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Francis Wayland, Economics Textbook

Evangelicalism and political economy in the early nineteenth century

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During the 1820s, increasingly unruly student behavior forced Brown University President Asa Messer to resign amidst controversy. Pranks on campus had escalated to the burning of privies and theft of chapel doors. Although Messer accused rival Brown Corporation members of encouraging students, he eventually made way for his successor, the disciplinarian Francis Wayland. A rising star among evangelical sermonizers, Wayland earned a reputation on Brown’s campus for his strict, no-nonsense attitude. He once attempted to subdue his “more than usually self willed” 15-month-old son by starving the infant until he succumbed to his father’s will. Brown alumnus Charles Congdon recalled, “He was disobeyed with fear and trembling, and the boldest did not care to encounter his frown.” Wayland’s legacy beyond the confines of College Hill rests on the remarkable success of his textbook, The Elements of Political Economy, published in 1837. Adapted from a mandatory course taught to Brown seniors, Elements was the most popular textbook on political economy up until the Civil War. Tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of students learned from Wayland, including Abraham Lincoln, who, according to his law partner, “ate up, digested, and assimilated” the text. The economic theories espoused in Elements were not especially innovative. The most prominent ideas in the text—division of labor, comparative advantage, the labor theory of value—can all be traced to the writings of more prominent political economists. In some sections, Wayland copied almost verbatim from Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations. Wayland’s distinct intervention lay in his ability to adapt the secular, and occasionally antireligious, discipline of political economy to a Christian worldview. During the early 19th century, America experienced a period of religious revival known as the Second Great Awakening. Evangelical movements, especially Methodist and Baptist, spread throughout the country, emphasizing the need for moral and spiritual renewal. Francis Wayland was a young medical student in Troy, New York when in 1815, he was touched by the revivals that swept across western and central New York (known as “burned-over districts” to represent the spiritual zeal that seemed to set the area on fire). Undergoing an evangelical rebirth, Wayland left medical school to enroll in seminary, eventually ministering at the First Baptist Church in Boston. Wayland embodied the convergence of capitalist thought and Christianity—unlikely bedfellows whose marriage has long confounded historians of modernity. How did a religion that preached humility, sacrifice, and a near disdain for wealth cohabitate with an economic system that justified self-interest as a means to social cooperation and prosperity? Genuine religious sentiments were alive and well in 19th-century America; clearly capitalism did not flourish at the expense of religion. The sociologist Max Weber famously argued that Protestantism’s focus on a calling unintentionally made possible the development of the ‘spirit of capitalism.’ However, by the 19th century, the question was no longer how Christians unconsciously laid the groundwork for a future economic order, but rather how Christians responded when directly faced with the realities of the new market economy, where impersonal economic forces replaced traditional communitarian ethics. In this context, Francis Wayland posited that the newly discovered science of political economy was more than compatible with Christianity. The laws of discipline were nothing less than a reflection of God’s divine will.

The first half of the 19th century witnessed two pivotal movements in the history of capitalism. On the one hand, in the realm of economic activity, new transportation infrastructure created a nationally integrated marketplace. On the other hand, in the realm of thought, Americans imported and proliferated the European discipline of political economy.

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