I wonder why religious conservatives are mostly synonymous with capitalism supporters ? I mean arent most religions inherently socialistic ? What makes conservatives support capitalism , despite not being among the rich?
Could they be more credulous and hence more susceptible to the lies corporations tell us?
When people say they don’t support capitalism then what is the system you see as a more viable alternative?
Edit: Imagine being downvoted for asking a question
Plenty of people who are critical of capitalism aren’t necessarily advocating for an entirely different system. Rather, they’re advocating for dealing with the problems of capitalism head-on, rather than pretending that they don’t exist and allowing them to become worse.
Socialism.
Check out how the Anarchists structured their society in Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War. George Orwell fought alongside them and wrote a book about it called Homage To Catalonia, where he describes how utopian it was while it existed. It also deeply soured him on communism, because he saw how the communists betrayed the anarchists during the war and how authoritarian they were compared to the left libertarian anarchists, which likely influenced him when writing Animal Farm.
The war was one of the defining events of his political outlook and a significant part of what led him to write in 1946, “Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it.”
Socialism is defined by the elimination of the purely capitalist class, wherin workers own the means of production.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that capital isn’t assigned for investment based upon market demand or that “EvEryoNe gEts pAId tHE SAmE” like others claim. Socialism in a modern economy can (and likely would be) market based, it just means that shareholders would be entirely made up of employees of a company (obviously this would lead to better conditions for workers, lower wages for executives and no dividend payments to people who aren’t working). Taking a more academic definition of capitalism, it’s entirely possible to be both socialist and capitalist. Few people are arguing against capitalism in entirety.
This is not a an easy answer. Part of it is Prosperity gospel. Basically what if god showed you who was righteous by making the righteous rich. Why are you not rich, because you are not righteous. It started in the early part of the 1900s and quickly moved to tevevalgelism, even back during the days of radio.
Combine that with a string believe in the great man theory of his troy. Something right wing people are more likely to strongly believe in. Add to that a need for a social hierarchy that clears say “These are the better and by divine right they should rules and these are the lesser to be ruled over” you have a powerful mix. God is at the most top point of a hierarchy and below must be the best people, the real great men who will shape history. How so I tell who these great men are? The rich, if they are righteous then god will reward them with riches.
Then add a very distinct American version of Christianity. If it the christian thing to do then America will do and if Amercia does then it must the christian thing to do. America is capitalist therefore it is christian to be a capitalist.
These circles of logic all feed into the one conclusion of hyper christian national capitalism.
I think what leads one to hold onto their religion and to support the social status quo are the same things: Attachement to what is familiar and reassuring and rejection of what is new and scary. Conservatives often try to appropriate religion to appear as the side of comfy, reassuring tradition, and represent progressives as the side of scary disrupters.
Because conservatism is more important to them than religion, essentially.
Does not explain why do they support capitalistic policies , and this is not just in the US but other countries too!
It does.
(You can say the same about existing socialist democratic policies, too.)
It’s just indoctrination.
People believe what they are taught, and relatively few questions anything seriously.
The majority of people continue to believe the religion they were raised in.
The majority of people believe in the economic system they were raised in.
The majority of the world’s countries use mixes of capitalist & socialist policies (ie free-market economies with social safety net programs).
So most people support capitalist free-market systems, and would say they are pro-capitalism.
They also don’t want you to cut their retirement government program levels.
And though most won’t claim to support socialism, they love firefighters or libraries or roads, and they can’t tell there’s no difference. Because they aren’t taught to question.
And most don’t want to replace their existing systems with completely different systems. They just want them to provide better tesults and be less costly.
Religion is most effective at converting those more inclined to believe propaganda & appeals to authority.
So these dichotomies are even worse & more prevalent for the religious.
Those people breed children of mostly similar sentiment. If raised capitalist, those religious children won’t question the obvious conflict. Their authorities tell them it’s ok.
Their authorities may even modify the religion to fit the mold (ie Prosperity Gospel).
The religious authorities who suggest questioning existing systems receive pushback from followers and the system itself when they encourage critical thinking regarding the conflicts of capitalism and religion.
Examples include Martin Luther King Jr & the current Pope, both of whom were not well received with their criticisms of capitalism.
So again, it is just indoctrination with a sprinkling of ignorance.
Religion is not the goal of conservatives, it’s a tool to preserve hierarchy in the society. Capitalism is another tool that achieves that.
The people that aren’t wealthy but are conservative benefit from hierarchy enforced by religion. It ensures that they’re not on the bottom of society - that place is intended for various minorities.
