Frey on Hudnut-Beumler, _In Pursuit of the Almighty's Dollar: A History of Money and American Protestantism_

[eh.net-review at eh.net]

Published by EH.NET (June 2007)

James Hudnut-Beumler, _In Pursuit of the Almighty's Dollar: A History 
of Money and American Protestantism_. Chapel Hill, NC: University of 
North Carolina Press, 2007. xv + 268 pp. $30 (cloth), ISBN: 
978-0-8078-3079-6.

Reviewed for EH.NET by Donald E. Frey, Department of Economics, Wake 
Forest University.


Despite the subtitle, which suggests a much broader scope, this 
history is limited to fundraising by Protestant churches. Each 
chapter on fundraising in a certain time period alternates with a 
chapter on how funds have been spent -- on church buildings, on 
ministerial salaries and support of clergy families, on auxiliary 
structures, etc. This set of parallel chapters on spending was at 
least as interesting as the primary, fund-raising chapters, whose 
themes tended to repeat. Hudnut-Beumler is dean of the divinity 
school at Vanderbilt University and has previously written on 
American church history and religious sociology. His approach is to 
use theological, sociological, and a few economic, concepts to 
elucidate a part of religious history.

The author summarizes several historical stages of church 
funding-raising. In the early federal period, disestablished churches 
struggled to find voluntary support from their congregations. The 
alternative, pew rentals, represented a closed-club view of 
membership with mandatory "dues." It persisted in places, but largely 
succumbed to the voluntary model. Creation of a contributory mind-set 
was difficult and developed only slowly. Even worse for local 
churches, traveling agents for Christian benevolent associations 
crisscrossed the nation, competing for the charitable dollar. The 
first wave of literature on church-funding, which Hudnut-Beunler 
reviews in detail, was aimed at developing a theology and method of 
systematic giving to the local church.

By the late nineteenth-century, Protestants discovered the "tithe" of 
the Mosaic law. Taken seriously, this would create a sense of legal 
obligation; but in reality it had that effect on only a few members 
of churches. Meanwhile rummage sales, charitable socials, and the 
like, persisted -- which implied church-funding was optional, of low 
priority and worth one's effort only if connected to some 
recreational activity. At least some writers realized that the 
legalistic tithe was inconsistent with Protestantism's fundamental 
belief that God's grace is a free gift. They worked to shift the 
focus to "stewardship," a faithful response to God's grace in all 
aspects of life. Stewardship, broadly understood, was also consistent 
with the liberal Social Gospel's sense of Christian obligation to the 
whole culture, not just the upkeep of the church.

By the mid-twentieth century, churches were resorting to worldly 
techniques: annual "every member canvasses" for pledges, weekly 
offering envelopes, etc. Also, clergy mimicked practices their 
laypeople encountered in business: annual reports, like corporations, 
to highlight their efficiency, for example. Expensive fund-raising 
consultants were employed to run a "building campaign," using all the 
persuasive techniques of the secular world. Churches rapidly followed 
other non-profits in promoting "planned giving" through charitable 
gift annuities, wills, and so on. None of this replaced the earlier 
tithing and stewardship emphases; these things simply augmented them. 
Of course all this worldly technique evoked theological criticism, 
which Hudnut-Beumler also covers.

The final chapter, on trends since 1980, is perhaps the least 
focused, perhaps because these trends are still working themselves 
out. They include the rise of non-denominational churches (that even 
avoid calling themselves "church"), TV "ministries," mega-churches, 
do-it-yourself religion and "spirituality." Most cater to the 
individualism and consumerism of American culture. Unfortunately, 
Hudnut-Beumler cannot state clearly how these relate, or will come to 
relate, to church fundraising, so strict editing might have dropped 
this material. However, in the contemporary scene he does see the 
continuation in one place or other of almost everything that has gone 
before: the inherent spiritual individualism of Protestants ("faith 
alone") that dampens support of institutions (even churches); 
legalistic preaching about tithing; talk of stewardship; soft-sell, 
but still worldly, techniques.

Hudnut-Beumler devotes only two short sections to the "Prosperity 
Gospel," which in the last century emerged in Pentecostalism and 
related movements. He notes that this theology is a "radical 
departure" from usual theological reasons for giving: for it promises 
a large material blessing from God in return for the believer's gift. 
Hudnut-Beumler notes that this quid-pro-quo mentality is more akin to 
magic than religion according to classical sociology. However, he 
charitably does not characterize it that way himself. He refrains 
from predicting where it may lead. Prosperity theology could have 
benefited from both more sociological and economic analysis (for it 
is a reversion to a type of theological utilitarianism, a way of 
thinking assumed by mainstream economics).

Some lessons stand out from this historical review. First, most 
American Protestants have not given a high priority to church 
support, and this has not changed dramatically over time despite all 
the changes in fund-raising theologies and techniques. The inference 
of many of the clergy quoted by the author is that a majority of 
their members have pretty worldly priorities. On the other hand, the 
author thinks that, even in a consumer culture that does not value 
religion highly, enough people will continue to support religion that 
things will continue about as is.

The author does a very, very thorough job reviewing an enormous 
number of books, pamphlets, tracts, audio-visuals and the like 
written over two centuries (mostly by the clergy) on giving to the 
church. Cumulatively, this research is impressive. However, the book 
would not have suffered if the coverage of this material had been 
pruned. A second criticism is that the author could not resist 
drawing some conclusions that don't really emerge from the case he 
presents. For example, he ends by stating that 250 years of 
"competition for the Almighty's dollar" is what has made 
Protestantism in America "more ubiquitous than even McDonald's 
restaurants" (p. 228). Maybe that was a necessary condition to create 
ubiquity, but it probably isn't sufficient. And the degree of that 
"ubiquity" varies greatly by region.

For economists, giving to churches by Protestants presents an 
interesting challenge for economic theory. First, of course, in the 
American Protestant tradition services are not priced, like a public 
good. This may explain the low levels of support provided. But the 
question for utilitarian economic theory is why is there any support 
at all? Perhaps the unique twist to this challenge, provided only by 
Protestantism, is that its own core theology essentially rules out 
utilitarian reasons to contribute to a church. The central 
Reformation principle is that salvation is a direct gift of grace by 
God to the individual, _without intermediary_. If the church is a 
necessary intermediary, then there is a utilitarian motive to pay for 
it. But Protestantism removes _that_ motive. That seems to this 
reviewer to be a real exception to utility-maximization theory.


Donald E. Frey has written on the Protestant ethic, Puritan influence 
on Daniel Raymond's economics in the 1820s, Francis Wayland's efforts 
to harmonize evangelical ethics and laissez-faire, and the Social 
Gospel economics of Richard Ely.

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