Theology and Economics: The Impact of Liberal Foundationalism

The Church’s response to the rise of the Enlightenment and the modernist world has been foundationalism. Foundationalism is rooted in scientific rationalism. It has as its central tenant that there are objective core truths behind all we experience, and these truths can be ascertained through rational examination of reality by autonomous objective human beings. The goal is to identify these core truths and build all other understandings upon them. These truths are the “foundations” upon which all else stands. However, as it has played out, foundationalism has resulted in the development of two opposing camps.

One camp joined in with the demythologizing impulses of the modernist world. Scripture and tradition were weighed against scientific rationalism and found wanting. From the eighteenth century forward, and especially in the twentieth century, these theological modernists began to look for the truth “behind” scripture. A common universal experience of the transcendent was postulated for the entire human race. Each culture merely expresses it in different terms. The Bible is a wonderful expression of the transcendent, but it is only a piece of the truth. By applying the tools of reason and scientific investigation, the common foundational truth was believed to be uncovered.

This mindset, of necessity, leads to a type of elitism. Only the “high priests” of the rational scientific approach to scripture can speak authoritatively about the nature of spiritual truths. They are the “anointed ones” to direct the rest of the community in the ways of wisdom and truth. It is unrealistic to expect the masses would have the intellectual resources and sophisticated skills to discern foundational values, so they must be re-socialized into a new understanding. Some theological modernists have proposed radical revisionism, but more typically, the approach is an incremental effort to infuse ancient concepts and words with different meanings, thus subtly shifting people’s understanding without directly challenging them.

The parallels between this mindset and the rise of socialism should be quite clear. Socialism has as a central tenant that a small group of elite intellectuals, applying rational and scientific analysis, can plan a better economy than is created by a society of disparate individuals freely engaged in exchange. Some nations like Russia and China embraced this ideology and implemented radical reform. The strategies have been more incremental and less confrontational in many other places.

Even in more capitalist societies like the United States, the trend toward controlling more and more decisions people make with massive human organizations developed. During the first half of the twentieth century, businesses learned the enormous productivity they could gain by standardizing products and mass producing from one centralized location. The federal government also began to insert itself in various aspects of life using standardized programs with centralized bureaucracies in response to the crisis of the Great Depression. Even mainline denominations began to subsume previously independent mission and ministry organizations under one comprehensive umbrella to be managed by a centralized bureaucracy.

Having exhausted the economies of scale from mass standardization and with the introduction of new technologies, businesses long ago began a transition to mass customization using flatter and more decentralized structures. However, the centralized bureaucratic management mindset has become sacrosanct in government and mainline denominations, where the idea is that an “anointed” elite is needed to “manage” the lives of their constituencies. This, of course, dovetails perfectly with the theological modernist mindset.

Reflecting on subsidiarity issues, this twentieth-century transition into centralized bureaucracies has had two consequences. First, it has atrophied the abilities of intermediate organizations and the skills of individuals in addressing their own needs. Second, it has created a dependency mindset so that when a problem emerges, the immediate response is to hold the large bureaucratic institutions responsible. When President Bush first rolled out his faith-based initiatives agenda (an agenda that I will be the first to admit has some serious problems), the National Council of Churches cast a wary eye, fearing that it would undermine the role of the federal government as the primary caretakers of the poor!

The mindset of an anointed elite managing government and society has long dominated mainline theological education. Paul Tillich believed that “Socialism is the practice of which Christianity is the religion.” Liberation theology, feminist theology, and various other perspectives have largely been various mutations of this thinking. Surveys consistently show that most seminarians matriculating from mainline institutions are, at best, suspicious of free market enterprise, and many are clearly hostile.

A far more individualistic and materialistic society has clearly developed over the last century. Theologians assume this to be a direct consequence of the free enterprise system. In fact, I argue that the bankrupt theology of a demythologizing elite is a primary culprit. (I will also argue in the next post that Evangelical theology has been as big a culprit.) People have become more materialistic because, instead of infusing the world with sacred meaning, the sacred has been eradicated. The sense of call and purpose in daily life has been blurred or completely obscured. Rather than bringing the revelation of a transcendent God into a materialistic world, mainline institutions have aided and abetted the rise of materialism. Rather than suffer under the pontifications about the latest social philosophy dressed up in theological mumbo-jumbo, people have left church institutions in search of transcendence elsewhere, often in Gnostic-like philosophies that don’t challenge their materialism.

The errant fusion of materialistic individualism with free-market capitalism is not the exclusive work of mainline Christianity. There have long been voices in the Evangelical community who do the same thing. Jim Wallis is one of the most prominent in recent years. I see a heavy dose of it in Emergent circles. I recently read N. T. Wright’s “Simply Christian.” I am an N. T. Wright fan but look at the following paragraph published in the book:

And now we have the new global evils: rampant, uncaring, and irresponsible materialism and capitalism on the one hand; raging unthinking religious fundamentalism on the other. As one famous book puts it, we have ‘Jihad versus McWorld.” (Whether there is such a thing as caring capitalism, or for that matter thoughtful fundamentalism, isn’t the point at the moment.) This brings us back to where we were a few minutes ago. It doesn’t take a Ph.D in macroeconomics to know that if the rich are getting richer by the minute, and the poor poorer, there is something badly wrong. (1)

“Whether there is such a thing as caring capitalism?” “Poor are getting poorer by the minute?” With all due respect, what planet is he writing about? Look at the level of prosperity in the world that has emerged over the last quarter of a millennium in the Western world. Lower middle-class people live lifestyles today that most wealthy could not imagine one hundred years ago. Look at the stunning decline in disease and infant mortality rates coupled with rising life expectancy throughout the world in the Twentieth Century. Over the past several decades, no famine has occurred in a nation that embraces free markets and the rule of law. More people than ever before live in politically free countries. The two most populous poor nations on the planet, India and China, are experiencing staggering economic growth that, while uneven, is expanding farther and farther throughout their respective societies. That bastion of “right-wing economics,” the United Nations, reports enormous and steady growth in the number of people earning more than one dollar a day over the past couple of decades. Their major objective is how to make it happen to more people faster. And all of this happened with the world tripling in population size since the 1920s. The poor are getting poorer???

