Blessings of Business

Darren Grem’s forthcoming The Blessings of Business is a study of the money men behind mid-20th century Evangelicalism. It’s a revealing book, once one skims off Grem’s premises, which seem to be: Evangelical ministry takes money, wealthy people provide the money. Grem seems to think this a scandal. It’s hard to spot the scandal. Evangelicals were starting colleges and magazines, planning and executing large-scale mission programs, all things that take some capital and cash, and it’s hardly surprising that they depended on generous rich people who shared their convictions.

But Grem is right that the characters he studies are little known figures in the history of Evangelicalism. One of the most colorful was R. G. LeTourneau, who led what anyone would call a big life. Raised in the heady Darbyism of a Brethren church, LeToureau was a world-class engineer: “Le Tourneau loved science and technology. An engineer by trade and the idea man behind countless innovative bulldozer and scraper designs, he founded LeTourneau Technologies, Inc. in 1935. His career and fortune depended on applied science and engineering, self-sufficiency, respectability, and innovation.” He invented a scraper that proved to be “an important innovation, making it possible to level land on a previously-impossible scale and helping to usher in the age of modern, industrial earthmoving.”

Much of LeTourneau’s money came from government contracts: “His earthmovers supported the New Deal’s public works projects, especially in the southwest. His machines worked on the Boulder Highway, the Hoover Dam in Nevada, the Marysville Levees, the Orange County Dam, and the Newhall Cut-off north of Los Angeles.” During World War II, “LeTourneau benefitted from a private-public partnership with the military, to which his company provided thousands of bulldozers, scrapers, and pullers.” According to Grem, “nearly a third of the money the Army Corps of Engineers spent on earthmovers during the war went toward the purchase of over 75,000 LeTourneau machines.”

Grem plays a bit of “gotcha” here, implying that LeTourneau’s government contracting was at odds with his general approval of free market economics and at odds with Evangelicalism’s hostility to the federal government. LeTourneau became suspicious of the New Deal later in life, but his military contracts are hardly a violation of Evangelical political principle. He believed that defense was one of the ordained functions of civil government, so there’s no contradiction between his support of the military and his resistance to federal regulation of business. His principles may have been wrong, but his actions were consistent with them.

Grem also casts a twilight shadow LeTourneau’s oversight of his company: “At each plant, an older model of evangelical paternalism and welfare capitalism prevailed. LeTourneau’s factories were miniature company towns, complete with regular chapel services and industrial chaplains, the latter representing what LeTourneau called ‘Christianity with its sleeves rolled up.’ LeTourneau paid evangelists to preach at company gatherings. Speakers from evangelical colleges and the Gideons also made appearances. Religious meetings—especially chapel meetings—were so regular that, in 1946, the company’s in-house magazine reported that, ‘Few congregations get to hear more preachers than LeTourneau folk.’ For LeTourneau, a corporation could—and should—have an evangelical soul.” As Grem half-admits, there was nothing new about this sort of Evangelical business ethic, but he sometimes claims that Evangelicals introduced a new conception of Christian living. A bit of Weber, and a glance at Weber’s Reformation and post-Reformation sources would have been helpful here.

Nearing 60, LeTourneau quit his business to devote most of his time and large portions of his wealth to missions projects. Not all were successful, but LeTourneau University persists to this day as the rare Evangelical university devoted to science and technology.

The Blessings of Business leaves the reader with many questions. How, if at all, did Evangelical dependence on corporate wealth affect Evangelical convictions about economics and business? Have Evangelicals blunted their critiques of the abuses of capitalism? To what extend did corporate sponsorship shape Evangelicalism’s accommodation to Americanism? Not all of Grem’s suspicions are well-founded, but he provides important data to develop a more searching examination of American Evangelicals and American business.