A Sermon to the Choir: Kathryn Tanner’s Christianity and the New Spirit of Capitalism

Abstract

[...]from May 2016 when the lectures were given, through 2019 when the book was published, to the first half of 2021 when I am working on this review, events have unfolded that have brought the Western world to its knees, as we are reeling from one self-inflicted disaster to the next. The book, beautifully produced by Yale University Press, is in six chapters, prefaced by acknowledgements and followed by endnotes and a general index. Christianity and the New Spirit of Capitalism is, then, less of a direct engagement with Weber, and more of a staged contrast between a number of central components of “finance-dominated capitalism” with the Christian calling of Tanner’s own context. [...]Weber’s methodology concerns the effect of the worldview and theological doctrines of Protestantism (rather than personal beliefs) on the capitalist drive for profit.