Even priests need the free market

Henry Ward Beecher’s church was very rich. Every Sunday crowds would flock across New York’s East River on “Beecher’s boats” to see the charismatic preacher, who had arrived in Brooklyn from rural Indiana. In the 1850s and 60s Beecher sold sermons, bringing in so much cash that he could sponsor and arm with rifles a regiment in the American civil war (“Beecher’s regiment,” toting “Beecher’s bibles”). By 1875, when an adultery scandal brought him down, his Brooklyn congregation had swollen from 20 souls to thousands. Beecher was a celebrity; proof both that religion can lead to riches, and that riches can lead to religion.