Religion and the Rise of Capitalism

Summary

Religion and the Rise of Capitalism is a historical study, first given as the Henry Scott Holland Memorial Lectures in 1922, of how Christian thought about economic life changed between the late Middle Ages and the early eighteenth century. Tawney's question is how a society that once judged trade, lending and prices by moral and religious standards came to treat economic activity as a self-governing realm ruled by impersonal laws. Chapter I, The Medieval Background, describes society as the medieval writers saw it: a body of unequal members with different functions, all serving a common end. Avarice was a deadly sin; the just price, the ban on usury and the condemnation of speculators and middlemen applied that view to the market. Tawney admires the coherence of this teaching while recording the gap between it and actual practice, and remarks that the true heir of Aquinas's doctrine of value is the labour theory of value. Chapter II, The Continental Reformers, sets the Reformation against the commercial revolution of the sixteenth century, centred on Antwerp, with new banking, rising prices and international finance. Luther, in Tawney's account, met these forces with a peasant's suspicion of commerce and the old denunciations of usury, while his separation of inner faith from outward works left him without a practical social program. Calvin, by contrast, accepted commerce and moderate interest, and built in Geneva a discipline that sought to bring every department of life under the rule of religion. Chapter III, The Church of England, follows the Tudor and Stuart Church through enclosures, the sale of monastic lands and the preaching of Latimer and others against greedy landlords, to the paternal social policy of Laud, and then the retreat of the Church from economic questions after the Civil War. Chapter IV, The Puritan Movement, is the heart of the book and its engagement with Max Weber. Tawney grants that Puritan teaching on the calling, diligence and thrift fostered the economic virtues, but insists that Puritanism contained both a collective discipline and an individualism, and that economic change shaped religion as much as religion shaped economics. By the late seventeenth century, he argues, writers such as Richard Baxter and later commercial moralists honoured industry as a religious duty, while poverty came to be seen as a sign of idleness rather than a claim on charity. The Conclusion sums up: the medieval Church's attempt to subordinate economic appetites to moral ends was often corrupt in practice but noble in aim, and Tawney closes with his own judgment that a society treating wealth as the supreme end cannot be called Christian. The library text is the 1926 American edition (Harcourt, Brace), dedicated to Bishop Charles Gore, with Tawney's notes and index.

Plot or Argument

• Introduction and the opening of Chapter I

  Tawney frames the change from a view of economic activity as one kind of moral conduct to a view of it as governed by impersonal, almost automatic forces, and surveys the work of Weber, Troeltsch and others.

• I. The Medieval Background

  The social organism of unequal but mutually bound classes; avarice as sin; the just price, usury and the condemnation of speculation; and the distance between this ideal and the reality of a Church deeply involved in finance.

• II. The Continental Reformers

  The economic revolution of the sixteenth century; Luther's conservative, agrarian outlook and the gap between his faith and social practice; Calvin's acceptance of commerce, moderated interest, and the Genevan discipline over economic conduct.

• III. The Church of England

  The land question and enclosure, Tudor and Stuart attempts to enforce social duties through Church and State, Laud's paternalism, and the growth of individualism as the Church withdrew from economic teaching.

• IV. The Puritan Movement

  Puritanism and society; the conflict between godly discipline and the religion of trade; the triumph of the economic virtues and the idea of the calling; and the new attitude to poverty and poor relief.

• V. Conclusion

  Tawney asks that the medieval and Puritan moralists be judged by their aims as well as their achievements, and argues that modern society's treatment of riches as the supreme end stands opposed to Christian teaching.

Characters

• Thomas Aquinas, scholastic theologian

  Representative of the medieval teaching on just price, usury and the subordination of trade to moral ends.

• St. Antonino of Florence, fifteenth-century archbishop and moralist

  Cited as a late medieval writer who applied canonist doctrine to an advanced commercial city.

• Martin Luther, German reformer

  Portrayed as hostile to commerce and usury but unable to translate faith into a social program.

• John Calvin, reformer of Geneva

  Accepted commerce and moderate interest while subjecting economic conduct to strict church discipline.

• Hugh Latimer, Tudor bishop and preacher

  Preached against enclosing landlords and the greed of the age.

• William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury

  Pursued a paternal social policy through the prerogative courts, including action against enclosers.

• Richard Baxter, Puritan pastor at Kidderminster

  His Christian Directory treats the calling and fair dealing in detail and is Tawney's chief Puritan witness.

• Max Weber, German sociologist

  Author of the thesis on the Protestant ethic that Tawney engages, accepting part and qualifying much.

