Civic republicanism - The Puritan Ethic and the American Revolution

Umm, no, I’m not talking about the damn Republican Party here: I think it’s more accurate to start labeling that cabal of cravenly corrupt clowns the "(not)Republican Party." To promote this relabeling, let us ask: What is a republic? And, what type of economy should a republic have? To that end, here is one suggested reading. 

The Puritan Ethic and the American Revolution 

Edmund S. Morgan, “The Puritan Ethic and the American Revolution,” The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 24, No. 1 (Jan., 1967), pp. 3-43

One note before the excerpt: the transition, under liberalism, from political economy to economics and politics as two separate bodies of intellectual pursuit involved removing the questions of morality (ethics) from economic considerations: only market forces were the acceptable means for judging economic outcomes.

“The Ethic conveyed the idea of each man’s and woman’s “calling” in life. “The emphasis of [work or labor] was on productivity for the benefit of society. In addition to working diligently at productive tasks, a man was supposed to be thrifty and frugal. It was good to produce but bad to consume any more than necessity required. A man was but a steward of the possessions he accumulated. If he indulged himself in luxurious living, he would have that much less with which to support church and society. If he needlessly consumed his substance, either from carelessness or from sensuality, he failed to honor the God who furnished him with it.”

….

“The calling of a ruler, as the colonists and their Puritan forebearers saw it, was like any other calling: it must serve the common good; it must be useful, productive; and it must be assiduously pursued.”

….

The Puritan Ethic whether enjoined by God, by history, or by philosophy, called for diligence in a productive calling, beneficial both to society and to the individual. It encouraged frugality and frowned on extravagance. It viewed the merchant with suspicion and speculation with horror. It distrusted prosperity and gathered strength from adversity…. The merchants actually had more than a short-range interest at stake in their reluctance to undertake nonimportation. The movement, as we have seen, was not simply a means of securing repeal of the taxes to which merchants along with other colonists were opposed. The movement was in fact anticommercial, a repudiation of the merchant’s calling. Merchants, it was said, encouraged men to go into debt. Merchants pandered to luxury. Since they made more on the sale of superfluous baubles than on necessities, they therefore pressed the sale of them to a weak and gullible public. What the advocates of nonimportation demanded was not merely an interruption of commerce but a permanent reduction, not to say elimination, of it. In its place they called for manufacturing, a palpably productive, useful calling.

Is there a path here by which the evangelical christianists might be saved by prompting them to engage in an opposition to consumer culture and in favor of a more responsible stewardship of resources?