Ultimately, Christianity clashes with every economy and every form of government. This is the tension of living in the Kingdom that has come, but not fully yet.

Good comments, Pete.

And, it is also compatible with every economic system in that it doesn't depend on the world for it's power.

Love of money is the root of all evil, and capitalism runs on, depends on, the love of money.

A nation centered on capitalism is a nation centered on greed.

Of course the rich see no conflict between Christianity and capitalism. That's why churches that preach "faith, not works" do better than churches that preach "sheep and goats."

Christianity has survived under capitalism, communism, fascism, and everything in between.

I think Pete is ultimately right that the Kingdom clashes with every economy eventually. The corollary to that is that our hope rests in no worldly system, and our faith isn't dependent on civil governments cooperating in their economic system.

So if we need government to keep business honest, then who is keeping the government honest?????????

I do not recall the Lord Jesus teaching or advocating for a particular type of government.

Justice can be had under ANY economic system if the citizens are 'good' - compassionate and full of love for one another.
But only through the Grace of God can people be so transformed.

What do you all make of Jesus own strange economics?

Mat 20:1-16: "God's kingdom is like an estate manager who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. They agreed on a wage of a dollar a day, and went to work. "Later, about nine o'clock, the manager saw some other men hanging around the town square unemployed. He told them to go to work in his vineyard and he would pay them a fair wage. They went. "He did the same thing at noon, and again at three o'clock. At five o'clock he went back and found still others standing around. He said, 'Why are you standing around all day doing nothing? ' "They said, 'Because no one hired us.' "He told them to go to work in his vineyard. "When the day's work was over, the owner of the vineyard instructed his foreman, 'Call the workers in and pay them their wages. Start with the last hired and go on to the first.' "Those hired at five o'clock came up and were each given a dollar. When those who were hired first saw that, they assumed they would get far more. But they got the same, each of them one dollar. Taking the dollar, they groused angrily to the manager,'These last workers put in only one easy hour, and you just made them equal to us, who slaved all day under a scorching sun.' "He replied to the one speaking for the rest, 'Friend, I haven't been unfair. We agreed on the wage of a dollar, didn't we? So take it and go. I decided to give to the one who came last the same as you. Can't I do what I want with my own money? Are you going to get stingy because I am generous?' "Here it is again, the Great Reversal: many of the first ending up last, and the last first."

Elegance,
I've thought about this and my "assumption" is that there are those who live a life time of service to Christ, from childhood to adulthood, sacraficing much for the sake of G-d and Y'shua; And then there are those who spent their last year of life in worship of a G-d, but haven't done a thing for the kingdom even though for the better part of their life they had all the luxuries the first group gave up on.
Anyway, that is what I see.
But I once was told by a friend that when I get to heaven there will be three surprises for me...one, that I'm there, two, the people who I thought wouldn't be there are there, and three, the people I thought would be there....aren't there.
We just don't know...and so I find that liberating that all I have to worry about is me doing the right thing, not everyone else, or anyone else. And to be perfectly honest, just keeping me on the straight and narrow is a full time effort.

sheerakahn,

I agree with what you have said. My point however, was to address the topic at hand which is about the government's right to control how a person earns a living and runs their business.

I used to attend a church where one of the pastors thought that capitalism was a tenet of Christianity. A few people in the church I now attend think that as well.

We should also distinguish between Capitalism and consumerism...

I would agree with the statements above that point to a tentative relationship between Capitalism and Christianity. It neither helps nor hurts for us to be in any system.

But Consumerism on the other hand, is a scourge...

Steven says: "We should also distinguish between Capitalism and consumerism..."

Are not all people consumers? What then, is 'consumerism'? Who decides when you have consumed enough? The government; the church; some self-appointed anti-consumerism watch dog group? This seems to be a conversation that people want to hold opinions about but really don't want to discuss.

Steve Martin wrote:

>Love of money is the root of all
>evil, and capitalism runs on,
>depends on, the love of money

At its best, this response is naive. All economic systems "run on money".

