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Jesus, Money, Promise and What Happens When They Disappear
Professor Damon’s theses regarding the role of religion in American culture during the
Second Great Awakening are in fact quite ingenious. However, there are significant questions as
to whether his arguments fit southern society in the same way that they do the North. Damon’s
use of a modified form of exchange spheres to fit southern society, S-C/M-S’ instead of M-C-M’
and H-J-H’ for C-M-C’ do appear to work in some cases, but not completely. In addition, his
argument built upon Mauss’ model, that religion and value flow in opposite directions, coupled
with his argument that Southern religion flowed from the bottom up, causes some problems.
This essay will attempt to first explain, and then evaluate and modify his arguments in the light
of the history of the Second Great Awakening, and the images of nineteenth century society
painted by Bruce, Johnson, and Wallace. After working with his theses, I will then seek to
answer the question of what happens to society when value stops flowing, both in the North and
the South.
Damon’s first argument centers around the idea that, in the South, the traditional
exchange spheres have become so separated as to make it impossible for anyone to move up
from the C-M-C’ sphere to the M-C-M’ sphere. Assuming that this is true, he creates a
substituted exchange sphere, based upon the camp meeting practices of Southern Religion as
presented in Bruce. From Damon’s perspective, this spiritual exchange sphere was the
functional equivalent of the capitalistic exchange spheres of Marx and of the North. In Damon’s
southern, spiritual exchange spheres, Jesus functioned as money, and preachers were a sort of
spiritual capitalist (see appendix 1). Some tweaking, though not an abandonment, of Damon’s
analysis is necessary at this point for several reasons. First, the question of where alienation of
labor fits in, indeed the question of labor at all is not really dealt with. Second, in comparison
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with the Marxian exchange spheres, those in the South don’t correspond completely. For
example, the S, saints, is not exchanged for H, hell, in the same way that money is exchanged for
commodity labor. Damon’s analyses have the upper, quantitative exchange sphere consisting of
Saints using a camp meeting to produce more Saints. This sphere functions perfectly well. The
problem is with the lower sphere and its relations to the upper sphere. It is at this point that we
must consider the institution of slavery and its affect upon the Southern view of people. If we
assume that slavery permits people to be viewed as commodities, as well as the owners of
commodities, the model becomes clearer, but also separated from Marx’s model. In the revised
model (see appendix 1) the separation between the two spheres collapses. Yet the basis for the
spheres is maintained. Saints (the converted especially preachers and assuming, as they did, that
all converted would help to spread the word) must be viewed as both spiritual capitalists and as
the product of the application of Jesus to sinners. The Jesus in this case does not function so
much as money but as what could be called entrepreneurial capital, which is the functional
equivalent of a factory in that it need not be diminished by use or purchased by the capitalist for
each round of the exchange spheres. In this model the existing saints can apply their Jesus
repeatedly to sinners, thus adding value to the sinners and converting them into saints. The
transformation from sinner to saint in this case is a qualitative measure as well as a quantitative
measure, since it both increases the number of saints, who can then use their Jesus to create even
more saints and changes the individual sinners. With people functioning as both commodities
and the owners of commodities, the functionality of this model becomes clear. The sinners own
only themselves, and give freely of themselves to the spiritual capitalists in order to have value
added to themselves and become Saints. This draws an interesting parallel with the northern
worker in Johnson who commented that he made more money because he had gotten religion.
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For the parallel to work between Northern Capitalism and Southern Religion some aspect of
Sainthood must be regarded as money as well as commodity. In this case the model starts to
look more like Marx’s (see appendix 2). From the perspective of the sinner (worker?) he
exchanges himself (his labor?) for sainthood, which now takes on the functionality of money.
