Our failure to criticize capitalism in its operation -- the shoddy record of production for obsolescence, the reckless depletion of natural resources, the prizing of profit over sensitivity to worker’s needs, the bribery of multinational corporations ... gave way to a one-way street for Marxists to criticize capitalism.
The critique of capitalism given in the above quote, which to me seems self-evidently accurate, are the words of none other than Carl F. H. Henry, noted evangelical theologian, in the April 1976 issue of Sojourners. To be sure, Dr. Henry believes that capitalism has certain strengths, and he would like to see its deficiencies reformed. But his straight-forward critique is surprising precisely because it has been so infrequently uttered in much of modern American Christendom.
There is, quite plainly, a capitalist captivity of the American church. The values which support capitalism seem lodged in the marrow of our bones. Our national ethos tells us that freedom and individualism are functions of economic free enterprise and competition. The drive to maximize wealth is what builds economic prosperity for all, we are told, and possessive acquisitiveness insures continued expansion and growth.
Christians for the most part have simply not raised fundamental questions about economics. Yet, this is what seems most questionable, biblically, about the foundational values of American society.
There is a glaring dissonance between the life Christ calls his disciples to in his kingdom and the values enshrined daily by capitalism. A simple reading of the Gospels and the book of Acts make this plain.
Christ warns us against the worship of money, and against covetousness, telling us we cannot serve God and Mammon. Capitalism encourages first the accumulation of money, and then its rampant expenditure through breeding a national psychology of endless material desire. What is, after all, the purpose of the hundreds of advertising messages which daily bombard us? They attempt to make us want, or think we need, some product.
The gospel instructs us to live in a spirit of love towards one another. “Give pride of place to one another in esteem” (Romans 12:10). Capitalism encourages a spirit of competitiveness towards others. It enshrines this as such an essential value that even internationally, the thought of not being “No. 1” was enough to keep us futilely killing people in Vietnam.
When the Holy Spirit descended on the early church with all its power, it resulted in deep material sharing based upon the needs of others, and built the corporate, interdependent spirit which lies at the heart of the New Testament image of the church as a body. Capitalism encourages a spirit of intense individualism regarding the possession of goods and the fulfillment of needs.
Put simply, Christ tells us that the self is made whole through loving, serving, and giving. Capitalism assumes that life’s purposes are to be centered in desiring, accumulating, and achieving.
Many argue that capitalism works because it is based upon the reality of human sin and selfishness. True. But the same could be said for legalized prostitution.
Christians, particularly from the evangelical heritage, have gone to great lengths to keep themselves pure from society’s secular and fallen values which encourage sexual license and promiscuity.
But the same people become captives of capitalism with a mere shrug of the shoulders. “It’s a good system because it’s based on sin.”
More thoughtful Christians have been aware of capitalism’s limitations. Yet they assume there are some givens which simply cannot be changed. The best we can do is to ameliorate some of the gross evils. Besides, to question capitalism is to risk being almost treasonous. Politically and pragmatically, that’s simply out of bounds. So let’s work the best we can with what we have.
But with the kingdom of God it is not so. This kingdom does not grow by assuming that certain givens cannot be changed. Rather, it declares that the most basic givens must be changed.
Christ does not call us to promote various systems for the social order because they are based on sin but rather to lament them.
As desirable as reforms of capitalism may be, their limitation, biblically, is that they fail to raise what are the most decisive questions -- those of the values which mold our lives. The gospel questions the ends of capitalism, not merely its means.
We must ask, further, what it means for capitalism to “work.” By working, it makes people richer. But the record of history is that it makes the rich richer first, always promising that their wealth is the key to the poor’s eventual hope. But such hopes remain largely just that.
Particularly in a world with limits to its resources, and thus clear restraints to the possibilities of continual growth, it becomes untenable to argue that the poor’s prospects are best fulfilled through their benefiting from the expansion of the rich’s wealth and prosperity. Rather, the opposite becomes true: the rich’s love for money is what perpetuates the plight of the poor.
That, of course, is what the Bible has always maintained. It was not written, after all, with the backdrop of capitalism in mind.
Well-intended, liberal people, concerned with the drastic division between the rich and the poor, advocate various steps and reforms which, they argue, are in everyone’s best interest. It is understandable that we should hope this could be so.
The truth, in my judgment, is that what will benefit the poor and dispossessed will be costly to the rich.