A more nuanced and historically informed rephrasing of Mr. Martin's comment would go something like this:

Greed, not love of money, is the root of all evil. Capitalism, correctly understood, civilizes greed better than any alternative ever imagined or tried.

Michael

There is nothing wrong with abundance. The more money someone has, the more they can help needy.

And as these comments in the thread attest to, we all come to this from our particular contexts shaping how we see this issue. While there are certainly many scriptural texts that speak to economic affairs, we need to be very careful to read the parables of Jesus in a literalistic way, since he definitely didn't intend them to be understood that way. And besides, the parable mentioned above about the various workers during the day being paid the same wage, in my reading of various commentaries, had as much to do with Jewish/Gentile issues as anything economic. It seems Jesus used a commonplace economic reality to illustrate a spiritual reality. But we should be careful NOT to see that as a baseline for economic theory.

I do agree with the comment in the article that raised the question of "total depravity" when it comes to economic affairs. That's why, for me a least, a mixed or well regulated form of capitalism is preferable to either laissez faire capitalism or to state socialism. But then again, I'm a Distributist.

Capitalism means simply that the ownership of property and therefore the means of production are in the hands of the citizens of a nation and not the state. It does NOT mean a completely unregulated economy, or consumerism (as others have pointed out). The Old Testament law showed a "capitalist" economy with strict regulations on honest dealing. I would suppose that's still okay with God, since nothing in the New Testament overturns that. The real issue is how we think of money--as has also been pointed out. But I think another issue is that we really don't understand words like "capitalism" and "socialism," and so throw them around to mean what we want them to mean.

The results from the evangelicals include an aversion to having economic issues being discussed in sermons. The 2011 Easter sermon of the Archbishop of Canterbury was squarely on greed and excessive profit-seeking (see ... http://bit.ly/f6Td5w for my report and analysis on the sermon and that of another bishop). Would evangelicals point to charity as sufficient to redress the greed?

You trust a corrupt government to regulate corrupt business? Pick your poison. I have a lot more trust for the big business people I've personally met than I do for the politicians I've personally met - so in my experience - I'd pick the business poison over the government poison.

The "love of money" is the root of "all kinds" of evil. These words were not written to capitalists, but rather to people who need to remember that greed is in the core of our being.

Is capitalism consistent with Christianity? It is certain that any system without godly leaders lacks the ability to be consistent with God's best. Even monotheistic rule as we saw in scripture, monarchy as we see later with the people of God all depended upon the godliness of the leaders.

I just finished reading an advanced copy of The Economics of Good and Evil (I think it comes out in May sometime). It has a very interesting take on modern Economics. It tries to chart how economics were viewed by looking at the Epic of Gilgamesh, the OT, NT, Greek philosophy and then the early economists like Adam Smith. The end of the book calls for economics to return back to its roots of being a primarily ethical and moral study and away from its modern mathematical determinism.

I think we need to distinguish between "free enterprise" and capitalism. To me (and maybe only to me) free enterprise is an economic system that gives individuals the freedom to pursue careers of their choosing (whether as a business owner or as an employee in a chosen profession). There's nothing wrong with that. Capitalism, on the other hand, is an "ism"...a belief system...in which Capital is the end all. Acquiring Capital is utmost...which may explain why oil companies are making record profits, there is no shortage, and yet the price of oil keeps going up. In this definition, there are definite clashes with Christianity...which makes it no different than any other governmental/economic model...and which is why we are constantly called to be a different breed of cat...

This survey is worthless as nipples on a boar! The terms “capitalism” and “free markets” have dozens of different meanings, everything from piracy and the mafia on the left to utopia on the right. At best, the survey tells us that those who think capitalism is an evil akin to piracy find that it contradicts Christianity. Duh!

What should be the definition of capitalism and free markets? Followers of Karl Marx coined the term “capitalism” and by it they meant the system that existed in 19th century England. That system was a mixture of residual mercantilism and a partial implementation of Adam Smith’s “system of natural freedom”. Smith didn’t invent his system; he copied it from the Dutch Republic, which he claims in “Wealth of Nations” mostly fully implemented it. The Dutch got it from the Church’s late Scholastics, especially those of the School of Salamanca.

