The Blessings of Business How Corporations Shaped Conservative Christianity

The Book of Matthew cautions readers that "Ye cannot serve God and mammon." But for at least a century conservative American Protestants have been trying to prove that adage wrong. In The Blessings of Business, Darren E. Grem argues that while preachers, activists, and politicians have all helped spread the gospel, American evangelicalism owes its enduring strength in a large part to private enterprise.

Grem argues for a new history of American evangelicalism, demonstrating how its adherents strategically used corporate America--its leaders, businesses, money, ideas, and values--to advance their religious, cultural, and political movement. Beginning before the First World War, conservative evangelicals were able to use businessmen and business methods 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, trade, and the state, transforming evangelicalism itself into as much of an economic movement as a religious one.

The Blessings of Business tells the story of unlikely partnerships between well-known champions of the evangelical movement such as Billy Graham and largely forgotten businessmen like Herbert Taylor, J. Howard Pew, and R.G. LeTourneau. Grem also shows how evangelicals set up their own pro-business organizations and linked the quarterly and yearly growth of "Christian" businesses to their social, religious, and political aspirations. Fascinating and provocative, The Blessings of Business uncovers the strong ties that conservative Christians have forged between the Almighty and the almighty dollar.

Darren E. Grem is Assistant Professor of History and Southern Studies at the University of Mississippi. A native of South Carolina and graduate of Furman University and the University of Georgia, Grem specializes in twentieth-century American history, with teaching and research interests in religious history, cultural history, and business history. He lives in Oxford, Mississippi.

Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Introduction

PART I: How Big Businessmen Shaped Conservative Evangelicalism
Chapter 1: Fundamentalist Fronts
Chapter 2: Corporate Convictions
Chapter 3: Corporate Crusades

PART II: How Conservative Evangelicalism Became Big Business
Chapter 4: Marketplace Missions
Chapter 5: Culture Industries
Chapter 6: Free Market Faith

Conclusion
Index