Kathryn Tanner’s book Christianity and the new Spirit of Capitalism generated an interesting debate about the relationship between Christianity and capitalism, as exemplified by the four review essays—by David Cloutier, Nicole M. Flores, Philip Goodchild, and John E. Thiel, respectively—published in Modern Theology in 2019. While the responses contain many interesting critical points, this article focuses on two particular trajectories in the debate that indirectly demand an empirical engagement with Tanner’s work. One strand of criticism charges that Tanner offers too generic examples of the economic reality that she examines, while her description of Christianity is too specific without being contextualized. The second strand argues that Tanner makes a dichotomy between a religious project and an economic project, which leads to the construction of a “pure” Christian conduct. This article continues this debate by fleshing out the issues of purity and impurity through an empirical study of two Christian networks, the Economy of Communion and Business as Mission. Using Bruno Latour’s account of modernization, the main finding is that the two logics, purity and impurity, continually configure the relationship between religion and economy. We further discuss these findings in relation to Tanner and her critics, and argue that theological ethical studies of the relationship between Christianity and economy would benefit from starting with empirical studies of the actual intertwining of religion and economy. Tanner convincingly argues that in order to challenge capitalism one has to work for structural, political changes and not only improve conditions within the economic system. However, this does not necessarily imply the use of pure and abstract normative principles. Normative ethical insights that are developed through analyses of everyday religious–economic practices may turn out to be as convincing.

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This article engages with how religion and economy relate to each other in faith-based businesses. It also elaborates on a recurrent idea in theological literature that reflections on different visions of time can advance theological analyses of the relationship between Christianity and capitalism. More specifically, this article brings results from an ethnographic study of two faith-based businesses into conversation with the ethicist Luke Bretherton’s presentation of different understandings of the relationship between Christianity and capitalism. Using Theodore Schatzki’s theory of timespace, the article examines how time and space are constituted in two small faith-based businesses that are part of the two networks Business as Mission (evangelical) and Economy of Communion (catholic) and how the different timespaces affect the religious-economic configurations in the two cases and with what moral implications. The overall findings suggest that the timespace in the Catholic business was characterized by struggling caused by a tension between certain ideals on how religion and economy should relate to each other on the one hand and how the practice evolved on the other hand. Furthermore, the timespace in the evangelical business was characterized by confidence, caused by the business having a rather distinct and achievable goal when it came to how they wanted to be different and how religion should relate to economy. There are, however, nuances and important resemblances between the cases that cannot be explained by the businesses’ confessional and theological affiliations. Rather, there seems to be something about the phenomenon of tension-filled and confident faith-based businesses that causes a drive in the practices towards the common good. After mapping the results of the empirical study, I discuss some contributions that I argue this study brings to Bretherton’s presentation of the relationship between Christianity and capitalism.

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