Capitalism and Christianity, American Style

Capitalism and Christianity, American Style
Author: William E. Connolly
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 194
Release: 2008-04-09
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0822381230

Capitalism and Christianity, American Style is William E. Connolly’s stirring call for the democratic left to counter the conservative stranglehold over American religious and economic culture in order to put egalitarianism and ecological integrity on the political agenda. An eminent political theorist known for his work on identity, secularism, and pluralism, Connolly charts the path of the “evangelical-capitalist resonance machine,” source of a bellicose ethos reverberating through contemporary institutional life. He argues that the vengeful vision of the Second Coming motivating a segment of the evangelical right resonates with the ethos of greed animating the cowboy sector of American capitalism. The resulting evangelical-capitalist ethos finds expression in church pulpits, Fox News reports, the best-selling Left Behind novels, consumption practices, investment priorities, and state policies. These practices resonate together to diminish diversity, forestall responsibility to future generations, ignore urban poverty, and support a system of extensive economic inequality. Connolly describes how the evangelical-capitalist machine works, how its themes resound across class lines, and how it infiltrates numerous aspects of American life. Proposing changes in sensibility and strategy to challenge this machine, Connolly contends that the liberal distinction between secular public and religious private life must be reworked. Traditional notions of unity or solidarity must be translated into drives to forge provisional assemblages comprised of multiple constituencies and creeds. The left must also learn from the political right how power is infused into everyday institutions such as the media, schools, churches, consumption practices, corporations, and neighborhoods. Connolly explores the potential of a “tragic vision” to contest the current politics of existential resentment and political hubris, explores potential lines of connection between it and theistic faiths that break with the evangelical right, and charts the possibility of forging an “eco-egalitarian” economy. Capitalism and Christianity, American Style is William E. Connolly’s most urgent work to date.

Asian Americans and the Spirit of Racial Capitalism

Asian Americans and the Spirit of Racial Capitalism
Author: Jonathan Tran
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 369
Release: 2021-11-09
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0197587909

Any serious consideration of Asian American life forces us to reframe the way we talk about racism and antiracism. The current emphasis on racial identity obscures the political economic basis that makes racialized life in America legible. This is especially true when it comes to Asian Americans. This book reframes the conversation in terms of what has been called ""racial capitalism"" and utilizes two extended case studies to show how Asian Americans perpetuate and resist its political economy.

The Money Cult

The Money Cult
Author: Chris Lehmann
Publisher: Melville House
Total Pages: 453
Release: 2016-05-31
Genre: History
ISBN: 1612195091

A grand and startling work of American history America was founded, we’re taught in school, by the Pilgrims and other Puritans escaping religious persecution in Europe—an austere and pious lot who established a culture that remained pure and uncorrupted until the Industrial Revolution got in the way. In The Money Cult, Chris Lehmann reveals that we have it backward: American capitalism has always been entangled with religion, and so today’s megapastors, for example, aren’t an aberration—they’re as American as Benjamin Franklin. Tracing American Christianity from John Winthrop to the rise of the Mormon Church and on to the triumph of Joel Osteen, The Money Cult is an ambitious work of history from a widely admired journalist. Examining nearly four hundred years of American history, Lehmann reveals how America’s religious leaders became less worried about sin and the afterlife and more concerned with the material world, until the social gospel was overtaken by the gospel of wealth. Showing how American Christianity came to accommodate—and eventually embrace—the pursuit of profit, as well as the inescapability of economic inequality, The Money Cult is a wide-ranging and revelatory book that will make you rethink what you know about the form of American capitalism so dominant in the world today, as well as the core tenets of America itself.