None of this says the world situation is all peaches and cream. I am not saying that there are no serious injustices in the world and issues that must be addressed. But we are talking about trajectories here, and capitalism, not a band of enlightened elitists, has driven these advancements.

I suspect the pervasive individualism and materialism in Evangelical circles are behind some of the aversion to free market capitalism by the Evangelical left and Emergent types. These same Evangelicals are usually big supporters of free markets and capitalism. Borrowing from the critique of mainline Protestantism, I suspect many critics have made the same errant fusion of materialistic individualism with capitalism. But the materialistic individualism in Evangelicalism does not spring from capitalism. It is to the Evangelical ethos we turn next.

(1) N. T. Wright. Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense. San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 2006. 8.

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Comments

[John Lunt]

Great post. The reality is that it's just a question who has the power. Whether it is in the hands of capitalists or socialists.

At least the capitalists create wealth. Socialists tend to squander it - badly.

Chavez has amazing resources in Venezuela. I'm willing to bet they will be in serious economic problems within 10 years - or less.

Another point, look at what "capitalists" like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are doing with their resources. They'll pull off stuff no socialist state could.

[Michael Kruse]

Thanks John. Gates' and Buffet's gifts were not a compelled redistribution, but rather wealthy people exhibiting virtuous behavior of their own volition. Because the money is their money, and they are shrewd investors, you can be darn sure they will invest in enterprises that will get a bigger bang per buck than the money would get if it were confiscated by government entities and allocated by political operatives.

How many others will this set an example for and inspire to do the same? I hope all of inspres all of us with whatever talents we have been entrusted with.

Good to hear from you!

[Ken Klewin]

I'm also a Wright fan who finds his understanding of economics disturbing. There is a disturbing tendency for many folks to see that "helping the poor" means attacking the only system that actually has a record of making life better for large numbers of them. Why is it so hard to see that God works through his eikons to further His plan for creation?

[Michael Kruse]

Ken I think there are a number of reasons and that is part of what I am trying to address in this and the next few posts. If you have any thoughts on this I would love to hear them.

[will spotts]

For me, a working definition would be helpful for the terms "individualism" and "materialistic individualism". I say this because I need to be clear on what exactly you are addressing. I have seen something very sinister, harmful, philosophically bankrupt, and pretty much evil advanced recently under the fashionable rubric of "community", so I tend to react more strongly to certain terms. I know that is not what you mean, but I'm having trouble distinguishing.

Thanks

[Michael Kruse]

Good questions. By materialistic I am referring to a mindset that is secularist and focused on the material aspects and realities of life, largely to the exclusion of what we might call spriitual and transcendant aspects of exsitence.

Earlier in the series (way back) I wrote that God created us as individuals to be in community. Both individuality and community have to be held in tension and integrated in God who is "the three in one."

The individuality I refer to here is the Enlightenment ideal of the autonomous object individual reasoning his/her way to truth and meaning.

I hope that helps.

[will spotts]

Indeed. Many thanks.

As long as both are respected I have no problem with it. And yes, you're a sociologist, so community is kind of a stock in trade . . ..

I have seen formulations of community that involve the annihilation of the individual -- in which case the individual is expected to squeeze into the community role, and deny the truth of his or her experience.

Thanks for the clarification on material reductionist views as well.

[Michael Kruse]

"...annihilation of the individual..."

'I am Locutus of Borg. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.'

Something along those lines? *grin*

[will spotts]

Yeah, that about sums it up.

I was thinking more in terms of Jonestown . . . but a Star Trek analogy will do nicely.

[David Giesen]

Two things . . . and I'm back on the subject because it is expressly relevant. Distinguishing between gifts of nature and things made by humanity liberates one's political economic speaking and thinking to at once reconcile a species of communitarianism with individualism.

To socialize economic rent 1) deprives the individual of nothing the individual has produced; 2) eliminates non-merit based advantage; 3) liberates competition to operate based upon merit rather than upon the skewing asset of privatized economic rent; 4) abolishes the single most corrupting influence upon politics, namely the private-interest pursuit of unearned access to economic rent; and 5) recognizes the objective reality of community (the economic rent of land is a function of the geographic, three-dimensional relationship of people).

Second,addressing a comment far above, I challenge the assumption that Warren Buffet and Bill Gates have earned their billions without having significantly taken advantage of the socially absurd norm that privatized economic rent is morally sound and economically cohernet. True, a lone assassin may do the deed more efficiently than a host of senators (J.C. . . . Julius Caesar) might, but murder is murder and mere market monopoly ownership, or access to earth at less than full economic rent paid to society hardly represents superior genuine business acumen.