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Rating: 
Summary: Gives insight into how to evaluate Christian prosperity.
Review: I've wanted to get a persepctive on how the early church justified its incredible secular wealth and power during the Middle Ages. I believe that it is time to revisit these ideas in an age where Christianity and secular society are either obsessed with the accumulation of wealth or Christians have an aversion to it feeling that Christians shouldn't have wealth. This book was recommended to me by my professor at Fuller Seminary.
Rating:
Summary: Gives insight into how to evaluate Christian prosperity.
Review: I've wanted to get a persepctive on how the early church justified its incredible secular wealth and power during the Middle Ages. I believe that it is time to revisit these ideas in an age where Christianity and secular society are either obsessed with the accumulation of wealth or Christians have an aversion to it feeling that Christians shouldn't have wealth. This book was recommended to me by my professor at Fuller Seminary.
Rating:
Summary: The law of God saith, he that will not work, let him not eat
Review: This book is a magisterial critical evaluation of the thesis of Max Weber 'The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism'.Tawney argues rightly that there is an interaction between religion and the social/economical circumstances because 'it seems a little artificial to talk as though capitalist enterprise could not appear till religious changes had produced a capitalist spirit. It would be equally true, and equally one-sided, to say that the religious changes were purely the result of economic movements.' (p. 312) As a matter of fact, the Christian Church itself had changed mightily in the Renaissance. It persecuted the Spiritual Franciscans who followed St Francis' rule of evangelical poverty! It was the richest company in the Western world (see 'A world lit by fire' by W. Manchester). Tawney remarks rightly that what Calvin did for the bourgeoisie of the sixteenth century, Marx did for the proletariat of the nineteenth.
Calvin's success was firmly prepared by Puritan moralists, who stressed thrift, work as an end in itself, efficiency and rational calculation. They paved the way for a shrewd commercial and powerful middle class, which adopted the Calvinist religion and its ethic as a natural ally. This very rich book shows the real impact of Calvinism on the whole society. One example: wages. Calvinism considered 'that high wages are not a blessing, but a misfortune, since they merely conduce to weekly debauches.' (p.267) This is a brilliantly written, colourful, metaphorical, and yet scientific work. It should be an example for all historians and should show them how to present important historical evolutions in a comprehensive and attractive language. This is an essential read for the understanding of our own modern society.
Rating: 
Summary: A classic
Review: This book is not only a classic in polisci fields but also very important in sociology and history. Tawney's argument that the decline of the communal mindset (present in Reformed theology especially) was a leading cause of the rise of Capitalism, especially in countries like England, where a wealthy few profited from the disolution of the monasteries. I would recomend this book to anyone studying polisci, history, sociology and even theology, to give a good perspective on why we think the way we do. Our western mindset is a classic example of not seeing the forest throught the trees.
Rating:
Summary: This book is a classic in its field.
Review: What is the boundary between us and them? Who is part of the family, with whom we deal on the basis of love and trust, and who is not, from whom we require a monetary accounting of our economic relationship? This book follows the changing answer to that question over the 16th and 17th centuries, in Britain and (to a lesser extent) other parts of Europe. The medieval conception was that all people were brethren in Christ, all part of the family, and everyone was responsible for the well-being of all. The Church, as the guardian of this family, could establish and enforce ethical standards for business life as much as it regulated all other aspects of life. This was the view of the Protestant reformers as well as the Catholic Church. No doubt sincerely felt in the brotherhood of the early church, this feeling began to pall with the have-nots in a stratified medieval society, especially as the corruption of the Church became rampant. The tide of individualism was rising, not to be denied. The Protestant reformers certainly did not intend to help this tide along: they regarded it as part of the decadence of the time. The story, and the irony, of religion in the rise of capitalism is that the Protestant churches got captured by the individualists against the wishes of their founders. Tawney explores this history with wit and wisdom, as illustrated in this quote: "... the poor, it is well known, are of two kinds, 'the industrious poor', who work for their betters, and 'the idle poor', who work for themselves." This book is a classic in its field, and should be in the library of everyone interested in the history of the last few centuries.
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