Religion and the Rise of Capitalism : Christian Ethics and the Making of Modern Economic Life
Overview
When did making money become a pursuit increasingly judged by its own rules? In Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, R. H. Tawney examines the changing relationship between Christian teaching, economic ambition, and social obligation.
Moving from the medieval background through the Reformation and the rise of English Puritanism, Tawney explores how religious thinkers confronted trade, lending, property, poverty, and profit. Economic conduct was a matter of conscience as well as calculation, and arguments about wealth raised difficult questions about what people owed to their neighbors.
His account follows the tensions between inherited moral restraints and an expanding commercial world. Luther, Calvin, the Church of England, and Puritan writers appear within a history in which religious convictions and economic circumstances continually act upon one another. The result is more complex than a claim that Protestantism simply created capitalism.
Tawney asks how attitudes toward individual enterprise changed, how commercial success acquired moral authority, and how responsibilities toward the poor were understood and contested. These questions connect theological argument with the organization of society, showing how ideas about proper conduct could support economic activity while also placing limits upon it.
For readers of religious history, economic thought, and social criticism, this is a study of how the boundaries between business and morality were debated and redrawn. It invites reflection on the assumptions beneath economic life: what counts as legitimate gain, where obligation begins, and whether prosperity can be understood apart from the purposes it serves.
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Details
- ISBN-13: 9798182979849
- ISBN-10: 9798182979849
- Publisher: Curated Collection Publishing
- Publish Date: October 2026
- Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.81 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.06 pounds
- Page Count: 288
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