The School of Salamanca taught that God sanctified private property with the commands prohibiting theft and covetousness. The system that best protected private property produced the only just prices was one in which the market was free from state coercion.

However, all assumed that the state would protect life, liberty and property from fraud and theft.

Marx followed the founder of socialism, Saint-Simon, and considered the existence of private property to be the main evil in the world. He considered any profit to be theft. All socialists have believed that man is born innocent and turns to evil only because of oppression, and property is the greatest oppressor of all.

PS, the questions about inequality, soaking the rich, and government intervention do nothing but advertise the ignorance of Americans regarding economics.

Part of the reason for the responses is that most people do not really know what capitalism is. It is ironic that people put so much faith in government. What ever the system, disciples of Jesus Christ must put the Biblical principles first.

Steve, that was an excellent comment:

That's why churches that preach "faith, not works" do better than churches that preach "sheep and goats."

This is a stupid question, because the answers are useless. Public opinion is not the proper adjudicator of which economic system is actually best for society. Naturally, the group in a society which fares the worst will be critical of the prevailing economic system. We don't need polls to tell us that. The question is not whether capitalism will make everyone happy, but whether a socialistic government would do a better job. The answer to that question depends on complex analysis. Until an answer is found, I'm afraid we are left with the political power struggle to determine what route the nation takes.

Jesus didn't comment on what government we should use, but a couple of things that capitalism has that socialism doesn't seem to have is freedom and choice.

If a socialist government was incorruptible, was run absolutely perfectly and no one was greedy and power hungry, it would be the government to have. But whenever greed gets into government corruption occurs.

Greed, love of money, is the root of all evil as the Bible says. All problems in society, when some are abused, taken advantage of, preyed upon, the root of it goes back to greed.

And when greed is found in Christians it is uglier than ever!

Actually, Jesus did endorse an economic system: he endorsed the Torah. And as God he wrote the Torah and the created the system of the judges.

The Torah protects private property as no other system ever has. Israel had no standing army, no president or king to support, no legislative branch so it had no politicians to support, and no federally mandated transfer of wealth.

It did have tithes, Jubilee and the poor laws, but those were voluntary; the Torah provided no mechanism for the state to enforce those laws. Helping the poor was a virtue because it was voluntary, as Jesus recognized.

Our modern freedoms and respect for property came from the Church's application of the Torah to markets. The Scholastics often wrote that the only just price is one found in a free market.

Roger you are so wrong. The only just society is one in which 'Citizen A' puts his hand in the pocket of 'Citizen B'; takes as much as he can, which he then distributes to 'Citizens C, D, and E' (keeping a sizable amount for himself); and then declares how much he cares for the poor and is doing the Lord's work.

"...The only just society is one in which 'Citizen A' puts his hand in the pocket of 'Citizen B'; takes as much as he can, which he then distributes to 'Citizens C, D, and E' (keeping a sizable amount for himself); and then declares how much he cares for the poor and is doing the Lord's work."

Yes, yes, like you Leslieann, I remember too when the people at HUD, the school lunch program, and those on Welfare crashed the US economy, trashed our retirement accounts, and took bailout money to keep themselves afloat.
Tell me more about this justice you speak of.

leslieann, it sure seems to be that way, doesn't it?!

sheerahkahn, the banks did no such thing. Economies have lived with crises exactly like the depression we have gone through since at least 500 BC. In the US, we have enjoyed such depression at least once a decade since our founding.

Before the creation of central banks, individual bankers caused those crises by artificially creating money and causing an unsustainable boom. Since the birth of the Fed, Federal reserve policy has caused the booms that end in busts. BTW, the Fed is a government agency.

PS, you may be under the illusion that the US operates as a free market. That is socialist propaganda. The US hasn't had anything close to a free market since 1929. We are almost as socialist as any socialist nation in Europe.

There is no free market in the US today. The government controls the economy. So if you don't like the economy, talk to the guv.

The federal reserve is NOT government owned, do some research. It is owned by private bankers. It is just as "federal" as "federal" express or "federal" dry cleaners.

