Success and the American Christian

Given the fact that several conservative Christian talk show hosts seem to dominate the news media when it comes to the integrating market theory economic politics and religion, perhaps it might be well to ask, is there really such a nexus? It seems almost like sugar and Frosted Flakes anymore. The sugar comes along with the cereal.

Yet it is very difficult to immerse oneself in the New Testament and surface, with any confidence at all, as to free market capitalism having anything to do with the teachings of Christ. In fact as a conservative Christian friend of mine once noted in Sunday School, "Its pretty obvious that Christianity leans towards communism." The unfortunate part of the comment was the use of the word "communism" which is generally associated with U.S.S.R. and Communist China. I believe what he meant was something which perhaps could better be labeled "communalistic" connoting communes. With that definition, I believe it is pretty hard to deny the truth of the assertion.

I also remember the comment of a retired Congregational minister made after a rather rousing community battle over funding a recreational center in town. He said, "You know the older I get the more Marxist, I get." Kind of a shocking statement given the "opiate of the masses" comment in the Communist Manifesto.

What these men, conservative men at that, were trying to get their arms around was the fact that it is difficult to annex Christianity to an economic system which views competition, ambition and greed as virtues. What they also were expressing was the inherent difficulty of taming the economic tiger we Americans are riding. How does one get off such a tiger safely. The answer is, we don't know how to get off the tiger. This fear of the dismount impacts nearly every economic reform issue of significance in America from the estate tax to reform of the health care funding.

The situation is reminiscent of the scene in Dante's Inferno where people are tied to chairs with one arm strapped down and the other strapped to a long spoon in such a manner as to disallow one to bend the elbow. In the middle of the table is a cauldron of tempting soup, however, no one can feed themselves, but only their neighbor because of the way the spoons are attached to their arm. The upshot is that they all sit around the table in eternal hunger. There is an element of that in American behaviour. For example, some will recall a widely published anecdote that was circulated by the John Birch Society during the Cold War. The anecdote involves a servant sneaking away from his master's house to attend a meeting of communists. According to the story, the servant listens to the presentation and then sneaks back home. The servant's attendance at the meeting, however, does not go unnoticed by the master who then asks his servant why he did not join up, and the servant replies that he calculated how much would go into the common pot and realized that he would be economically worse off when the property was redistributed. The point the John Birchers were making was that for many people, possibly even menial labor in some cases, they would be economically worse off if property and wealth were shared. But, there is a hidden attitude in the story, namely, a person would only be willing to share if it betters himself and not if there is a possibility that it will not.
This attitude, which permeates nearly all political and economic policy discussions in America, is, I believe, tied to how we define "success." In America we define "success" primarily in economic terms, namely how much money we have and make. With that mindset, it is very difficult to make Christianity and free market capitalism blend well without one or the other being moderated. The Christian right has opted to moderate Christianity in order to accommodate, capitalism rather than the other way around. The Christian left has been relatively quiet and inactive since the heady protest days of the Viet Nam war.
As a result of the blending of capitalism and religion by the Christian right, the key challenge for American Christians is whether our definition of "success" can be substantially altered and whether Americans are in fact willing to make the socio-economic changes necessary to bring that definition from theory to reality. So long as the current blend of economics and Christianity being espoused by the Christian right dominates religious discussion in this area, it will be difficult to bring the teachings of Christ as to wealth and community into alignment with reality in America.

It will also require that that the Christian left to make the point that Christ taught about temporal things other than abortion and traditional marriage, and that will be a call that really puts the followers of Christ to test because it will require an attitude change so that the servant in the John Birch story approaches the issue with a different perspective. The change will require Christians to think about fundamental changes in their lives rather than a relatively sacrifice free faith which only calls upon them not to commit sex related sins, defend traditional marriage, and eschew pornography. It will require Christians to actually fundamentally change their relationship with their community and it will, in some cases, require a willingness to make a sacrifice as to their standard of living and consumption habits -- but if a Christian refuses to do so, they will be betting their soul on whether they are right about capitalism.