Viewing sainthood as money, Damon’s conjecture that Jesus functioned as money is given new
validity, as Jesus is an integral part of Sainthood. The sinner, who for our purposes now owns
his sainthood, and exchanges that for the commodity of Saint, which he now becomes. The
system works only if people themselves (and not their labor) can be viewed as commodities,
which can work in the South given the existence of slavery. This revised view of Damon’s
theses also works well towards solving the problem of alienation, or the complete lack of any
mention of it. In such a system it is not that alienation does not exist, but that it cannot. Using
the analogy of a sinner as the commodity traded for sainthood with that of labor as a commodity
traded for money, we see that the commodity traded for the equivalent of money is exactly the
same as the person who does the trading. Thus, while workers can feel alienated from their
labor when it is sold to capitalists, the fact that sinners are able to continue to view themselves as
free, this time because of the contrast between slaves and free men provided by slavery, makes it
impossible to be alienated from themselves. They continue to own themselves. Furthermore,
they will receive at least some of the value from the quantitative creation of more saints in that
they themselves will now be a saint and will henceforth be able to function in the upper,
capitalistic Saint-Camp Meeting-Saint’ (or revised St-Sn+J-St’) sphere.
In many ways the second aspect of Damon’s theses concerning religion during the
Second Great Awakening is even more problematic. Based upon Mauss, he presents a system
whereby value and spirituality flow in different directions. Running with this, he argues that in
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the North religion flowed from the top of society down, while value flowed from the bottom up
(see appendix 2). The upper echelons knew that it was the working classes who were creating
enormous amounts of value, which they were then appropriating. According to Damon, they
then sought to return something to the lower classes, namely religion. This model works
beautifully in the north, where Marxian economics tells us that value was created by the labor
power of the workers and where Johnson tells us the religion was promulgated by the upper
classes. He says that “the most powerful source of the workingman’s revival was the simple
coercive fact that wage earners worked for men who insisted on seeing them in church” (Johnson
p121). Whether workingmen viewed religion as a just compensation (or whether they viewed it,
and especially the temperance and lost leisure time that accompanied it, as a burden) is further
brought into question by the words of a worker who said “I don’t give a damn (about religion). I
get give dollars more in a month than before I got religion” (quoted in Johnson p121). Indeed it
seems that Johnson would tend to view the upper classes as utilizing religion more “as a crucial
step in the legitimization of free labor” (Johnson p141) than as a “gift” of the upper classes lower
classes. Yet, completely apart from Johnson’s analysis and from the appearance of this system
to later historians or even to the workers of the time, there is no reason to doubt that the
capitalists of the time felt that their religion served to return something to the lower classes.
Furthermore, this mindset would fit with the argument that in the North, the upper classes had
become separated from those below, in that their attempts to force their workers to become the
same religion as they were would serve to unify the groups again. Thus, with regard to the
North, Damon’s theses seem to work fine.
The major problem with the model begins when one tries to apply it to the South, where
Bruce tells us that religion was promulgated by the lower groups in society. In order for this
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model to work the upper rung of society in the South would have to be passing value down to the
lower social groups. This does not appear true, at least not in the way that the workers in the
North created value for the capitalists. While one possible way of answering this question, and a
bit of a cop out, is to say that the North and South were so fundamentally different that the model
cannot and need not apply to the South. This idea is predicated partly upon the notion that the
South was a much more status-like society than the North, with the domination in the South
being personal as opposed to abstract. While this may to a certain extent be true, it is far from a
complete explanation of why the model should not work. Damon’s explanation is that Southern
Camp meeting religion was a response to the Honor Code which was promulgated by the planter
elite. While this is completely possible, and would serve as some sort of transfer from the upper
classes to lower classes, there does not seem to be a correspondence between a code of conduct
and value. Furthermore, since in the North it was the group (the capitalists) which had been
become separated from its social opposites that first put forth a method of reunification, it would
seem unlikely that that in the South, where the lower classes were the group which had become
separated, for their religious attempts at reunification to have been a response to anything. Thus,
it would seem that the use of the honor code as reciprocation for religion leaves much to be
desired. But perhaps most importantly, I don’t see there being any real need to substitute honor
for value, since Damon’s model for the North can be made to work in the South if we consider
the historical economics and politics of the that region during this time. (****Though arguable,
the model about to be constructed does seem to correspond with the notion of value and
spirituality flowing in opposite directions, and further will allow for interesting conjecture with
regards to the question of what happens when value stops moving in the system.****) In the
North, the upper classes “gave” religion to the lower classes as a way of repaying them for the
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value they gave to the capitalists, thus creating some sort of reciprocity between the classes.