Roger,
I'm going to be nice here...and give you the opportunity to "rephrase" before I respond to your baffling post.

Key element:

RM: "sheerahkahn, the banks did no such thing."

one sentence later

RM: "Before the creation of central banks, individual bankers caused those crises by artificially creating money and causing an unsustainable boom."

Either the banks are responsible, or they are not...which one is it?

Barbara, yes the Fed is owned by private banks, but the President appoints the Fed Chairman and all of the Fed profits go to the US treasury. It's about as much a government organization as you can get.

Sheerahkahn, There is no contradiction. Before the creation of the Fed in 1913, banks created business cycles on their own. Since the Fed they don't have the power to do that; the Fed controls the money supply and so creates the business cycles that lead to depressions.

"There is no contradiction"

Either you have lost your mind, or you watch FOX news way too much because...you did contradict yourself...now maybe you don't recognize your contradiction, but if me pointing out my problem with your statement isn't clear enough for you, perhaps this will:

Your perception of what you think are saying is inconsistent with the words you are using.

Now, that is out of the way, go back to that first part where I asked you to rephrase your statement, or there is nothing else to talk about because it all begins right there...once we clear that up, then we can move on to why I think you are wrong...very wrong.
I would use misinformed, but I'm having doubts about the extent of your knowledge of the subject.

Sheerahkahn, I honestly don't understand what you're saying. I don't know how I can make it any clearer. Banks today are not free. They are controlled by the Federal Reserve. They do not set their interest rates. They do not determine credit standards. They merely do what the Federal Reserve tells them to do. If the Federal Reserve reduces interest rates, the banks have no choice but to loan money at those rates.

If a bank chooses to not go along with the Fed and keeps interest rates high, it will go out of business because no one will borrow from it.

The artificial boom caused by money expansion starts with the decision of the Fed to lower interest rates. I don't know how to make it any clearer than that.

Perhaps if you explained what part you don't understand it would help me explain it better.

PS, repeating yourself and posting lame insults does not promote discussion.

Why is it shocking that the most priveleged members of society would affirm a system that rewards them and makes them wealthier? So RICH, WHITE people like capitalism. Because it benefits them. It has nothing to do with Christianity or ethics. A system that makes the rich richer and the poor poorer cannot inherently be ethical. It is exploitative. It makes sense that the people who have not had the same priveleges under the system would not find it just.

Matthew 20:1-16 is a parable regarding heaven and salvation. It has NOTHING to do with earthly economic systems. It's a heinous misreading of a biblical text to insert meaning into it that could never have been intended by the author.

R, I don't deny that the current system in some ways makes the rich richer at the expense of the poor. However, I object to calling the current system capitalist or free market. The current system in the US is anything but.

I have argued that the nation of Israel under the Judges was the first implementation of capitalism because it sanctified private property (thou shalt not steal, covet or envy), taxes were voluntary and went to the Tabernacle, there were no standing armies to pay, no legislative or executive branches of government, and the poor laws were voluntary in that God provided no mechanism for human enforcement of them.

Jesus, as the second person of the trinity, took part in creating those laws, so he must have approved of them.

Roger,
quid pro quo
It is not a lame insult when I suspect you are dodging the truth of the critique...you see it as a lame put down, I see you as trying to pretend there is no glaring contradiction.

Again, and I'm being quite generous here due to the fact that this is the internet and the ability to say, "what?" which would have allowed you to follow through with a clearer explanation, so I am being succinct to avoid confusion.

You: sheerahkahn, the banks did no such thing...

Contradicted yourself: Before the creation of central banks, individual bankers caused those crises by artificially creating money and causing an unsustainable boom

again, at the risk of repeating myself...I am allowing the possibility that in your perception you were trying to explain a nuanced point, but the words you choose did not express that point, hence, the reason why I'm granting you the chance to "rephrase" your statement before I challenge your thoughts about the financial collapse...who knows...we may agree, or, we disagree; But I can't get to that point of the discussion till that contradiction is cleared up.

Now that you see my pov, perhaps we can remove the obvious chasm that is between us.

sheerahkahn, You can't see the distinction between the two statements?

