Christian History Home > Issue 19 > The Puritan Critique of Modern Attitudes Toward Money
The Puritan Critique of Modern Attitudes Toward Money
Puritans are often charged with having been the origin of modern attitudes toward money. Upon scrutiny, the things ascribed to Puritans turn out to be secularized versions of something that the Puritans only accepted in a context of supreme allegiance to God and obedience to Christian moral standards.
posted 7/01/1988 12:00AM
To show the cleavage between Puritan and modern attitudes, I have arranged Puritan views as a series of critiques of modern outlooks.
The Puritan Critique of
THE SUCCESS ETHIC
Modern Western culture is based overwhelmingly on the success ethic—the belief that material prosperity is the ultimate value in life and that a person’s worth can be measured by material or social standards. By contrast, the Puritan Thoman Watson asserted that “blessedness… does not lie in the acquisition of worldly things. Happiness cannot by any art of chemistry be extracted here.” Samuel Hieron was far from the success ethic when he prayed:
“Oh, let not mine eyes be dazzled, nor my heart bewitched with the glory and sweetness of these worldly pleasures …. Draw my affection to the love of that durable riches, and to that fruit of heavenly wisdom which is better than gold, and the revenues thereof do surpass the silver, that my chief care may be to have a soul enriched and furnished with Thy grace.”
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