It is at this point that liberation theology seems to be most accurate and persuasive in its analysis. The hope of the world’s poor does not lie in “development” through the beneficence of the rich and according to their values and models. Rather, it rests in liberation from structures of injustice in order to free the resources and energies of the poor to work more directly for their own welfare.
Thus, making capitalism work, or rejoicing in the fact that it does “work,” seems hardly a solution for closing the gap between the world’s wealthy minority and impoverished majority.
The voices in America that have criticized the goals and operation of capitalism have come more often from economists and social analysts than from the church. For the most part, Christian leaders have been conspicuously silent, except for some from conservative and evangelical circles who have been outspoken theological apologists for the values of capitalism.
This silence can be understood. To sharply question capitalism in most American Christian circles can seem almost about as heretical as doubting the divinity of Christ. If one does not fully ascribe to capitalism, then the assumption is that such a person is a socialist, a Marxist, or a Communist -- and usually all three. Most believers prefer not to risk having such seemingly un-American and un-Christian labels thrust upon them.
In other countries where capitalism is not viewed as an inerrant doctrine of social faith, Christians are often freer from this captivity. Western European Christians can more easily raise theological and ethical criticisms of capitalism, not because their theology is more biblically rooted but because politics there is much more diverse, with respected parties -- Labor, Socialist, and now even Communist -- on the political left. Even in Italy, a devout Catholic intellectual like Raniero La Valle, who formerly edited one of the church’s most important magazines, deserted the Christian Democrat Party and ran for the Italian Senate as an independent on the Communist ticket. La Valle asserted that he was not a Marxist but that “the idols we have now are capitalist idols -- the competition for privilege, for wealth.”
But in America, such words are usually equated with Marxism and therefore dismissed as being antithetical to Christian faith.
In actuality, however, it is a truth that most recent critiques of capitalism now beginning to emerge from within the church in America are coming from Christians who are Marxist in their perspectives and views.
In seminaries and social action bureaucracies of the church in the United States, it is becoming acceptable and almost chic to confide to others that you are a Marxist. This creates an air of subversive excitement, making theology seem relevantly activist once again. Christian Marxists recognize one another at conference from a common vocabulary and build a spirit of affinity, much the way that evangelicals can always smell one another when scattered amongst mainline, “liberal” Christians.
Much of the criticism, however, directed against such Christian Marxists is laced with hypocrisy and a pathetically warped self-righteousness.
Nevertheless, it is crucial that certain issues are raised to those whose theology is significantly molded by Marxist perspectives. This must be done not to defend another competing ideology, but to call us all to faithfulness to the biblical witness.
The risk that is present in liberation theology is that in avoiding captivity by capitalism, faith falls into another form of ideological captivity by Marxism. It is argued that we are all inevitably captive to one ideology or another. But that seems sharply refuted by the message of the gospel and the life of our Lord.
Living in faithfulness to the biblical witness means precisely that this is the ultimate locus for our life and action. Such a stance calls us ultimately to be judges of the world’s ideological systems rather than its captives.
In the economic sphere as well as elsewhere, the alternative we hold forth must begin with the shape of the church. Its life, and the lives of its members, must become freed from the values of materialistic acquisition, possessiveness, and competitive, individualistic gain that dominate American society, through being transformed by the Spirit. One of the results of Pentecost was the new economic reality that reflected the Christians’ love for one another and their belief that life’s fulfillment came through spiritual rather than material gifts.
A church characterized by pentecostal economics can then address a penetrating and prophetic witness to society about its own economic structures. It need not advocate nor expect that all society can order itself economically according to the book of Acts. But it will focus the issues where they most need to be -- on the basic values which society weds itself to, on the economic structures and organizations which are the outgrowth of those values and reinforce them, and on how these are destructive of true human fulfillment.
Then it may be possible to envision an economic order that does not thrive in direct proportion to individual and corporate greed.
Then it may also be possible to avoid an economic order that tries to autocratically impose material equality by vesting the state with religious authority and assuming that the unbridled power of its high-priestly rulers will be righteous.
The response of the American church to its capitalist captivity must be to build in its life such a pentecostal economics. Only then can it bear witness authentically, to the oppressors and the oppressed, with the biblical hope of healing and liberation.
Wes Michaelson was on the editorial staff at Sojourners when this article appeared.
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