CHRISTIAN HISTORY Issue 104 Christians in the New Industrial Economy The world changed, the church responded Did you know? THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION REPLACED HUMAN SKILLS WITH MACHINE SKILLS ALL OVER EUROPE AND AMERICA HOW THE OTHER HALF LIVED Workers who moved to the cities often ended up in cheap, crowded, unsanitary tenements such as this on Baxter Street, New York City. BEER AND BIBLES? ARTHUR GUINNESS (see “Godless capitalists?” pp. 33–36) not only produced a line of brewers, he also sired a missionary line, the “Guinnesses for God.” Arthur’s grandson Henry Grattan Guinness became a famed evangelical orator (and, ironically, a teetotaler). He evangelized throughout Britain and wrote books on biblical prophecy. Henry’s daughter Geraldine mar- ried the son of Hudson Taylor, a famous missionary to China, and wrote Taylor’s biography. Modern apologist Os Guinness, carried out of China in a basket on a pole at the age of two by his missionary parents to escape the approaching Japanese army, is Henry’s great-grandson. ONE WAY TO GET AWAY NINETY MEMBERS of the communal society the Christian Brethren boarded the steamboat Megiddo RISE OF THE MACHINES in 1901 and set off to evangelize cities along the Mis- PREVIOUSLY, INDUSTRIES “put out” jobs to work- sissippi and Ohio Rivers. The members lived in family ers, giving them raw materials and coming around to groups and supported themselves by making and sell- collect the results. Industrialization centralized this ing crocheted goods, taking odd jobs in ports, collect- whole process. According to one history, the number ing rent from properties the members owned in cities of handloom weavers in Lancashire dropped from 240,000 in 1820 to only 188,000 by 1835. Their wages decreased from more than three shillings to just over two for a piece of calico. By 1861 only 7,000 hand weav- ers remained. The number of powerlooms increased from 2,400 to 400,000 in the same time period. CENTRALIZING WORK meant centralizing work- ers. London grew from housing one-fifth of Britain’s population in 1800 to half the population by 1850. In New York City, population doubled every decade from 1800 to 1880. Children shuck oys- describes some- AT WORK BEFORE DAYBREAK TODAY THE WORD “LUDDITE” ters at the Pass Packing Company in Mississippi. one who opposes advances in computing technol- ogy. Two hundred years ago, it was used for textile workers who smashed machines that were displac- ing them. The movement began with a series of dis- along the route, and charging the curious public admis- turbances in 1811 in northern England. Luddites took sion for tours. After two years, navigational problems their name from the apocryphal figure Ned Ludd, drove the group, now called the “Megiddo Mission,” who had supposedly broken a knitting frame after a onto land. In early 1904, they settled in Rochester, New superior admonished him. York, where the Megiddo Church functions today. COURT AT NO. 24 BAXTER STREET, CA. 1890—JACOB A. RIIS. FROM THE COLLECTIONS OF MUSEUM CITY NEW YORK CHILDREN SHUCKING OYSTERS—LIBRARY OF CONGRESS Christian’s Library Press has been committed to publishing inuential texts on church leadership, the vocation of work, and stewardship for more than 30 years. During this time The Journal of Markets & Morality is a peer-reviewed academic Christian’s Library Press published e Deacons Handbook, journal published twice a year—in the spring and fall. e Elders Handbook, and God’s Yardstick which still are in demand today. How will promoting intellectual exploration of the evangelicals respond to relationship between economics and morality, contemporary from both social science and theological perspectives cultural Articles shifts? The Journal of Markets & Morality publishes innovative articles in the elds of economics, theology, and moral philosophy. Our goal What we believe is to stimulate and encourage discussion across disciplinary lines. inuences how we respond, and this Symposium will have signicant The Symposium, appearing serially in the spring issue of the ramications for Journal of Markets & Morality, was created to be a forum for the future of a free conference papers, such as those of the Evangelical Theological society and its Available Society’s Theology of Work and Economics symposium. The business, economic, Online symposium aims to contribute valuable perspectives that lead and public sectors. to an integrated vision of stewardship, work, and economics for Now! leaders in the seminary, church, and business communities. Sometimes the way forward is found by looking back. Controversy The Journal of Markets & Morality hosts controversies on Writing in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, questions of current signicance, oering a challenging Abraham Kuyper elaborates on the doctrine of common engagement on crucial issues from diering viewpoints. grace, a theology of public service and cultural engagement