Therefore, unless the Southern planter class was extremely greedy, it seems unlikely that the
lower class could have provided both value and religion to the upper classes and received
nothing in return, status society or not. In actuality, the lower classes of the south did not supply
value to the upper classes and they did receive something analogous to value from the planters.
The upper class was able to be an upper class without extracting value from the plain folk
because of the institution of black slavery. Slavery changed the entire exchange sphere system,
creating a system which could not be covered by conventional Marxian categories. Owning both
the means of production and the labor which was applied to it, the southern planter operated
wholly in the M-C-M’ sphere, never needing to make use of the C-M-C’ sphere.
(****Incidentally, this fact seems to me proof or at the very least a sufficient explanation of why
the lower class in the south was separated from the upper class. Furthermore, while the timing
thing, i.e. why this could be viewed as a change originally gave me problems, but the fact that
the cotton gin was invented in the 1790s and that cotton growing in the old southwest only got
going during the 1810’s , coupled with the fact that this is the region where camp meeting
religion took hold seems to provide a fitting answer****). Thus the southern upper class was not
receiving the best of both worlds so to speak because it didn’t need the labor the of lower classes
and the value which it creates, but was receiving only religion from below. Still, accepting for
the moment the validity of Damon’s theses, it would seem unlikely that the upper classes were
receiving religion without the lower classes being in some way compensated. And, following the
model (though in contrast to his own explanation of the role of the Honor Code), it would seem
that this compensation must consist of some sort of value, or at least of something analogous to
value. Indeed what the planters compensated the plain folk with was potential to acquire value,
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which was preserved through political means. This opportunity for future value, given the way
in which value was created in the South, again relates to slavery, this time to the opportunity for
plain folk to someday become planters. While not a common occurrence, people could and did
move up socially and economically into the planter class. And the plain folks knew this. They
kept up the hope of socio-economic mobility and of being on the receiving end of value. “ Even
though the small farmer occupied a marginal position within the South, he had reason to believe
in the possibility of his upward movement within the system” (Bruce p19). The planters in a
sense “gave” this hope of value to the lower class by simply existing as a social class. But more
than that, they worked politically to provide the means for social mobility by working for the
westward extension of slavery. This possibility of social mobility would be severely weakened
if slavery were prevented from expanding and providing new lands for a new class of planters to
operate. This desire to return something to the lower classes, or more likely a sense that this
must be done in order to secure their social position, at least in part explains the political
intransigence of Southern politicians (who largely represented the planter class) with regard to
the slavery extension issue. Thus what the lower classes got in exchange for their religion, and
in keeping with Damon’s model, though not a form of value was the possibility of receiving
value in the future, and of someday operating in the planter’s sphere.
