The Profits of Religion: An Essay in Economic Interpretation
Dec 2015 · Open Road Media
Ebook
213
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About this ebook
An eye-opening condemnation of the economic sins of organized religion
Throughout his adult life Upton Sinclair was an unapologetic idealist and a tireless crusader for the rights of the common man. In this powerful and scrupulously researched critique, he argues that organized religion is a gargantuan moneymaking operation in collusion with industry in their shared quest to strike down dissent while bleeding profits from the millions in their thrall.
Sinclair catalogs how spirituality, “the most fundamental of the soul’s impulses,” is used as a tool for exploitation by unsavory clerical organizations. He specifically details the hypocrisy and self-serving, parasitic nature of churches in the West, from the entrenched fortresses of ancient Christianity to the “nonconforming” Protestant sects to the cultist “new religions” that came into vogue in the early twentieth century. A controversial, impassioned broadside, The Profits of Religion is Upton Sinclair at his most provocative and persuasive.
This ebook has been authorized by the estate of Upton Sinclair.
Throughout his adult life Upton Sinclair was an unapologetic idealist and a tireless crusader for the rights of the common man. In this powerful and scrupulously researched critique, he argues that organized religion is a gargantuan moneymaking operation in collusion with industry in their shared quest to strike down dissent while bleeding profits from the millions in their thrall.
Sinclair catalogs how spirituality, “the most fundamental of the soul’s impulses,” is used as a tool for exploitation by unsavory clerical organizations. He specifically details the hypocrisy and self-serving, parasitic nature of churches in the West, from the entrenched fortresses of ancient Christianity to the “nonconforming” Protestant sects to the cultist “new religions” that came into vogue in the early twentieth century. A controversial, impassioned broadside, The Profits of Religion is Upton Sinclair at his most provocative and persuasive.
This ebook has been authorized by the estate of Upton Sinclair.
About the author
Upton Sinclair (1878–1968) was a Pulitzer Prize–winning author, activist, and politician whose novel The Jungle (1906) led to the passage of the Federal Meat Inspection Act and the Pure Food and Drug Act. Born into an impoverished family in Baltimore, Maryland, Sinclair entered City College of New York five days before his fourteenth birthday. He wrote dime novels and articles for pulp magazines to pay for his tuition, and continued his writing career as a graduate student at Columbia University. To research The Jungle, he spent seven weeks working undercover in Chicago’s meatpacking plants. The book received great critical and commercial success, and Sinclair used the proceeds to start a utopian community in New Jersey. In 1915, he moved to California, where he founded the state’s ACLU chapter and became an influential political figure, running for governor as the Democratic nominee in 1934. Sinclair wrote close to one hundred books during his lifetime, including Oil! (1927), the inspiration for the 2007 movie There Will Be Blood; Boston (1928), a documentary novel revolving around the Sacco and Vanzetti case; The Brass Check, a muckraking exposé of American journalism; and the eleven novels in the Pulitzer Prize–winning Lanny Budd series.
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