Anybody who has spent much time in Church or Synagogue knows that the default approach is that clergy teach laity, not just in faith and morals, but quite often in matters pertaining to business and economics. But the problem is that clergy seldom have remotely the same amount of experience and expertise in financial matters as their members. Often men of the cloth have been quick to judge and even excommunicate members for practices which the professional clergy simply do not understand. This was clearly the case in early America. But as merchants were called to account before pastors, and even church courts, those merchants were forced to defend their actions. Initially those defenses, which consisted mostly of simple tutorials about normal market practices, were not accepted by church leaders. But over time, the knowledge from the laity sifted up to the clergy and to the professional theological classes and, in the end, won the day. By the eve of the War for Independence, New England clergy had moved from being the chief critics of financial innovation to being solid supporters of it.
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