Lessons

• Economics was once a branch of ethics

  Tawney shows that medieval and early Reformation writers judged prices, loans and wages by moral law and the common good, and that the idea of an autonomous economy governed by its own laws is comparatively recent. Readers learn to see that the boundaries between religion and economics have a history.

  • What was the just price, and why did medieval writers condemn the speculator more than the merchant?
  • How does Tawney describe the change from economics as moral conduct to economics as impersonal mechanism?
  • Should the Church speak to questions of prices and wages today?

• The calling and the economic virtues

  Puritan preachers taught that every Christian must labour diligently in a lawful calling chosen before God, and Tawney credits this teaching with forming habits of industry, thrift and sobriety. He also argues that over time the same teaching could make success a mark of virtue and poverty a mark of fault.

  • How does Tawney say the Puritan calling differed from the medieval idea of one's station?
  • Why does he think the economic virtues gave a timely stimulus to the English economy?
  • Can diligence in work be honoured without treating wealth as proof of virtue?

• History is more tangled than any single thesis

  Against a simple reading of Weber, Tawney insists that Puritanism contained both a collectivist discipline and an individualism, and that economic change shaped religious thought as much as the reverse. He models careful historical judgment about causes.

  • What does Tawney accept in Weber's thesis and what does he question?
  • What does Tawney mean by saying every soul holds both a Catholic and a Protestant?

• Judging the past by its aims

  Tawney grants that medieval discipline was often corrupt in practice, but asks that people be judged by their reach as well as their grasp. He treats the old moralists with respect while recording their failures.

  • Why does Tawney say men should be judged by the ends at which they aim?
  • Is it fair to judge an institution by its ideals when its practice did not match them?
  • How does this principle apply to judging our own society?

Context

Tawney wrote in the aftermath of the First World War, when British Christians debated the Church's duty toward industrial society; the 1924 Conference on Christian Politics, Economics and Citizenship (COPEC) and the work of Bishop Charles Gore, to whom the book is dedicated, belong to the same movement. In Germany, Max Weber's essay The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904-1905), Ernst Troeltsch's Social Teaching of the Christian Churches and Werner Sombart's studies had made the relation of religion to economic life a central question of historical scholarship.

Composition

The book grew from the Henry Scott Holland Memorial Lectures that Tawney delivered in 1922 and was published in 1926 by John Murray in London and Harcourt, Brace in New York. Tawney's long endnotes, including an extended note on Weber, document his use of sermons, tracts, statutes and church records. The library text reproduces the 1926 Harcourt, Brace edition, which is in the public domain in the United States.

Reception

The book became one of the most widely read works of economic history in English and a classic of Christian social thought; Tawney later wrote the foreword to Talcott Parsons's English translation of Weber's essay (1930). Economic historians have debated its argument ever since: H. M. Robertson and others questioned the link between Protestantism and capitalism, while defenders of commercial society have contested Tawney's moral judgments on it, and admirers have valued his balance between Weber's thesis and the economic history of England. It remains a standard starting point for the history of Christian economic ethics.

Comparisons

• weber-the-protestant-ethic-and-the-spirit-of-capitalism

  Weber argues that the Calvinist ethic of worldly asceticism helped form the spirit of capitalism; Tawney accepts part of this but stresses economic causes, the variety within Puritanism and the long survival of medieval teaching.

• calvin-institutes

  Calvin's teaching in Book III on the use of the present life and its goods underlies the Genevan discipline Tawney describes, which accepted commerce but placed it under strict moral oversight.

• luther-selected-sermons-and-treatises

  Luther's writings on trade and usury, and his treatise on Christian liberty, are Tawney's sources for the reformer's conservative economic outlook and his separation of inner faith from social works.

• summa-theologica

  Aquinas's questions on fraud in buying and selling and on usury (II-II, qq. 77-78) are the classic statement of the medieval economic ethic with which Tawney's story begins.

• the-wealth-of-nations

  Smith's account of self-interest guided to the public good marks the destination of the change Tawney traces, a view of the economy as a natural system that no longer needs the casuistry of divines.

• rerum-novarum

  Leo XIII's encyclical of 1891 renewed the medieval tradition of moral teaching on wages, property and labour that Tawney describes, from the Catholic side.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• The picture of society as an organism of unequal members in Chapter I, and the doctrines of just price and usury that follow from it.
• The contrast Tawney draws between Luther and Calvin in Chapter II.
• Laud's attempts to enforce social duties in Chapter III, and why they failed.
• Where Tawney agrees and disagrees with Weber in Chapter IV and in his note on Weber.
• The change in attitudes to poverty in The New Medicine for Poverty.