Me: "the banks did no such thing..."

That refers to the banks in the latest crisis, around 2008.

Me: "Before the creation of central banks, individual bankers caused those crises by artificially creating money and causing an unsustainable boom..."

That refers to banking before 1913. I was making the point that banks operated differently before and after 1913. Before 1913, banks expanded credit on their own, although with significant state intervention and help. After 1913 the Federal Reserve made it impossible for banks to operate on their own. The Federal Reserve took control of monetary policy and forced banks to comply. So the credit expansion that caused the crisis of 2008, which you lamented, was caused by the government agency, the Federal Reserve, not by the banks under its control.

The actions of bankers before 1913 had no impact whatsoever on the financial crisis of 2008. Since 1913, the state through the Federal Reserve controls the money/credit supply and dictates most of the actions of banks and bankers.

So if you want to blame anyone for the crisis, blame the Federal Reserve, not the bankers.

thank you for clarifying...I can now see where you are going, and I disagree with you, but, and herein is the reason we can now get to the meat of the discussion...the Fed had little to do with this current problem...it was all the banks.

Now, lets get down to the discussion.

The banks, for this part, are responsible because they used CDO's as a method of making static money dynamic, then employed CDS as a way to profit from the less valuable CDO tranches in what is called shorting.
Goldman Sachs, currently under investigation for market manipulation and fraud is one the bigger players.
But, the start of this mess begins with the "Giant Pool of Money" that came in from Chinese and Indian investors, which, they wanted to invest in real estate markets because they felt that was the safest place to invest.
enter the banks...in the old days, like 92, when I bought my house, I basically had to show that I really didn't need the loan...I did, but I put down a substantial amount. 10% of the loan.
However, that became a problem, and with Clinton wanting more home ownership, FannieMae and Freddiemac guaranteeing loans, requirements for home loans dropped, allowing people who were clearly incapable of buying a 200k home, much less the 720k home to actually buy them.
enter unscrupulous bankers who then tranched out the loans to investors, then turning around to short those that weren't good, and voila...our current mess.

I don't expect you to take my word for it, but there are a lot of good articles out there...kind of like following the White Rabbit...start with the Giant Pool of Money, which will lead you to some really dodgy characters in the banking and hedge fund dealers.
All in all, the only blame the Fed has in any of this was the shallow world view problem of home loans...Greenspan dropped the ball.

Banks had used CDO’s and other forms of mortgage-backed securities (MBS’s) for decades. Why didn’t they blow up before?

And banks are limited by the Federal government to a very few investments. They have to invest in AAA-rated securities and all of the MBS’s were. The only other AAA-rated securities are government bonds. What turned AAA-rated securities into junk?

The answer lies partly in the Giant Pool of Money you mention. Yes, a large amount of money came from overseas and invested in real estate, driving up real estate prices. But keep in mind that India and China cannot print dollars; that would be counterfeiting. Only the Federal Reserve can print US dollars.

China and India got their dollars to invest in the US by selling stuff to the US. That’s the primary way they can get US dollars.

Of course, they could simply buy US dollars with their currencies, but then someone would have to have a reason for buying their currencies and why would they want them? Usually people buy foreign currencies because they want to invest in those countries or they want to buy something in China or India. But why would they want to invest or buy something in China or India? Mainly because they think they can sell to the US what they make in China or India. So it all comes down to the same thing: Chinese and Indians get US dollars by selling stuff to the US.

Now if US dollars go to China and India and the Fed doesn’t replace them, there will be a shortage of US dollars in the US, which will cause interest rates to rise. The Fed doesn’t want that because higher interest rates slow US growth. So the Fed prints more money.

As you can see, the Great Pool of Money came from the Federal Reserve. It can’t come from any other place. (Iran and N. Korea counterfeit a lot of US dollars but few end up in the US.)

So add together the state interventions in the real estate market that you mention to massive Fed expansion of the money supply and you have the ingredients for a blow up of the real estate market, all organized by the Fed and the Federal government. The banks were just stooges.

Sorry for the long post, but I teach economics and can’t help trying to explain it to willing participants.

