{"id":597,"date":"2012-10-16T16:40:05","date_gmt":"2012-10-16T16:40:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/joecarter\/?p=597"},"modified":"2012-10-16T16:40:05","modified_gmt":"2012-10-16T16:40:05","slug":"how-puritans-became-capitalists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/joecarter\/2012\/10\/how-puritans-became-capitalists\/","title":{"rendered":"How Puritans Became Capitalists"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

In his book,\u00a0Heavenly Merchandize<\/em>, Mark Valeri, professor of church history at Union Presbyterian Seminary, finds that the American economy as we know it emerged from a\u00a0series of important shifts in the views of Puritan ministers<\/a>:<\/p>\n

IDEAS:\u00a0<\/strong>You\u2019re saying that the market didn\u2019t rise at the expense of religion, but was enabled by it?<\/p>\n

VALERI:\u00a0<\/strong>You need to have a change in your basic understanding of how or where God works in the world before you can envision different economic behaviors as morally sufferable. These religious changes come first. The market\u2013networks of exchange, converging prices, things being adjudicated in courts\u2013is not put in place in North America until the 1740s,1750s. The religious changes come before that. They\u2019re integral to it.<\/p>\n

IDEAS:\u00a0<\/strong>Your book comes out at an interesting moment for America\u2019s relationship with free-market economics\u2013to a lot of people, it looks like everyone in the financial markets has been behaving in defiance of the broader interests of the society.<\/p>\n

VALERI:\u00a0<\/strong>I asked a hedge fund manager I know if he had said to the traders described in [Michael Lewis\u2019s] \u201dThe Big Short,\u201d \u201dWhat you\u2019re doing will result in huge financial calamity, unemployment, people losing their homes\u2013isn\u2019t that socially irresponsible?\u201d, what would they have said? He said, \u201dTheir response would be, \u2019that doesn\u2019t matter, that\u2019s not my concern. My job is to make as much money as I possibly can.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

My book shows the people who built the capitalist system did not think like that. The people who built the market economy had a whole cluster of deep collective loyalties and moral convictions.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read more . . .<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

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In his book,\u00a0Heavenly Merchandize, Mark Valeri, professor of church history at Union Presbyterian Seminary, finds that the American economy as we know it emerged from a\u00a0series of important shifts in the views of Puritan ministers: IDEAS:\u00a0You\u2019re saying that the market didn\u2019t rise at the expense of religion, but was enabled by it? VALERI:\u00a0You need to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1213,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,17,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-christianity","category-economics"],"yoast_head":"\nHow Puritans Became Capitalists<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In his book,\u00a0Heavenly Merchandize, Mark Valeri, professor of church history at Union Presbyterian Seminary, finds that the American economy as we know it\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/joecarter\/2012\/10\/how-puritans-became-capitalists\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" 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