Berkley Center

For contemporary American evangelicals, debt meets God in financial ministry, which offers help for the financial trials so widespread today. Church teachings encourage believers to bring their intimate relationship with God into the marketplace, to resist the powers that tempt them to keep on buying, and to redirect their consumption in light of God's purpose. This talk by Caitlin Zaloom analyzed how financial Bible study, church-sponsored budget coaching, and Christian media reshape the relationship between money and the divine, and, at the same time, offer new models and techniques for living in today's volatile economy. The messages and practices of Christian finance illuminate the complex relationships between economic reason, faith, and consumer culture in the United States today.