{The Good News of the Christian gospel got even better in late 19th- and early 20th-century America, when Russell Conwell, a Baptist minister who founded Temple University, put the Lord’s stamp of approval on the getting and spending of money. Pastor Conwell delivered his “Acres of Diamonds” lecture to audiences across the country, setting at ease the consciences of the wealthy and of those with aspirations to wealth; his Christianity could have been labeled “the preferential option for the rich.” Conwell’s lecture qualifies as a “Great Refusal” in that, despite being a minister, Conwell refused to take the Christian gospels seriously.}
(Note: In the following excerpt, I have taken the liberty of appending my own commentaries and scriptural paraphrases.)
Russell Conwell, from “Acres of Diamonds”:
I say that you ought to get rich, and it is your duty to get rich. How many of my pious brethren say to me, ‘“‘Do you, a Christian minister, spend your time going up and down the country advising young people to get rich, to get money?” ‘‘Yes, of course I do.” They say, ‘‘Isn’t that awful! Why don’t you preach the gospel instead of preaching about man’s making money?” ‘‘Because to make money honestly is to preach the gospel.”’ That is the reason. The men who get rich may be the most honest men you find in the community.
The LORD has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives, sight to the blind, and reassurance to those who do His work by piling up treasure on earth.
‘‘Oh,” but says some young man here tonight, “I have been told all my life that if a person has money he is very dishonest and dishonorable and mean and contemptible.” My friend, that is the reason why you have none, because you have that idea of people. The foundation of your faith is altogether false. Let me say here clearly, and say it briefly, though subject to discussion which I have not time for here, ninety-eight out of one hundred of the rich men of America are honest. That is why they are rich. That is why they are trusted with money. That is why they carry on great enterprises and find plenty of people to work with them. It is because they are honest men.
We know they are Christians because ninety-eight percent of them are honest and can be trusted with money.
My friend, you take and drive me out into the suburbs of Philadelphia and introduce me to the people who own their homes around this great city, those beautiful homes with gardens and flowers, those magnificent homes so lovely in their art, and I will introduce you to the very best people in character as well as in enterprise in our city, and you know I will. A man is not really a true man until he owns his own home, and they that own their homes are made more honorable and honest and pure, and true and economical and careful, by owning the home.
Blessed are the homeowners, for they are truly men; and blessed are the magnificent homes, with their gardens and flowers and art, for they are sources of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful.
For a man to have money, even in large sums, is not an inconsistent thing. We preach against covetousness, and you know we do, in the pulpit, and oftentimes preach against it so long and use the terms about ‘‘filthy lucre”’ so extremely that Christians get the idea that when we stand in the pulpit we believe it is wicked for any man to have money—until the collection-basket goes around, and then we almost swear at the people because they don’t give more money. Oh, the inconsistency of such doctrines as that!
Thou hypocrite, denouncing money in one breath yet filling baskets with it the next! You are whitewashed bank vaults, pristine on the outside but filled with Mammon on the inside, not that there is anything wrong with that.
Money is power, and you ought to be reasonably ambitious to have it. You ought because you can do more good with it than you could without it. Money printed your Bible, money builds your churches, money sends your missionaries, and money pays your preachers, and you would not have many of them, either, if you did not pay them. The man who gets the largest salary can do the most good with the power that is furnished to him, if his spirit be right to use it for what it is given to him.
Man does not live by spirit alone, but by the power of money too. All things are possible for Mammon. Mammon is my shepherd; I shall not want.
You ought to have money, and if you can honestly attain unto riches, it is your Christian and godly duty to do so. It is an awful mistake to think you must be awfully poor in order to be pious. Some men say, “‘Don’t you sympathize with the poor people?’’ Of course I do; I sympathize with the poor, but the number of poor who are to be sympathized with is very small. To sympathize with a man whom God has punished for his sins, to help him when God would still continue a just punishment, is to do wrong, and we do that more than we help those who are deserving. While we should sympathize with God’s poor—that is, those who cannot help themselves— let us remember there is not a poor person in the United States who was not made poor by his own shortcomings, or by the shortcomings of someone else.
Blessed are some of the poor, for they deserve sympathy, but most of them get what they deserve.
A gentleman gets up back there, and says, “Don’t you think there are some things in this world that are better than money?” I do, but I am talking about money now. Of course, there are some things higher than money, some things higher and grander than gold. Love is the grandest thing on God’s earth, but fortunate the lover who has plenty of money. Money is power, money is force, money will do good as well as harm. In the hands of good men and women it could accomplish, and it has accomplished, good. I heard a man get up in a prayer-meeting in our city and thank the Lord he was ‘‘one of God’s poor.” Well, I wonder what his wife thinks about that? She earns all the money that comes into that house, and he smokes a part of that on the veranda. I don’t want to see any more of the Lord’s poor of that kind, and I don’t believe the Lord does.
Thou shalt not smoke on the veranda unless thou hast money to burn.
Thus endeth the sermon.
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