The Gospel and the Economy

I had a conversation a while back with a Christian brother who has a management position for a manufacturing company. At one point our conversation turned to the state of the economy. I asked him if there were any improvements in the manufacturing sector in recent months. He said there wasn’t. I asked him if he was optimistic about the future. He again said no, and then began to tell me why. I was a bit excited. As a pastor, I feel somewhat separated from the daily grind of the business world. Now I was talking to an insider, and I thought I was about to receive a piece of pertinent information. Information that I hoped was filled with both direct knowledge and Christian principles. My friend’s rationale, however, quickly digressed into a capitalistic speech that sounded more like Rush Limbaugh than Christian. The problem, he said, was that America was again engaging in a massive social experiment. FDR did the same thing in the 30s in attempt to bring the US out of the depression, and we’ve paid for it ever since. If FDR would only have left things alone, my friend said, if he would only have let the markets work everything out, we would have been fine. And now Obama was making the same mistake and thus crippling our country for years to come.

I didn’t respond to my friend. I didn’t think it would do any good, but I was thinking, “Do these hyper-capitalists even know their history? The market was naturally going to pull us out of the depression? What market? There was no market. 40% unemployment was just going to go dissolve away in time? Have these guys ever read Steinbeck? Have they ever tried to raise a family in a cardboard box with no work?” But I’m not here to rant about the historical inaccuracies of hyper-capitalists, for that isn’t my main concern. What bothers me most about this view of the economy is how non-Christian it was. How little of a role the gospel plays in it. And yet how prevalent this view is among evangelical Christians.

Capitalism and Human Depravity. The market will sort things out if we will just leave it alone. Get government out. Less regulation the better. So the hyper-capitalist say (for the record, I’m not against capitalism). They speak as if the markets are weather patterns operating according to the laws of the natural universe. Spring always follows winter. But the markets aren’t run by natural laws. They are run by people, and people are selfish, foolish, and sinful. The market isn’t an “it.” It is a “them.” It is people. Many right-wing Christians point out that the government is run by selfish human beings who morally are no better than the people they rule. Government can’t be the answer, they say. I agree. But I also would like to remind us all that human depravity runs the market place. Should we have more confidence in it? Isn’t pretty much every economist in agreement that the cause of the recession was not government regulation but capitalism gone awry? And the fact that it goes awry shouldn’t catch us off guard.

Capitalism with a capital “C”: Capitalism will save the day, if we just put our faith in it. Those aren’t the exact words of the hyper-capitalist, but it comes pretty close to that. Such a view to me is flirting, or perhaps more than flirting, with idolatry. It is sub-Christian. Jesus, not capitalism, holds the answers to our economic needs. For human sin and not socialism, communism, or any other “ism” is the true enemy of prosperity and life. Governments and markets always fail because humans fail. Our only hope for not failing is to be radically changed by his grace.

I have yet to cement my political views on many things, but it seems to me that this is not the path to a gospel-centered view of governance. I'm interested in what others think.