In Jesus and the Politics of Mammon, Phelps uses contemporary critical theory, continental philosophy, and theology to develop a radical reading of Jesus. Phelps argues that theological traditions have on the whole blunted Jesus’ teachings, particularly in regard to money and related concerns of political economy. Focusing on the distinction between God and Mammon, Phelps suggests instead that Jesus’ teachings result in a politics that is anti-money, anti-work, and anti-family. Although Jesus does not provide a specific program for this politics, his teachings incite readers to think otherwise with respect to these institutions.
Everyone yearns for “the good life” ... where children are reared in a loving, stimulating environment ... where youth are prepared for their future ... where adults achieve satisfaction through personal relationships and meaningfully rewarding work ... and where seniors find peace in their “golden” years. Typically, it entails economic sufficiency. Yet, when this universal hope becomes reality, many Christians confront a disturbing faith challenge. Jesus taught his followers to postpone earthly satisfactions until the next life. In the present world, their blessings will be found in poverty, hunger, sorrow, and persecution. Woe to those with wealth, full stomachs, laughter, and popularity! Christ practiced and demands self-denial, not self-satisfaction. Entry into Jesus’ severe life-style is difficult and the path is arduous. Multitudes are called but only a select few actually follow the way to eternal life that requires crucifixion of one’s self. This book is a thought-provoking biblical analysis of the gospel’s opposition to wealth. One cannot serve both God and money. The Christian dilemma is that practical faith absolutely requires compromise. Money is necessary for daily life and future needs. How is it possible to follow Christ in this money-driven society? The Book of Mammon searches the Bible for the surprising resolution.
In his first full-length book Justin Welby looks at the subject of money and materialism. Designed for study in the weeks of Lent leading up to Easter, Dethroning Mammon reflects on the impact of our own attitudes, and of the pressures that surround us, on how we handle the power of money, called Mammon in this book. Who will be on the throne of our lives? Who will direct our actions and attitudes? Is it Jesus Christ, who brings truth, hope and freedom? Or is it Mammon, so attractive, so clear, but leading us into paths that tangle, trip and deceive? Archbishop Justin explores the tensions that arise in a society dominated by Mammon's modern aliases, economics and finance, and by the pressures of our culture to conform to Mammon's expectations. Following the Gospels towards Easter, this book asks the reader what it means to dethrone Mammon in the values and priorities of our civilisation and in our own existence. In Dethroning Mammon, Archbishop Justin challenges us to use Lent as a time of learning to trust in the abundance and grace of God.
Despite Jesus' teaching regarding God and money, the paradox remains that churches need money to serve God. Ministers need salaries, bills must be paid, and benevolence programs require financing. By examining what the early Christian documents of the New Testament have to say about asking for money and the circumstances in which they did this, Jouette Bassler provokes reflection on the theological, ethical, and social dimensions of the practices of today's church. Suggestions for further reading and study questions complement each chapter and enhance the usefulness of this book.
Amid competing portrayals of the "cynic Jesus," the "peasant Jesus," and the "apocalyptic Jesus," the "political Jesus" remains a marginal figure. Douglas E. Oakman argues that advances in our social-scientific understanding of the political economy of Roman Galilee, as well as advances in the so-called "Third Quest" for the historical Jesus, warrant a revival and a critical revision of H. S. Reimarus's understanding of Jesus as an instigator of revolutionary change.
“An extraordinary work of intellectual history as well as a scholarly tour de force, a bracing polemic, and a work of Christian prophecy...McCarraher challenges more than 200 years of post-Enlightenment assumptions about the way we live and work.” —The Observer At least since Max Weber, capitalism has been understood as part of the “disenchantment” of the world, stripping material objects and social relations of their mystery and magic. In this magisterial work, Eugene McCarraher challenges this conventional view. Capitalism, he argues, is full of sacrament, whether one is prepared to acknowledge it or not. First flowering in the fields and factories of England and brought to America by Puritans and evangelicals, whose doctrine made ample room for industry and profit, capitalism has become so thoroughly enmeshed in the fabric of our society that our faith in “the market” has become sacrosanct. Informed by cultural history and theology as well as management theory, The Enchantments of Mammon looks to nineteenth-century Romantics, whose vision of labor combined reason, creativity, and mutual aid, for salvation. In this impassioned challenge to some of our most firmly held assumptions, McCarraher argues that capitalism has hijacked our intrinsic longing for divinity—and urges us to break its hold on our souls. “A majestic achievement...It is a work of great moral and spiritual intelligence, and one that invites contemplation about things we can’t afford not to care about deeply.” —Commonweal “More brilliant, more capacious, and more entertaining, page by page, than his most ardent fans dared hope. The magnitude of his accomplishment—an account of American capitalism as a religion...will stun even skeptical readers.” —Christian Century
This collection of essays offers a close look at the connections between American Protestants and money in the Antebellum period. They provide essential background to an issue that continues to generate controversy in the Protestant community today.
Award-winning essayist Lance Morrow writes about the partnership of God and Mammon in the New World—about the ways in which Americans have made money and lost money, and about how they have thought and obsessed about this peculiarly American subject. Fascinated by the tracings of theology in the ways of American money Morrow sees a reconciliation of God and Mammon in the working out of the American Dream. This sharp-eyed essay reflects upon American money in a series of individual life stories, including his own. Morrow writes about what he calls “the emotions of money,” which he follows from the catastrophe of the Great Depression to the era of Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey, and Donald Trump. He considers money’s dual character—functioning both as a hard, substantial reality and as a highly subjective force and shape-shifter, a sort of dream. Is money the root of all evil? Or is it the source of much good? Americans have struggled with the problem of how to square the country’s money and power with its aspiration to virtue. Morrow pursues these themes as they unfold in the lives of Americans both famous and obscure: Here is Thomas Jefferson, the luminous Founder who died broke, his fortune in ruin, his estate and slaves at Monticello to be sold to pay his debts. Here are the Brown brothers of Providence, Rhode Island, members of the family that founded Brown University. John Brown was in the slave trade, while his brother Moses was an ardent abolitionist. With race in America a powerful subtheme throughout the book, Morrow considers Booker T. Washington, who, with a cunning that sometimes went unappreciated among his own people, recognized money as the key to full American citizenship. God and Mammon is a masterly weaving of America’s money myths, from the nation’s beginnings to the present.
Man's freedom--God's omnipotence: how can they be reconciled? That question is central to this penetrating study of political action and the prophetic function. Ellul's answer to that question, though based on events recorded in the Second Book of Kings, is immediately relevant to contemporary issues and to the church today. Emerging from these reflections is an eloquent testimony to the immense love of God--"which not only creates and saves, but which also in its incomprehensible humility wants to associate man with its work."
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.
