Guaranteed Pure
The Moody Bible Institute, Business, and the Making of Modern Evangelicalism
Timothy Gloege
Publisher: University of North Carolina Press
Imprint: The University of North Carolina Press
Published: 04/2015
Pages: 328
Subject: Religion, Business and Economics, History
| University of North Carolina
Print ISBN: 9.78E+12
eBook ISBN: 9781469621029
DESCRIPTION
Conservative evangelicalism and modern business grew symbiotically, transforming the ways that Americans worshipped, worked, and consumed. Gilded Age evangelicals initially understood themselves primarily as new "Christian workers--employees of God guided by their divine contract, the Bible. But when these ideas were put to revolutionary ends by Populists, corporate evangelicals reimagined themselves as savvy religious consumers and reformulated their beliefs. Their consumer-oriented "orthodoxy" displaced traditional creeds and undermined denominational authority, forever altering the American religious landscape. Guaranteed pure of both liberal theology and Populist excesses, this was a new form of old-time religion not simply compatible with modern consumer capitalism but uniquely dependent on it.