of Christians’ shared humanity with the rest of the world. Book Reviews Each issue features an expansive book review section, As Kuyper notes, “If God is sovereign, then his lordship designed to monitor the latest interdisciplinary work in the must extend over all of life, and it cannot be restricted to areas of ethics and economics; Christian Social Thought; and the walls of the church or within the Christian orbit.” the philosophy, history, and methodology of economics. Kuyper’s work shows us that God is not absent from the nonchurch areas of our common life and bestows his Scholia gifts and favor to all people. The Scholia oers never before translated texts from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Featuring texts from Protestant and Catholic moral theologians on topics in Abraham Kuyper was a profound theologian, an encyclopedic thinker, and a deeply spiritual man who believed that it is the believer's task economics, political economy, and social ethics, the Scholia “to know God in all his works.” In a day when secular science is seeking exists to reintroduce these historical documents to scholars to establish hegemony over all knowing, and when postmodern art is across the globe. These classic texts serve to assist scholars in threatening to bring an end to art, Kuyper’s solid, Biblical insights can the revival of the once vibrant natural-law dimension of help add sanity to these two critical areas of human life. these disciplines. —Chuck Colson, Founder, Prison Fellowship and the Colson Center for Christian Worldview marketsandmorality.com WWW.CLPRESS.COM Editor’s note Machines taking the jobs of humans. The sudden abil- produced this issue seems both natural and fruitful. The ity for instantaneous communication across continents. Acton Institute has long argued that the church needs to People abandoning the countryside for the big city. understand and teach social ethics in a way that values New inventions at every turn. A growing gap between the fundamental nature of enterprise and economics, rich and poor. The world shrinking daily. and that Christians need to be concerned to a greater The early twenty-first century? Yes, but those words degree about what conditions must be met to promote could just as easily describe the Industrial Revolution widespread human flourishing. Scripture, indeed, that, over 150 years ago, began changing the social teaches economic wisdom, human dignity rooted in and working lives of Americans. Industry after indus- the image of God, the value of all legitimate work, the try developed new tools to do workers’ jobs, tools that call to love one’s neighbor as oneself, and the funda- in some cases supplanted these industries’ bedrock mental importance of social institutions. We here at skills and methods and the people who had mastered CHI agree that exploring how the church has addressed them. Automatic looms—the ability to tunnel under- these issues in the past can only help this conversation, water—telegraphs that could send messages around which has sometimes been an adversarial one. the world—and eventually radio, electricity, and pho- The articles here are intentionally varied; we may nograph records. The location of work moved from not agree with, or endorse, all those who brought the home to the factory, from the country to the city. the resources of the Christian faith to bear on eco- Unprepared cities became riddled with squalid, unsafe nomic change. But this range of articles shows how tenements. Like a great landslide, the revolution swept many, many people tried to apply Jesus’ teachings to away centuries of solid economic and social ground, the world they lived in, during strange and confus- leaving Europe and America battered and bewildered. ing times. Obviously, these stories are also relevant And Christians were right there in the middle to our own day. We also live in a time of tremendous of these economic realities. Approaches varied, of economic and technological dislocation. We also won- course—from the Holiness preaching, “blood-washed” der which way to turn. Let the voices in this issue help singing, and homes for fallen women of the Salvation remind us that Jesus is Lord; the Army; to the clean, safe, and new model villages built same yesterday, today, and forever. for workers by the Quaker owners of the Cadbury and If we follow him, working together Rowntree cocoa companies; to the fight for an alcohol- at an organizational level, he will free world of the Woman’s Christian Temperance see us through. CH Union; to attempts by University of Wisconsin presi- dent John Bascom to implement the Social Gospel and Jennifer Woodruff Tait, bring in a new society, not only through the church, Managing Editor but through his university. And many who might never have darkened the door of a traditional Christian CORRECTION In issue 102, the interview “Crusades church—from members of communal societies to labor and Reformers” (p.