To Serve God and Wal-Mart: The Making of Christian Free Enterprise

Wal-Mart as Antichrist might be believable, considering the barely-disguised worship of cheap labor sacrificed on the altar of nonstop consumption. But this book by historian Moreton says it all in the subtitle—*The Making of Christian Free Enterprise*—then proceeds to produce evidence of how this unnatural marriage of capitalism and popular Christianity has been accomplished. It’s been a puzzle to those of us who recognize that what little Jesus actually said about economics and politics leans more toward the left, but Wal-Mart is the drive-through chapel featuring an Elvis impersonator where populist Christian capitalism wed, then began to reproduce. Wal-Mart may be the biggest example, but it’s not the only one. Moreton makes show more her point with a combination of economic and cultural history, offering an explanation for working-class Americans’ continued embrace of beliefs that hurt them economically. Just count the “Honk if you love Jesus!” bumper stickers in a Wal-Mart parking lot. show less

The spectacular rise and astounding success of retail giant Wal-Mart has puzzled business observers for decades. How did someone who seems like nothing so much as a ‘hick from the sticks’ shepherd a single five and dime store in rural Arkansas, the heart of the anti-corporatist stronghold that had “fought against large corporations and for increased government safeguards,” into the largest corporation in the world? Author Bethany Moreton frames the story as “the Wal-Mart paradox.” According to her, Sam Walton, the founder of Wal-Mart, turned what for many would seem like insurmountable obstacles into defining advantages. By tapping directly into the social fabric of the rural communities in which his stores were located, show more Walton was able to dominate retail competition and force that same outlook out into the larger world as well.

Moreton tells the history of Sam Walton and Wal-Mart from Walton’s very earliest days as an entrepreneur in the Ozark Mountains. That area in southern Missouri and northern Arkansas is isolated, insular, and ideologically conservative. An area that had held onto a lifestyle of family farms far longer than most, it was also an area that opposed big business most stridently. As Moreton stated, it was an area that “suffered at the hands of Northern railroads, Eastern banks, and industrial monopolies that demonstrable extracted wealth in a semicolonial relationship with the hinterlands.” However, Walton was able to turn that mindset to his advantage by presenting his company as local.

Walton’s business plan called for only local investors, at first family members. Later, he offered his store managers the opportunity to become investors, which allowed him to avoid the ire of those most opposed to industrial monopolies. Walton could present his stores as locally owned and operated which gave him a distinct advantage over other mass retailers, such as Target and K-Mart which also opened their first stores in 1962. Once the first stores had shown a pattern of success, Walton added economic efficiencies to the mix.

Walton carefully planned the expansion of his company. New stores opened concentrically from the distribution center in Bentonville, Arkansas. His goal was that no store be more than a day’s drive from the center. Additionally, as the company spread, it moved outward one community at a time. This allowed for word of mouth to spread to the neighboring communities, thus ameliorating the need for advertising expenditures. Walton’s greatest entrepreneurial genius may have been demonstrated through his melding of a “populist corporate image” with an “evolving Christian culture.”

The stores were also structured on the traditional family units that had been prevalent on the farms, with the men at the head of the family and the women in a subservient role. This led to a management cadre that was almost exclusively male, and an entry level workforce that was almost as exclusively female. As Moreton described it, Walton took advantage of harsh economic times and used the fundamentalist bent of his community to his advantage in hiring and promoting workers. As Wal-Mart started adding stores, the Ozark communities in which they were being built were losing many family farms. Those women who were newly seeking employment outside the homestead for the first time were happy to receive the minimum wages jobs.

Additionally, Walton and the Wal-Mart managers have positioned their stores as the wholesome alternative to “big city” retailers, by really pushing “the whole family values thing.” Though eschewing such labels well into the 1990s, the company has wholeheartedly embraced this identity from that point forward. This may have been after conservative Christian leader Ralph Reed stated that “if you want to reach the Christian population on Sunday, you do it from the church pulpit. If you want to reach them on Saturday, you do it in a Wal-Mart.” By positioning the company in this way, Wal-Mart has been able to take advantage of the growing “Southernization” of America and expand the brand across the country and the globe. show less

I suppose I’d say this book offers what the title promises. It’s a well-researched and consummately written account of how Sam’s empire emerged in concert with the transforming identities of (some) US Christian doctrine and the transformations of the service economy throughout the post-war years. This is about how the “Wal-Mart Country” of the Ozarks went from a provincial/rural rejection of the emerging chain-store epidemic to the host of the world’s greatest chain. Something like that.

I suppose I’d say that this has much of interest. This probably an important book that certainly offers a unique reading of Wal-Mart’s evolution; a reading that encompasses innumerable aspects – local and global - beyond the typical show more issues often attributed the retailer’s “effect.” It’s also a bit dull if you’re seeking a critical account of the mega-retailer or “free enterprise” or religious universities or whatever. If Moreton offers any critical dimension, it’s definitely below the radar (or way over my head, as the case may be) and, while that’s a respectable scholarly approach, my anti-Wal-Mart leanings leave me wanting more. Perhaps I simply require spectacle or muckraking to hold my interest at this point. At the very least this lacks the snarkiness implied by the rather goof-ball, photoshopped cover image splicing aisle nine with the firmament.

