THE RIGHT BOOKS

Is CAPITALISM CHRISTIAN? (Crossways Books/Good News Publishers, Westchester, Ill. 60153; $9.95), edited by Franky Schaeffer, is a hefty, 461-page testimonial to the Gildered Age, extracted from the works of R. Emmett Tyrrell, Warren T. Brookes, Paul Johnson, P. T. Bauer, Humberto Belli, Jean-François Revel, Michael Novak, Thomas Sowell, Paul H. Weaver, Peter L. Berger, and Richard John Neuhaus, to give a partial list. Although a perhaps insufficient number of the selections address directly the question at hand, they do (as was no doubt the intention) provide it with a broader frame of reference by means of which the reader is led toward the conclusion that capitalism is as natural to the economic life of mankind as sexuality is to the biological, and that it is therefore, and to the same degree, “Christian.”

Which may, of course, throw some light on the queasiness with which Christians, in recent times as in the past, have tended to regard the workings of capitalist economies. No man, it has been said, once privileged to witness himself engaged in the reproductive act, would be likely ever to debase himself so again; while there is little reason to believe that the board of directors of General Motors, or the owners of a mom-and-pop stationery and tobacco store, would react similarly to watching video replays of their quotidian economic activities, there is certainly no lack of people who feel themselves compelled to provide vicariously the appropriate response.

CW

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Chilton Williamson Jr.

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Is CAPITALISM CHRISTIAN? (Crossways Books/Good News Publishers, Westchester, Ill. 60153; $9.95), edited by Franky Schaeffer, is a hefty, 461-page testimonial to the Gildered Age, extracted from the works of R. Emmett Tyrrell, Warren T. Brookes, Paul Johnson, P. T. Bauer, Humberto Belli, Jean-François Revel, Michael Novak, Thomas Sowell, Paul H. Weaver, Peter L. Berger, and Richard John Neuhaus, to give a partial list. Although a perhaps insufficient number of the selections address directly the question at hand, they do (as was no doubt the intention) provide it with a broader frame of reference by means of which the reader is led toward the conclusion that capitalism is as natural to the economic life of mankind as sexuality is to the biological, and that it is therefore, and to the same degree, “Christian.”

Which may, of course, throw some light on the queasiness with which Christians, in recent times as in the past, have tended to regard the workings of capitalist economies. No man, it has been said, once privileged to witness himself engaged in the reproductive act, would be likely ever to debase himself so again; while there is little reason to believe that the board of directors of General Motors, or the owners of a mom-and-pop stationery and tobacco store, would react similarly to watching video replays of their quotidian economic activities, there is certainly no lack of people who feel themselves compelled to provide vicariously the appropriate response.