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Searching... Branch | Book | 209.73 SMI | 1 | Non-fiction Collection | Searching... Unknown | Searching... Unavailable |
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Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In this challenging essay, Smith, a professor emeritus at UC-Santa Cruz, argues that Christianity over the centuries has been a tireless critic of capitalism, rather than its handmaiden. He believes that St. Augustine's inspiring vision of a ``city of God'' has kept alive the hope of equality, democracy and world unity. He contends that Protestantism, far from undergirding modern capitalism (as German sociologist Max Weber maintained) actually resisted the rising tide of capitalist exploitation and competitiveness. In 19th-century America, socialists, utopians, women's rights advocates, populists and abolitionists--many driven by Christian convictions--fought the injustices of capitalism. Smith characterizes Roosevelt's New Deal as an odd alliance between Christian reformers and Marxists, noting that prominent New Dealers (e.g., FDR's cabinet members Henry Wallace and Frances Perkins) were fervent Christians. To those who rejoice over the current ``triumph of capitalism'' and the collapse of state socialism, Smith's inquiry serves as a strong antidote to complacency. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
From prolific historian Smith (Killing the Spirit, 1990; Redeeming the Time, 1986, etc.): a genealogy of democracy that rejects Max Weber's ``Protestant ethic''--which equates democracy, Christianity, and capitalism--and instead places the democratic impulse squarely in the Christian communalist tradition. Christian doctrine, says Smith, is the basis of our American belief in the equality and unity of all men and women before the law, and in the eyes of God. These ideas first erupted into human consciousness in the Hebrew Bible, and found their clearest expression in the teachings of Jesus. For a thousand years, Smith says, the Catholic Church nurtured the dignity of human life and elevated the status of women to heights unknown in non-Christian cultures. With the Reformation, Protestantism--and American Puritanism in particular--took the lead in the cause of human rights, promoting ``convenanted communities,'' quasi-socialist societies with no room for such capitalist practices as unbridled competition and monopolization. The Reformation left its stamp on many pivotal American events (``radical Protestants freed the slaves''), and the New Deal, Smith argues, was a ``Christian socialist revolution'' led by devout churchgoers, including FDR and Henry Wallace. Today, America's moral leadership lies with black Protestantism and a revitalized Catholicism, which may restore Christianity to ``its classic role as the critic of capitalism.'' Smith's attempt to divorce Christianity and capitalism is only half-successful (see Michael Novak's The Catholic Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, 1992, for a pro-capitalist Christian argument); still, a forceful and elegant demonstration of the close alliance between Christianity and democracy on American soil.
Booklist Review
American democracy does indeed, just as cultural conservatives maintain, trace its roots back to early Christianity, Smith says. But the Christian understanding of democracy is also egalitarian and sits uneasily with capitalism, as modern liberal Christians insist.