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

To Serve God and Wal-Mart: The Making of Christian Free Enterprise
by Bethany Moreton
Harvard University Press, 372 pages
0674033221

At some point during my childhood, my mother began shopping at a new grocery store in our western Oklahoma town. She told my sister and me not to tell our grandfather that she was shopping there. You see, the new grocery store was a dreaded CHAIN STORE! The owners of the store did not live in our town, and they owned TWO other grocery stores—one of them in Kansas! Many Oklahomans of my grandfather’s generation did not like chain stores! My sister and I pledged our secrecy, and my grandfather suffered no ills (at least not because of my mother’s grocery shopping).

What a difference forty years makes! Now, no self-respecting Oklahoman would do anything other than shop at chain stores (indeed there is hardly anywhere else to acquire necessities). We have one special favorite chain store—Wal-Mart! How did things change so much?

Yale graduate, and University of Georgia professor, Bethany Moreton, attempts to answer this question and does so masterfully.

Her analysis revolves around the culture of the Ozarks, where Wal-Mart began. Her penetrating discussion of the company, the folkways of the Ozarks, the religious faith of the customers and employees, and broad political and economic factors give the reader a sweeping panorama of the past fifty years. “Wal-Mart country” has expanded geographically, indeed to global proportions, taking Scots-Irish folkways and evangelical Christianity with it.

Though most of us in Oklahoma don’t identify immediately with the Ozark culture, there are many similarities between that tradition and our rural, agricultural, oil patch heritage. Indeed, many elements of Ozark culture are common throughout the rural South. These various social norms are part and parcel of Moreton’s writing. Rather than taking a simplistic view that interprets Wal-Mart solely as the product of the Ozarks, Moreton paints a complex picture of interaction with and among various cultural threads. Wal-Mart is influenced by the prevailing culture of Sam Walton’s Bentonville, but in turn, Wal-Mart country has been influenced and unquestionably shaped by the behemoth retailer.

Moreton does not write with a bias for or against Wal-Mart. This is an evenhanded treatment seeking to simply take in the various aspects of an international phenomenon. The book is extensively documented with over 100 pages of footnotes and index. This makes it a little shorter than most non-fiction books. It seems a few ideas could have been better developed, and possibly were summed up a little too quickly in the interest of brevity. Nonetheless, this is a great first book from a young Ph.D. We can expect great things from this lady. Read the book.