At the very most this comes off a bit like some kind of apologia for the massive company’s machinations. If Moreton shows any bias, it seems directed towards Wal-Mart’s good deeds: the rescue of intelligent Guatemalan teens from a life of guaranteed poverty aided by the US government; the rescuing of hapless Katrina victims from the incompetence of FEMA; the bestowal of good old consumer choice upon previously ignored Mexican nationals. Beyond mention of the “Made in the U.S.A” propaganda as more “style than substance,” she seems to gloss over anything that might be construed as negative. This may be refreshing in light of all the other anti-big box exposés, but my cynical disposition left me wondering if this book might actually represent a most sophisticated marketing ploy! Has the Home Office managed to infiltrate the scholarship of a major university (and the Harvard University Press)?!? Crazier things have happened.

As I’ve witnessed years of inane TV ads, obviously conceived by an uncreative store associate, I’m not going to read that much into it. But if a typical hard-core Women’s Studies academic could muster up a Wal-Mart cheer, it might sound a lot like this. show less

My low rating for this book is perhaps unfair and possibly inaccurate, but it reflects my reading experience. Moreton goes into painful detail on the ties between the evolution of Wal-Mart and how "a Christian service ethos powered capitalism at home and abroad." Her research is exhaustive, but I quickly became exhausted. This was way, way too long and she lost me in the minutiae. There were some interesting bits, but overall I found this very dull.

Part of the problem is that I expected a professor of history and women's studies to present more of a criticism of the retailer and the free enterprise system in general. Instead, at times this read like an apologia, as an earlier reviewer also noticed. Further, she completely lost me on the show more whole "service" slant to her argument since my admittedly limited experience with Wal-Mart evokes no memories of any service. Still, it's a professional, meticulously researched piece that might appeal to someone looking for an economic and cultural history. show less

This book started out quite fascinating, but by the end I was skimming through entire chapters and ready for the book to be over. The book was not well organized, and I feel like the author's central ideas were lost amid vast quantities of minutiae. Additionally, Moreton repeats herself constantly throughout the book as she brings up previous topics, which is why I feel that the book could have used a reorganization before publishing.

That said, the book did have some good insights and I found a few of the points Moreton made to be quite interesting. These include reforming a version of masculinity in terms of the Christian servant leader in order to compensate for the emasculation that came from service work as opposed to factory work; show more defunding of higher education by the government leading to increased industry support and propaganda-feeding to college students; how poor rural folks went from populism to supporting industry and the policies that constantly exploit the rural poor; and finally the internationalization of global companies, and how Wal-Mart helped NAFTA get support.

I wish that Moreton had spent a bit more time talking about women and how they were seen as service workers not worthy of promotion within Wal-Mart. She only very briefly talks about the class action lawsuit where women sued Wal-Mart for lack of promotions to management positions. However, she does spend at least two chapters talking about a student group that evangelizes to grade school students about the benefits of the free market, which I found to be much less interesting (at least not worthy of two whole chapters). show less

This book is poorly argued, and I don't think that Moreton demonstrates the connections she is trying (I think??) to make. However, she avoids -- for the most part -- a "what's the matter with Kansas" type of argument, so that, at least, is refreshing; and if nothing else, she holds differing sets of values up for comparison in a way that could even be useful for discussion. I'm still not sure what her aim and intended audience were, though.

This book traces Wal-mart's development from a local store in the Ozarks to the largest corporation in the world. Moreton argues that it does this through adaptable business strategies that incorporated ideas of Christian service, family structure and free enterprise. She starts by showing how Sam Walton turned the disadvantages of being in Arkansas into advantages. He initially kept ownership to his family, then store managers and then the local areas so to contrast the national chains. He also tapped into the social structure of the area that put men in management and women as store workers. He developed a family structure for each store to develop employee loyalty and morale.

She shows that Wal-mart promoted Christian-style service show more and then brought in Christian business. This was not because of Walton's religious feeling, which appears to have been lukewarm, but because it made good business sense. Christian merchandise and events made a lot of money, so Wal-mart promoted them.

The book moves onto Wal-mart going national and exerting some influence on culture. It linked with Students in Free Enterprise to indoctrinate students in the value of capitalism and then recruit them into it management system. It helped fund evangelical schools in the Ozarks to promote free enterprise. It funded scholarships for Central Americans to study at those schools and then return how as apostles of the American system (free-enterprise and Christianity).

The section on international scholarships is when Wal-mart started to go global. But its big step was opening a store in Mexico, which Moreton says nearly single-handedly got NAFTA passed by showing how Mexicans wanted to buy American goods. Then she shows how Wal-mart led the way in creating a global supply chain and in opening outlets abroad.

This book is superbly researched, but has very little to link it together except that Wal-mart is in every chapter. It is basically a corporate history, which is useful to people interested in business, but each chapter is only loosely connected to the others so it seems disjointed. It is provides some interesting insight into the Ozarks, but beyond that, it isn't much use. I found her analysis of gender issues in the company to be inconsistent and unconvincing. There were definitely problems of gender there, but she doesn't show much on Wal-mart being different in wanting male executives. The section on NAFTA was interesting, but I will want to find some other analyses of ratification before I'll give too much weight to Moreton's findings.

Overall, I'd say skip it. show less