But it seems like in general white conservatives are at the extreme bottom in most scenarios… they’re just also blinded by the “it’s just not my turn to be rich yet” fallacy.
If you’re at the extreme bottom there’s little chance to move upwards in capitalism but it’s comforting to have some undesirables who have it even worse than you.
“If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”
― Lyndon B. JohnsonBoth religion and capitalism ensure white conservatives always have someone to look down on and they in return lends them their loud voice & violence.
ETA : Religion + capitalism’s symbiotic behaviour is not restricted to white conservatives. They have the same relationship with every ethnic & religious majoritarian conservative. India has been experiencing it since 2014 where Hindu supremacists support big corporates even when the corporates have created enormous inflation. In return these corporates control mainstream media and fund Hindu supremacist leaders who paint targets on the back of minority religions (currently, Muslims & Christians).
I didn’t check all of the comments, but most of the ones I saw were really poor jokes or just plain wrong. The reason that religion is so tied into conservatism goes back to Nixon, and the attempts made by Roger Ailes and others, including Ronald Reagan, to make sure a right wing president could never be held accountable again. This included a meeting with Reagan and hundreds of pastors in which they literally trained the pastors on how to convert their congregations to the rights hateful rhetoric, a big part of which was the demonization of abortion and the lionization of “the free market”. They’ve since been exporting this hateful rhetoric around the world by force and through traditional missionary style missions.
While I don’t doubt this happened, this isn’t the first real link between capitalism and religion, specifically Christianity. It can actually go way further back, like to the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Capitalism was beginning to take on its early forms, and doing what capitalism does best, which is reinforcing currently existing social hierarchies. When European ‘ancient farmers’ came over to the americas they needed labor, and ended up using Africans. Problem was, under English common law you weren’t supposed to own christian slaves. (Some slaves actually used this defense to escape slavery see Elizabeth key), and the region where slavery first popped off was Angola which was a largely christian country, so the colonies detached themselves from English comon law (which was one of the many stepping stones leading up to the American revolution) and changes various rules so that they could. That way they can keep holding slaves while using their religion to justify what they were doing. Religion was used to bolster capitalism, capitalism made religions people rich.
Abrahamic religions (as are most organized religions) are insanely heiarchical. Like we said before, capitalism has a habit of reinforcing those social heiarchies, so it’s not really that surprising that there a huge overlap there. Just like there’s a huge overlap between billionaires and capitalism supporters, or landlords and anti-union support.
I appreciate that addition, and agree. Thanks for adding on.
An important thing to keep in mind is that the practice of religion changes over time alongside culture, and is itself a part of culture. The Christianity of people living in places like Judea and Anatolia in the 1st century CE differs from the Christianity of, say, the Teutonic (not up on my post-Roman ethnicities, so might not be using the right term) tribes of Western Europe in the 6th century. This again differs from the Christianity of indigenous peoples in the Americas post-Columbus. In all these cases, these people had pre-existing cultural and religious beliefs which Christianity syncretised with instead of wholly replacing.
The Bible has been used to endorse slavery as well as oppose it, to condone violence and warfare as well as serve as the basis for radical non-violence. It is not “univocal”, because the various people who wrote and compiled it had their own beliefs and perspectives.
The various sects of Christianity differ in their values, beliefs, and even canon literature, and that’s before you get into Christianity as cultural practice rather than strict religion. Like all religions, Christianity is wonderfully human, encompassing our wide range of idiosyncrasies and contradictions, and that even includes people who don’t read the damn book! So yes, you’re going to find commonly accepted “Christian” practices which seem to clearly contradict the doctrine, but the doctrine contradicts itself, and serves people just as much as people should ostensibly serve it. The conception of Christianity as a unified religion, with 1 canon and 1 accepted interpretation, has never been accurate.
FWIW Early Christians did practice communal living and sharing of property (the New Testament tells us as much), and you can still see these things in practice today, albeit rarely. I also wouldn’t use modern terms like socialism to describe that sort of thing, because the economic order and class structures which Socialism and Communism are a response to literally did not exist at the time.
Basically… because of slavery.
If you take a look at an indigenous population and decide that both:
- They are lazy, because their labor only produces subsistence and isn’t captured as surplus value stored in currency
- Their laziness is a moral failing which will doom them to eternal suffering
…then you have now put yourself in a mental model where you have a moral duty to force that person to work for (your) profit instead of subsistence, in order to save their soul.
If you have a whole country that thinks this way, they will try to enslave the whole world and feel good about doing so.
So in a Darwinian way, that mentality is the most “fit”. It’s very uhhh “successful”. And so it propagates.