Key terms and names

Usury

Taking payment for a loan as such; condemned by medieval canon law, cautiously permitted by Calvin, and gradually accepted in England.

Just price

The medieval idea that goods should sell at a price reflecting the labour and costs of the maker, not the buyer's necessity.

Calling (vocation)

The station or work to which God summons a person; in Puritan teaching an active duty pursued with diligence.

Enclosure

Fencing common or open fields for private use, often for sheep, which Tudor preachers attacked for depopulating villages.

Casuistry

The detailed application of moral principles to particular cases, used by medieval and Puritan divines to guide merchants.

The Protestant ethic

Weber's term for the disciplined, methodical work ethic he traced to Calvinist teaching, the thesis Tawney qualifies.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension What did medieval writers mean by calling avarice a sin, and how did they apply that to trade and lending?
2. Comprehension How did Luther and Calvin differ in their response to the commerce of the sixteenth century, according to Tawney?
3. Comprehension How did Puritan writers change the meaning of the calling?
4. Interpretation Why does Tawney call Karl Marx the last of the Schoolmen? Is the comparison fair?
5. Interpretation Does Tawney think religion caused economic change, or economic change caused religious change, or both?
6. Interpretation How does Tawney's attitude toward medieval economic teaching differ from his attitude toward its practice?
7. Big Question Can a Christian pursue wealth diligently without serving mammon?

Faith Connections

• 1 Timothy 6:6-10 (Scripture)

  Tawney quotes Paul's counsel to be content with food and raiment, for the love of money is the root of all evil, as the old standard that the later praise of accumulation set aside.

• Matthew 6:24 (Scripture)

  No man can serve two masters; ye cannot serve God and mammon. Tawney's conclusion rests on this saying, though readers may differ on how it applies to commercial society.

• 2 Thessalonians 3:10 (Scripture)

  If any would not work, neither should he eat. Puritan writers drew on such texts for the duty of labour in a calling, which shaped the new attitude toward the idle poor that Tawney traces.

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae II-II, qq. 77-78 (Great Conversation)

  Aquinas's treatment of fraud in buying and selling and of usury is the classic medieval statement of the economic ethic Tawney describes in Chapter I.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: Medieval Christianity treated economic activity as moral conduct subject to the common good. The Reformation, the commercial revolution and the Puritan teaching on the calling gradually loosened that control, until economic life was seen as governed by its own impersonal laws and wealth became a mark of virtue. Therefore the modern separation of economics from ethics is a historical development, not a permanent truth, and Tawney concludes that Christians must recover the subordination of economic appetites to moral ends.

Rhetorical device: extended metaphor. In Chapter IV Tawney pictures the Church as a besieged garrison that discovers the invading host of economic appetites to be an ally rather than an enemy.

Debate: Resolved: that the Puritan ethic of the calling did more good than harm to English society.

Memory Work

men are to be judged by their reach as well as by their grasp--by the ends at which they aim as well as by the success with which they attain them.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Tawney argues that the Puritan teaching on the calling both strengthened the economic virtues and changed attitudes to the poor. Evaluate both claims using Chapter IV.

Comparison with The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism: Compare Weber's account of Puritan worldly asceticism with Tawney's. Where do they agree, and which of Tawney's objections is strongest?

Medical Lens

The book has no medical content; the chapter title The New Medicine for Poverty is a metaphor for changing attitudes to poor relief.

Creative Prompts

• Classroom

  Hold a mock church court in Calvin's Geneva hearing a merchant charged with overcharging in a time of scarcity, using the principles Tawney describes in Chapter II.

• Essay

  Compare Tawney's and Weber's explanations of how Puritanism related to the rise of capitalism. Which better accounts for the evidence Tawney gives in Chapter IV?

• Dialogue

  Write a conversation between Hugh Latimer and a Puritan tradesman of 1680 about whether diligence in business is service to God.

• Essay

  Tawney says men should be judged by their reach as well as their grasp. Apply his principle to one institution he discusses and argue whether it holds.

Further Reading

• The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Max Weber

• The Acquisitive Society, R. H. Tawney

• The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, Ernst Troeltsch

• A Christian Directory, Richard Baxter

  Tawney's main source for Puritan teaching on the calling.

• The Life of R. H. Tawney: Socialism and History, Lawrence Goldman