Based upon the models of economic and spiritual flows we now turn to the question of
what happens when value stops flowing. The answer to this question (at least with regard to the
north) is presented in St. Clair. Do to the geologic realities of the area, once the initial mines
were exhausted, it was impossible for deeper mines to be run profitably. Thus, while money was
made during the 1850’s and 60’s while the shallow mines were still productive, during the
1870’s enormous sums were lost by the mine owners. Interestingly, this change in value
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corresponds to a shift in the Kondratieff long wave cycle, yet the possibility of any connection
between these two events will not be explored at this point, since it need not be to show the
effects on St. Clair of such a stoppage of value going upward. However, on a larger scale, this
shift in Kondratieff waves also corresponds to growing labor unrest and employer repression
throughout this period. In the case of St. Clair we are presented with a correspondence between
the cessation of rising value and the Molly Maguire showcase trials. Between 1875 and 1884 the
“Twin Shafts (new deep mines at St. Clair), which had been expected to produce 750,000 tons of
coal a year indefinitely , shipped a total of only 275,871 tons.” (Wallace p. 435). The question of
where value was going, or more importantly where the capitalists thought that value was going
since it quite obviously was not flowing upward, comes into play when we look at the showcase
trial of 1875. The rhetoric of the prosecution indicated, at least in retrospect, that value was
being lost due to the actions of the Molly Maguires. Their harsh indictment of the Molly
Maguires including the statement that “never since the world began has there existed a more
villainous society or more horrible organization than “ the Mollys. (Wallace p357). Thus the
capitalists sought (like they had done previously in cases when mine accidents had caused value
to be lost) to place the blame squarely on their workers, as represented by the Mollys. An
additional reason for the vehemence of these attacks stems from what happens to religion when
value stops going upward. Given the nature of the flow system, religion could not flow down in
the absence of upward flowing value. And with value flowing negatively it follows that the
Capitalists could have seen religion flowing that way was as well. Thusly, the cessation of value
flow (or what they viewed as the seepage of value due to actions of the workers) would have
cause a cessation of religion or even a descent from religion. By extension, the actions of the
workers could have been viewed a movement toward hell. Thus for both their economic self
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interest, and especially for what they may perceive as happening to religion when value stops
flowing, we get the violent rhetoric of the showcase trial as well as general enmity of capitalist
towards worker that would result in bloody incidents between workers and Pinkerton guards
during this era.
So what happens to the South when value (or in this case the promise of value) ceases to
flow. It has already been argued that the planter elite in the South worked to extend slavery
westward partly as a way of returning some form of value to the lower class which had supplied
them with religion (though the acceptance of religion by elite southerners, much like by northern
workers, may have been based more upon social necessity than religious fervor). But while the
stoppage of value flow in the North came during the 1870s due to structural reasons and
Kondratieff troughs (both in St. Clair and in the region as whole), the cessation of flow in the
South was a political event. This event occurred in 1860, with the election of a president who
was sworn to prevent all westward expansion of slavery. Whether the lower classes viewed this
cessation of value flow as resulting in a cessation of spiritual flow is not discernible, but what is
clear is that they made up the majority of the Confederate army during the Civil War. Because
there was a political, rather than economic, reason for the stoppage of flow in the South (since
the 1860 was right in the middle of a Kondratieff upswing) the lower classes did not attack their
own elite, but rather Northerners who had caused the flow to stop. (****This explanation ties in
well with another of Damon’s arguments, that the South as whole served as economic producers
for the North. However, further exploration of this intriguing point necessitates study into the
relationship between Northern and Southern religion, as well as subsequent study of overall
value flow, and is far beyond the scope of this paper.****) Thusly, though a bit of a stretch, the
Civil War can be viewed as a response to the cessation of value flow in the South.
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Overall, Professor Damon’s various theses hold up well under scrutiny. His arguments
relating to the place of religion in the North (viewing it as a way of returning something to the
lower classes in exchange for value) seems rather solid. His arguments concerning the structure
of southern religion as being analogous to Northern Capitalism also seem to be workable, though
some manipulation of the model is necessary in order to institute a better correspondence with
Marx’s model. Furthermore Damon’s value/religion flow model works impeccably in the North,
and quite feasibly in the South if, instead of using the honor code as a southern counterpart to
value, we look at the promise of value through slavery expansion. Thus two things can be said.
First, Damon’s models do in fact seem to apply to the South, and second that they must be
applied at all times with a view of the importance of slavery. In order to understand southern
society, and religious structures, and thus to successfully apply Damon’s models to them, the
institution of slavery cannot be overlooked.