The Book Of Mammon

Everyone yearns for “the good life” ... where children are reared in a loving, stimulating environment ... where youth are prepared for their future ... where adults achieve satisfaction through personal relationships and meaningfully rewarding work ... and where seniors find peace in their “golden” years. Typically, it entails economic sufficiency. Yet, when this universal hope becomes reality, many Christians confront a disturbing faith challenge. Jesus taught his followers to postpone earthly satisfactions until the next life. In the present world, their blessings will be found in poverty, hunger, sorrow, and persecution. Woe to those with wealth, full stomachs, laughter, and popularity! Christ practiced and demands self-denial, not self-satisfaction. Entry into Jesus’ severe life-style is difficult and the path is arduous. Multitudes are called but only a select few actually follow the way to eternal life that requires crucifixion of one’s self. This book is a thought-provoking biblical analysis of the gospel’s opposition to wealth. One cannot serve both God and money. The Christian dilemma is that practical faith absolutely requires compromise. Money is necessary for daily life and future needs. How is it possible to follow Christ in this money-driven society? The Book of Mammon searches the Bible for the surprising resolution.

“An extraordinary work of intellectual history as well as a scholarly tour de force, a bracing polemic, and a work of Christian prophecy...McCarraher challenges more than 200 years of post-Enlightenment assumptions about the way we live and work.” —The Observer At least since Max Weber, capitalism has been understood as part of the “disenchantment” of the world, stripping material objects and social relations of their mystery and magic. In this magisterial work, Eugene McCarraher challenges this conventional view. Capitalism, he argues, is full of sacrament, whether one is prepared to acknowledge it or not. First flowering in the fields and factories of England and brought to America by Puritans and evangelicals, whose doctrine made ample room for industry and profit, capitalism has become so thoroughly enmeshed in the fabric of our society that our faith in “the market” has become sacrosanct. Informed by cultural history and theology as well as management theory, The Enchantments of Mammon looks to nineteenth-century Romantics, whose vision of labor combined reason, creativity, and mutual aid, for salvation. In this impassioned challenge to some of our most firmly held assumptions, McCarraher argues that capitalism has hijacked our intrinsic longing for divinity—and urges us to break its hold on our souls. “A majestic achievement...It is a work of great moral and spiritual intelligence, and one that invites contemplation about things we can’t afford not to care about deeply.” —Commonweal “More brilliant, more capacious, and more entertaining, page by page, than his most ardent fans dared hope. The magnitude of his accomplishment—an account of American capitalism as a religion...will stun even skeptical readers.” —Christian Century

"Brilliant, Clever, Tragic," "Laugh out loud funny," "A Terrifically Insightful Work." Described as The Office meets The Bible, the tale told here is hardly to be believed. The Question: What happens when God and Mammon are made to synergize? In answer, this book opens the doors to Mormon corporate offices, most secret of spaces, and invites you inside. At the Church Office Building (it's actual name) spiritual ambitions speak through HR evaluations, missionary mission statements, digital converts, and scripture marketing campaigns. Hear employees chant "cultural beliefs" and test if a new DVD hits your "spiritual hot buttons." Watch us market food storage "solutions" to religious consumers! Read about the "best practices" of the corporate side, from smuggling underwear into banana republics to Mitt Romney's role in a billion dollar Church Mall. The author, an Ivy League trained cultural anthropologist, "works" (sometimes) as a media evaluator with the Mormon Church's corporate arm. During long lunches he traces the ins and outs of a religion being consumed by corporate culture, and you, Dear Reader, are invited along for the insights, laughs, and revelations. A compelling, light-hearted but serious memoir, sometimes fictional ethnography, and, yes, even apocalypse, this book crosses genres, fact, fancy, and everything between. Not for the faint of heart, dumb persons, or the casual reader.

In his first full-length book Justin Welby looks at the subject of money and materialism. Designed for study in the weeks of Lent leading up to Easter, Dethroning Mammon reflects on the impact of our own attitudes, and of the pressures that surround us, on how we handle the power of money, called Mammon in this book. Who will be on the throne of our lives? Who will direct our actions and attitudes? Is it Jesus Christ, who brings truth, hope and freedom? Or is it Mammon, so attractive, so clear, but leading us into paths that tangle, trip and deceive? Archbishop Justin explores the tensions that arise in a society dominated by Mammon's modern aliases, economics and finance, and by the pressures of our culture to conform to Mammon's expectations. Following the Gospels towards Easter, this book asks the reader what it means to dethrone Mammon in the values and priorities of our civilisation and in our own existence. In Dethroning Mammon, Archbishop Justin challenges us to use Lent as a time of learning to trust in the abundance and grace of God.

In Jesus and the Politics of Mammon, Phelps uses contemporary critical theory, continental philosophy, and theology to develop a radical reading of Jesus. Phelps argues that theological traditions have on the whole blunted Jesus’ teachings, particularly in regard to money and related concerns of political economy. Focusing on the distinction between God and Mammon, Phelps suggests instead that Jesus’ teachings result in a politics that is anti-money, anti-work, and anti-family. Although Jesus does not provide a specific program for this politics, his teachings incite readers to think otherwise with respect to these institutions.

Michael Hague is an American illustrator and writer, primarily of children's fantasy books. He has illustrated such classics such as The Wind in the Willows, The Wizard of Oz, The Hobbit and the stories of Hans Christian Andersen. He is renowned for the intricate and realistic detail he brings to his work, and the rich colors he chooses. A horrifyingly beautiful vampire story, this lavishly illustrated adventure starts on the streets of 1920s London and ends at the gates of Hell. A horrifyingly beautiful vampire story, this lavishly illustrated adventure starts on the streets of 1920s London and ends at the gates of Hell. Writer Jonathan Meeks is captivated by the story of Dracula. On a quest for immortality, to discover if there is truth at the heart of the vampire myth, Meeks discovers there is far more truth in fiction.

What did Protestants in America think about capitalism when capitalism was first something to be thought about? The Bible told antebellum Christians that they could not serve both God and mammon, but in the midst of the market revolution most of them simultaneously held on to their faith while working furiously to make a place for themselves in ...