The rise of the Christian entrepreneur
As described elsewhere in this research many of the first Christianity-based businesses were set up by Quakers. Their specific contribution towards the development of management techniques is examined in the section on Quaker businesses below, but it is important to stress that despite their scale and impact they were not the only religious enterprises to emerge from a distinct faith community. David Jeremy, in the introduction to David Jeremy (ed.) (1998) dates the first claims about the positive influence of non-conformist religion to an article written in 1816 by Israel Worsley, a Unitarian cleric (d.1836)[9]. For reasons unknown this was published as an appendix to a funeral sermon, and argued that “although the avowal of dissenting principles cannot of itself manufacture either woollen or silken or linen cloth, yet, the freedom of the mind which the enjoy who are bound by no ‘tyrant’s law’ is calculated to promote the general interests of society”.
Jeremy examines the work of Everett E Hagen (1962), who “estimated that of ninety-two leading entrepreneurs in Britain in the early industrial period, 49 per cent were Nonconformist.” (p. 17). Other academics have cast doubt on Hagen’s figures but it is clear that there are very many examples. Methodism in particular is considered particularly conducive to the development of the ‘self-made man’ through its focus on personal application and self-improvement through work. Some have criticised Methodism as essentially reconciling the working class to their fate, on the one hand perhaps helping stave off revolution in Britain (Elie Halevy (1913)), and on the other hand teaching them to become resigned to their working fate (John L Hammond and Barbara Hammond (1917)). The idea of religion as a form of social control is familiar from the writings of Karl Marx, and was developed in connection with Methodism by E. P. Thompson (1963), whose fury at the denomination (“a ritualised form of psychic masturbation”) is perhaps explained in part by the fact that his father was a disaffected Methodist minister.
The Marxists would be correct to say that religion was enthusiastically harnessed as a form of social control by some entrepreneurs. William Lever, of the Port Sunlight soap manufacturer on the Mersey, hired a clergyman to work as a “company welfare officer and company church minister. He built a church whose membership was confined to his employees. And he supported all manner of church organisations. All to little avail: less than a fifth of the adults in his company village bothered to become members of the company church.” (p. 20).