Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.

by Ron Chernow

John D. Rockefeller was drawn to the church, not as some nagging duty or obligation but as something deeply refreshing to the soul. The Baptist church of his boyhood provides many clues to the secrets of his character. As a young man, he was raised on a steady diet of maxims, grounded in evangelical Protestantism, that guided his conduct. Many of his puritanical attitudes, which may seem antiquated to a later generation, were merely the religious commonplaces of his boyhood. Indeed, the saga of his monumental business feats is inseparable from the fire-and-brimstone atmosphere that engulfed upstate New York in his childhood. Even his father, wont to flirt with the devil’s company, knew many hymns by heart and urged his children to go to church; he once offered John five dollars to read the Bible cover to cover, thus creating an early, unintentional association between God and money. Always an iconoclastic, outlaw spirit, Bill never actually joined a church—that would have been going too far—so John identified religion with his beloved mother, who found in the Bible a balm for her troubled spirit.