A Brat Stomps Cantor: Is "Christian Economics" an Oxymoron?
There are numerous discussions about economics, money, wealth, and poverty in the Bible in both the Old and New Testaments. There are egalitarian and progressive versions that have emerged in forms of Catholicism and Protestantism, with clear examples in the Social Gospel, Catholic Worker, and Liberation Theology movements. The version of "Christian Economics" championed by sectors of the Christian Right in the United States, however, is rooted in Laissez-Faire capitalism as shaped by the Austrian School economists Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich August von Hayek; and later modified by Chicago School economic icon Milton Freidman. These ideas were the basis of President Ronald Reagan's "Trickle Down" theory which flowed down the legs of numerous elite right-wing analysts. A more radical right libertarian version of Laissez-Faire "Christian Economics" drips down from the body of work by R.J. Rushdoony and Gary North. Ron and Rand Paul embrace much of this version of Biblical economics which is the basis for Christian Reconstructionism, a militant Protestant movement which is like Calvinism on crack. Both Rushdoony and North wrote for The Freeman, the political magazine of the Laissez-Faire Foundation for Economic Education. They were eventually purged when the old guard libertarians thought they had drifted too far into a theocratic interpretation of the relationship between religious theology and political economy. Christian Reconstructionists engaged in an ideological/theological debate with Christian Conservatives in the US, resulting in a fractious alliance against modern social welfare liberalism. Frederick Clarkson and I have dubbed this "Dominionism"--a political tendency that allows for electoral cooperation among Christian Reconstructionism (and other forms of doctinaire "Dominion Theology") with the much larger variety of theologies found in the contemporary US Christian Right. Note that not all conservative theologies are tied to right-wing political views. The election of David Brat is an example of the depth of anger toward elites created by a crisis of legitimacy indicting the current political and economic systems. This widespread and legitimate sense of anxiety and anger is politically-shaped by massive cash drops into electoral and legislative campaigns by a handful of wealthy elites that result (intentionally or not) in the spread of demonizing and scapegoating conspiracy theories about elite betrayal within mass movements mobilized by right-wing populist rhetoric.
That some of the people elected to public office in this process have creepy political and religious views--or are simply ignorant--is apparently dismissed as a small price to pay to smash the remaining re-distributive aspects of Democratic Party policies and what is left of a government-financed social welfare safety net so that the free hand of market forces can slap us into shape as docile consumers and good subjects.
A Brat Stomps Cantor: Is "Christian Economics" an Oxymoron? | 7 comments (7 topical, 0 hidden)
A Brat Stomps Cantor: Is "Christian Economics" an Oxymoron? | 7 comments (7 topical, 0 hidden)
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