chapter explains that evangelical Methodism was 
compatible with capitalism despite its earliest membership being from the 
poor: "... although the early Methodists were poor, they were far from 
hostile to enterprise and the capitalist ethic. The movement was indeed a 
radical, egalitarian counterculture ... [but it was] not against 
industrious effort and self-improvement" (p. 80). With the decline of 
colonial established churches, Methodists learned to compete for converts: 
"Methodism was both a perfect metaphor for the emergent capitalist market 
... and the principal beneficiary of the free spiritual market that 
superseded the colonial system ..." (p. 82). Methodism also was congruent 
with the market in "its stress on individual responsibility, and its 
stimulus to self-improvement and enterprise" (p. 85).  
 
If refuting Sellers requires emphasizing how well Methodist methods and 
ethics fit the market environment of the new republic, Cardwine 
nevertheless resists economic determinism. He holds that Methodists' 
partisan allegiances "were to a considerable degree shaped by meaningful 
ideological conflict between competing religious groups." Methodists' 
underlying concerns "were shaped as much by the religious as by economic 
marketplace" (p. 92). The primary religious conflict, of course, was 
between the Methodist theology that attributed more to human agency in 
salvation than did orthodox Calvinism.  
 
Nevertheless, it would be erroneous to equate orthodox Calvinism with 
anti-market views, and Cardwine does not make this error. For example, the 
Calvinistic Old School Presbyterians (as shown by Pointer) were surely open 
to capitalism. Indeed, there is a century-long literature documenting the 
compatibility of Calvinistic Puritanism and the market. If there is a 
single criticism I would make of this book it is its failure to elaborate 
these colonial roots of the evangelical tradition, even while 
simultaneously arguing that evangelicalism did not abandon those roots.  
 
Noll summarizes the dominant Protestant view of economics, a view that 
earlier Puritans would have recognized: it drew "a fine line between 
accepting the legitimacy of wealth (also the means to gain wealth) and 
denouncing the abusive use of wealth for selfish ends" (p. 272). The 
Protestants took commerce for granted but "were more concerned to surround 
economic life with injunctions about using wealth wisely, benevolently, and 
for the good of others" (p. 272). In the era of utilitarian economic 
doctrines, Protestant ethics featured obligations that existed independent 
of self-interested motives: "Protestants were simply urged, _without 
consideration of reward_, to give for the general spread of Christianity" 
(emphasis added, p. 274). Finally, "Antebellum Protestants were also 
traditional in ascribing to God most of the responsibility for the presence 
or absence of wealth" (p. 274). "Even in an age of expanding markets, God 
still ruled ..." (p. 274). Colonial preachers could have sounded these 
themes.  
 
Most of the contributors to the volume are historians, but two economists 
are included. Chapter two, by Robin Klay and John Lunn, documents the 
important role, not only of individual Protestants, but of Protestant 
organizations, in the economy of the 1790-1860 era. Other chapters that I 
have not covered in this review include one on the marketing of revivals 
and the differing religious perceptions of economic life in the North and 
South.  
 
This book contains a wealth of information and interpretation, and is 
carefully documented with a host of references. The volume demonstrates 
that the religious beliefs and commitments of historical actors should be 
taken seriously when attempting to explain their actions.  
 
  
 
Donald E. Frey is author of "Francis Wayland's 1830s Textbooks: Evangelical 
Ethics and Political Economy," _Journal of the History of Economic Thought_ 
(Summer 2002)  
 
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