Eugene McCarraher

Main Description: This issue opens with the story of Melania and her real estate-magnate husband, who decide to divest themselves of their entire wealth. These early Christians, who sold off their many estates and freed eight thousand slaves, were only exceptional in the amount they gave away. Jesus, after all, had advised a rich man, “Go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor.” And he emphatically warned that you cannot serve two masters: you cannot serve God and money. What does that mean for Christians today, in a society and economy premised on the accumulation of capital? How can we resist and subvert the power of money? On this theme: - Clare Coffey looks at how multilevel marketing commodifies friendship. - Sharon Rose Christner describes what happens when a Vatican palace becomes a homeless shelter. - Alastair Roberts writes in praise of Mary of Bethany’s extravagant love. - A photojournalist asks what’s left of the Cuban Revolution seventy years after it began. - Jack Bell revisits William Cobbett’s spirited defense of the vanishing British commons. - Maria Weiss finds pain and friendship in the forced community of a leper colony. - Maureen Swinger reveals the joys and pitfalls of owning twenty-two cars (collectively). - Robert Lockridge describes what he’s learned running a pay-as-you-can café. Also in the issue: - The winning poems in the 2023 Rhina Espaillat Poetry Award contest - An excerpt from Eugene Vodolazkin’s new novel, A History of the Island - Reviews of Kerri ní Dochartaigh’s Thin Places, Lydia Millet’s Dinosaurs, and Jennifer Banks’s Natality - Readings on Christianity and money from Eberhard Arnold, Peter Riedemann, Nicolai Berdyaev, Basil of Caesarea, Maria Skobtsova, C. S. Lewis, and Dorothy Day Plough Quarterly features stories, ideas, and culture for people eager to apply their faith to the challenges we face. Each issue includes in-depth articles, interviews, poetry, book reviews, and art.

“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 ObserverAt 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

Is there a better way than capitalism? A much-cited recent poll found that more young Americans have a positive view of socialism than of capitalism. There’s a sense of newly opened possibilities: Might this be the moment for a mass movement of solidarity to overthrow the tyranny of concentrated power and wealth? But what exactly is this cause? Socialism’s champions know how to take effective whacks at capitalism, but diagnosis is not yet the cure. This issue of Plough springs from a conviction that there is a better answer beyond capitalism and socialism, a freely chosen life of sharing and caring that overcomes economic exploitation, a way of life that is both thoroughly practical and independent of the state. This vision is much older than Adam Smith and Karl Marx; it lies at the heart of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount and throughout the New Testament, as well as in the writings of the Old Testament prophets. It is exemplified by the communal life of the first church in Jerusalem, in which “all who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need” (Acts 2:44–45). Also in this issue: poetry by Jane Tyson Clement; reviews of books by Jennifer Berry Hawes, Robert Macfarlane, Emily Bazelon, and John Connell; and art and photography by Wassily Kandinsky, N. C. Wyeth, Deborah Batt, Kari Nielsen, Chris Arnade, William Morris, Hilzías Salazar, Amedeo Modigliani, Benjamin Meader, Bianca Berends, Elise Palmigiani, and Danny Burrows. Plough Quarterly features stories, ideas, and culture for people eager to put their faith into action. Each issue brings you in-depth articles, interviews, poetry, book reviews, and art to help you put Jesus’ message into practice and find common cause with others.