| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 89.3

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 89.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Business of the Heart: Religion and Emotion in the Nineteenth Century. By John Corrigan. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. xii, 389 pp. $40.00, ISBN 0-520-22196-6.)

Anyone interested in the historical context and cultural meaning of the Enron scandal—and especially in how piety and philanthropy among Enron executives relate to their deceptive accounting practices, egregious treatment of shareholders, and deliberate efforts to buy off government regulators—will find John Corrigan's new book most enlightening. Although Corrigan's focus is the nineteenth century and, more specifically, the Boston Businessman's Revival of 1858, his analysis sheds considerable new light on the long-standing symbiosis between religion and business in American culture. 1

Corrigan shows that Bostonians engaged in the 1858 revival treated emotion as a commodity and viewed prayer and conversion as transactions between the individual and God. To put it crassly, the Christian laid his emotion on the table in anticipation of goods and services from God. This transaction stimulated emotion and encouraged it to flow, but it also gauged that flow as something that could and should be regulated. Religious emotion should be palpable and sincere, not excessive or uncontrolled. Prayer groups should meet during the lunch hour to accommodate business schedules and allow participants to return promptly to their duties. Personal testimony should be encouraged but strictly limited to five or even three minutes. The same attitudes and language that condemned frenzied buying and overheated markets regulated religious emotion. . . .

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