"Sorry for the long post, but I teach economics and can’t help trying to explain it to willing participants."

Not at all, I'm all game for this.

but the issue is that the banks went...um...nefarious in their transactions with the CDO's and the CDS, yes, granted, this has been done for some time, but if you look at it the same way you look at tsunami, it's not so much the immediate water that does the damage, it's the cumulative mass behind it that does the damage.
Same same here.
The banks, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Merril Lynch, lowered requirements for the home loans, but herein is the kicker, the ARMS that they were loading the purchasers with did not give the buyer the indication that a recast would be imminent, and voila, 2008, loan recasts came in, a whole lot of people foreclosed because they couldn't afford the monthly payment.
But this isn't the only thing, the entire housing bubble popped, and considering a lot of people bought ridiculous expensive homes based on speculative principle soon abandoned said homes with keys in the mail box.
The Fed, under Greenspan, who himself admitted that he never thought the Housing "Golden years" would be little more than a pipe dream, the only thing they didn't do was increase interest rates...they did the opposite.
So, when China and India dump a lot of capital that they got from the trade, that's real cash btw, that cash comes in to the US market and our banks lost their morals, lost their professionalism, and in league with the shell game of CDO's and CDS's...launched into a lucrative five years of raping the enconomy...well, till 2008.
The Fed played a part, but it was a small part imo, but it was the banks working in a unregulated market (and by unregulated, I'm referring to the CDS's) took full advantage of the shadiness of the system.

btw, I'm a bench monkey for Pharmaceutical company...bench scientist, but sometimes it feels like monkey work.

No. They don't clash.
Enjoy theorizing about a more just system, been there, done that as a young man. I grew up and learned you have to make a living, support a family, employ some people, contribute to your community, and support missions. No, I prefer to live in this system whatever shortcomings. Actually works quite well if you're willing to work.

Technically, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Merril Lynch were not mortgage lenders. Neither were Bear Sterns and Lehman Bros. They were investment banks who bought the loans from the mortgage lenders (commercial banks like Bank of America) and repackaged them as MBS bonds and CDS, etc.

But most of the repackaging of loans was done by Fannie and Freddie, which started out as governmental agencies and became private, but with implicit government guarantees.

Most of the bad loans were efforts by mortgage companies to comply with the Federal government’s mandates to make subprime mortgages. But many of the bad loans, the interest only or ARM loans were made to house flippers who expected to flip the house for a profit in a few months.

Yes, there was some fraud involved, but there always is. The press ignores it during good times and pounces in bad times. So was the fraud larger than before and large enough to bring down the economy. No. Fraud is always there. Most of the bad loans came from mortgage banks trying to comply with federal regulations and make loans to people who couldn’t afford them. That’s what subprime lending is.

So what caused CDS’s, CDO’s, MBS’s and other financial instruments to go bad after being AAA-rated for decades? The price of housing collapsed. All of those instruments derived their value from the prices of the houses on which the mortgages were based. Housing prices collapsed because homebuilders had built too many houses.

Homebuilders built too many houses because borrowing money was so easy and cheap for too long because the Fed kept pumping money into the economy to try to keep it rocking. At the same time, much of that money had gone to Asia as we bought their goods and returned as investments.

Economists have studied depressions and business cycles for over 200 years. They know more about such things than any journalist. There are about a dozen theories of what causes the boom/bust business cycle, but not a single one attributes it to corruption. That’s not because they haven’t considered corruption as a cause; they have. It just doesn’t hold up to scrutiny very long.

The best explanation of cycles is the monetary theory in which the Fed expands the money supply, ignites an unsustainable boom and then the boom goes bust.

econome, good points! The search for utopias has left a lot of dead bodies in its wake. It's hard for people to accept that we can't achieve perfection in this life. Real capitalism (not the mess the US calls capitalism) never claimed to create perfection as all of the socialist creeds do. Capitalism is just the best of all possible worlds, given the fall nature of mankind. THat's just not enough for most people, though.

Thanks for an idea, you sparked at thought from a angle I hadn’t given thoguht to yet. Now lets see if I can do something with it.