That looks like a good book from the psychological perspective. I'll put that on the short list. Thank you! There is so much reading to do that I don't expect to finish in this lifetime. :)

Christopher Hill's _The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas in the English Revolution_ investigates poverty and sin from the early modern English cultural perspective, getting to the crux of capitalist class formation under the Prosperity Gospel in Chapter 8, "Sin and Hell":

>If Adam's Fall had not brought sin into the world, men would have been equal, property would have been held in common. But since the Fall, covetousness, pride, anger and all the other sins have been transmitted to his posterity. The mass of mankind is irretrievably damned: a small minority is predestined to eternal life. A coercive state is one consequence of the Fall, necessary to prevent sinful men from destroying one another. Private property is likewise a consequence of sin; but since it inevitably exists, it must be defended against the greedy lusts of the unpropertied, who must be held in subordination. The Tudor state took over many of the functions of the medieval church. These traditional doctrines had not gone unchallenged. The Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England rely heavily on original sin to defend property and the authority of magistrates against Anabaptists.