Because “conservative” isn’t an ideology, it’s a mindset. It’s based on the idea that the in-group is good, not because of what they believe but because of who they are. So because they are good, whatever they want is good. It does not matter if their wants are contradictory or hypocritical or irrational in any way. They define the parameters for what is worth preserving, and then anyone who wants to stop them is part of the out-group and therefore bad. The out-group is not bad because they hold bad positions. The out-group could change their positions, and they would still be bad becauae it is part of their identity.
Conservatives also do not require any justification for their wants, but having a religious justification is like catnip. Because of the conservative mindset, they have no problem picking and choosing the religious beliefs that support what they want while ignoring or attacking the ones that don’t.
This is honestly an extremely weak take. Not going to start a debate with you, I’m not a conservative, but oversimplification and vilification does more harm than good.
Eh, is it vilification when they are actual villains?
Are you kidding me? Do you see the current conservatives in the United States right now?
Max Weber’s “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism” goes into how protestantism cradled capitalist growth. But I think it’s a bit heavy handed to say folks support capitalist ideology. You don’t really support ideology. The ideology is what supports capitalism or is capitalism itself. But Protestantism is generally has individualistic beliefs. No longer does the clergy intermediate relation to God. Protestants believe individuals have a personal and individual relation to god. This sense of individualism can overlap with capitalist mentalities of individual success and profit.
But I think your use of ideology is too vague and understanding of religion is too generalized. You really need to talk about particulars of specific religious beliefs and particulars of specific attitudes towards capitalism. There’s not much to really comment on with such broad and vague brushstrokes.
They do it because of capitalism’s decentralized properties.
First, they fear a government having power over them. This can seem irrational, but they interpreted WW2 as 1.) proof that a government can be used to wipe out people it disagrees with, and 2.) that absolute sovereignty in the hands of man made institutions is a thread to god as the supreme sovereign.
The decentralization of capitalism, and democracy, gives them the ability to disconnect as much as possible from anything they dont agree with. This is why they talk about freedom while doing hateful things in the name of their lord. Theyre economically free (to be hateful).
A lot of this mentality really starts after WW2. First the war is won. Then they push to make America as christian as possible. About 50% of US citizens claimed to be christian in 1950, but it is 90% by the 1970’s. In God We Trust is put on US money and added to the national anthem in the 50’s. This is important because the US is starting to fight the cold war against atheistic communists. The power of capitalism becomes part of a global propaganda effort to demonstrate the weakness of the godless systems. The republicans align themselves with christianity, locking it in with Reagan’s election in 1980, and now capitalism and christianity are intertwined and propagandized to the point of not resembling the original ideas anymore. Give that 44 years, and here we are.
On Christian Soverignty, written by an influential christian just after WW2 https://providencemag.com/2020/07/christian-view-sovereignty/
They don’t really support capitalism. They are simply submissive to authorities and support whatever their leaders say.
Have you considered that they happened to just be born into the best country in the world, the one true religion, and it’s everyone else’s job to step in line?
They have socialistic choices too , if we dont talk about the US , there are actual socialistic parties , and still the religious conservatives support partys those are capitalistic.
Let’s use Hong Kong as an example.
Conservatives in Hong Kong are pro-Beijing. Most Buddhist and Taoist organisations in Hong Kong are pro-Beijing as well. Catholic communities in Hong Kong seem to be very divided politically.
That’s what I observed in Hong Kong. Most of the conservatives don’t seem to care about capitalism vs socialism, they just blindly follow their leaders.
Very interesting perspective, thanks for sharing!
Behind the bastards did a 2 part podcast on this
[Behind the Bastards] Part One: How The Rich Ate Christianity 🅴 #behindTheBastards https://podcastaddict.com/behind-the-bastards/episode/137287957 via @PodcastAddict
Because it’s remarkably similar in form:
“each one takes care of himself and god takes care of all”
Vs
“Everybody pursues their own gain and the market takes care of everything”
PS: “the lord works in mysterious ways” Vs “the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent”
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1999/03/the-market-as-god/306397/
Market takes care of is a liberatarian myth !
I know, but when you said religious conservative, I immediately assumed American and economically conservative, but there are plenty of Christian social democrats in Europe.
I think I may have misunderstood your question: which ideology did you expect religious conservatives to support? And, where/when? Maybe they could be socialists, because the new testament encourages generosity. Or maybe they could be really conservative and rabidly monarchist, imperialist like in the past. Maybe it does not matter and they just “support” what there is in their country at the time or it doesn’t matter where religion is separate from the state.