Money, Greed, and God

Money, Greed, and God
Author: Jay W. Richards
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 276
Release: 2009-05-05
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0061874566

In Money, Greed, and God: Why Capitalism is the Solution and Not the Problem, Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute Jay W. Richards and bestselling author of Indivisible: Restoring Faith, Family, and Freedom Before It's Too Late and Infiltrated: How to Stop the Insiders and Activists Who Are Exploiting the Financial Crisis to Control Our Lives and Our Fortunes, defends capitalism within the context of the Christian faith, revealing how entrepreneurial enterprise, based on hard work, honesty, and trust, actually fosters creativity and growth. In doing so, Money, Greed, and God exposes eight myths about capitalism, and demonstrates that a good Christian can be a good capitalist.

The Problem of Wealth

The Problem of Wealth
Author: Hinson-Hasty, Elizabeth L.
Publisher: Orbis Books
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2017-09-14
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1608337030

The problem is wealth, not poverty -- Introducing the problem of wealth -- The centrality of economics in Christian theology -- Economism and the ethic of scarcity -- When, why, and how? The boundary between economics and theology -- The current dominant forms of wealth creation and the ethic of scarcity -- Digging for roots to nourish an ethic of enough -- Social trinity, love, and the ethic of enough -- Extensive roots: ecocentric and theocentric visions of economy from a wider variety of the world's great faith traditions -- Increasing the theological and moral imagination of the U.S. middle class -- Real people embodying different values -- Parables for sharing -- Concluding observations and a call to action

Friends of the Unrighteous Mammon

Friends of the Unrighteous Mammon
Author: Stewart Davenport
Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com
Total Pages: 498
Release: 2010-10-21
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1459605896

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 ...

I Love Capitalism!

I Love Capitalism!
Author: Ken Langone
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2018-05-15
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0735216258

New York Times Bestseller Iconoclastic entrepreneur and New York legend Ken Langone tells the compelling story of how a poor boy from Long Island became one of America's most successful businessmen. Ken Langone has seen it all on his way to a net worth beyond his wildest dreams. A pillar of corporate America for decades, he's a co-founder of Home Depot, a former director of the New York Stock Exchange, and a world-class philanthropist (including $200 million for NYU's Langone Health). In this memoir he finally tells the story of his unlikely rise and controversial career. It's also a passionate defense of the American Dream -- of preserving a country in which any hungry kid can reach the maximum potential of his or her talents and work ethic. In a series of fascinating stories, Langone shows how he struggled to get an education, break into Wall Street, and scramble for an MBA at night while competing with privileged competitors by day. He shares how he learned how to evaluate what a business is worth and apply his street smarts to 8-figure and 9-figure deals . And he's not shy about discussing, for the first time, his epic legal and PR battle with former NY Governor Eliot Spitzer. His ultimate theme is that free enterprise is the key to giving everyone a leg up. As he writes: This book is my love song to capitalism. Capitalism works! And I'm living proof -- it works for everybody. Absolutely anybody is entitled to dream big, and absolutely everybody should dream big. I did. Show me where the silver spoon was in my mouth. I've got to argue profoundly and passionately: I'm the American Dream.

Just Capitalism

Just Capitalism
Author: Brent Waters
Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2016-10-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 161164691X

Just Capitalism is a Christian moral defense of economic globalization as a system that is well-suited to provide the necessary material needs that are prerequisite for human community and flourishing. Global-based market exchange offers the development and distribution of the goods of creation for humans to enjoy and share. Globalization also offers "the most realistic and promising way of exercising a preferential option for the poor." Waters argues that economic globalization, and thus capitalism, is a necessary condition for sustaining human life but not a sufficient condition for enabling human flourishing. Even though globalization is generally compatible with Christian theological and moral claims and can realistically facilitate the well-being of the human family, it must be reoriented toward koinoniahuman community, communication, fellowshipas the global economy's primary goal in order to help actualize human flourishing. Readers will gain insight about how economic globalization (and thus capitalism) is good for the human family and can be made better by certain reorientations that are compatible with Christian moral values. Waters provides a mature and civil counterargument against knee-jerk condemnations of economic globalization and capitalism.