Corporate Spirit

How did the corporate organizations that play such an important role in American society come to be” (p. 1)? Amanda Porterfield opens her study with this question and offers an answer that intertwines the history of Christian thought from the Apostle Paul to the present with evolving commercial life. She insists that the U.S. ideal of separation of church and state ironically “expedited the flow of ideas back and forth between business and religion” (ibid.). Porterfield also insists that the relationship between religion and the corporation originated in the early church. This ambitious project thus begins in the ancient world with Paul's call for early Christians to see themselves as part of the body of Christ, a metaphor that recognizes the significance of each constituent part and the greater capacity of united effort. As the church cultivated groups committed to church administration, charitable work, and exemplary living, it also developed a structure that facilitated efficiency, the division of labor, and the accumulation of land and wealth. Even before the final collapse of the Roman Empire, the church had succeeded in Christianizing social welfare through corporate institutions. Social and political crises during the seventh and eighth centuries accelerated these developments. Religious orders created organizations that provided succor and education in the name of Christ. In medieval Europe, devotion to the church “bound together princes, episcopal authorities, monastic orders, craft guilds, and other lay fraternities, even as they vied with one another for power and influence” (p. 46). Charters granted specific legal rights to the cities, monastic orders, and other organizations, lending them legitimacy as models for collective activity

Apostle · Archaeology · Business history · Corporation · Craft · Economic history · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Sociology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · History · Law

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