When the US made God king

It's popular today to credit the secular Enlightenment with the creation of the United States. But the founders didn't see it that way, especially Samuel Adams. 

Adams said at the signing of the Declaration of Independence on August 1, 1776: “We have this day restored the Sovereign to whom alone men ought to be obedient. He reigns in Heaven, and with a propitious eye beholds His subjects assuming that freedom of thought and dignity of self-direction which He bestowed on them. From the rising to the setting sun, may His kingdom come!”

New York City may elect socialist mayor

Zohran Mamdani, a self-described democratic socialist, became the Democrat nominee for mayor of New York with endorsements from self-proclaimed democrat socialists Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders.

Why is democratic socialism still popular? It destroyed every economy in South America over the last century and therefore is a major cause of the tsunami of immigrants from the south.  The latest disasters are Venezuela and Bolivia. Chile recovered from its infatuation with democratic socialism in the 1970s and has been the only Latin country with a growing standard of living since. Recently, Argentina grew tired of the destruction caused by democrat socialism and elected a libertarian president to turn the country around. Europe's economy stagnated a generation ago because of democratic socialist policies. So why do people still cling to such nonsense?

Capitalists care more for the poor than socialists

 

According to modern socialists, only they care about the poor. Capitalism exploits them. The opposite is the truth. How can the two sides have such different views of reality? 

Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt explains in his book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion. Haidt, like most professors in the humanities and social sciences, is a socialist. Haidt shows that compassion, and only compassion, drives socialists. While capitalists value compassion, they temper it with concerns for justice and truth. 

Pastors and theologians should care about economics

 The recent death of Alasdair MacIntyre reminded me of the extreme contempt philosophers and theologians have for the science of economics. MacIntyre was a philosopher and convert to Catholicism who wrote several books that have influenced theologians and pastors to embrace socialism. Yet, MacIntyre, like Karl Barth and most theologians and pastors, never read a book on economics. He accepted the lies of the drunken atheist Marx as economic gospel. 

There are several reasons Christians should be familiar with the science of economics. Christian theologians gave birth to the science. I wrote about that here, so I won't go into the details in this post. 

The Pope and Capitalism

Pope Francis died recently. His legacy will be debated for years. I want to focus on his hatred of capitalism and how Catholic Christians should respond. 

It has been widely reported that the Pope called capitalism the "dung of the devil." That's not exactly what he said. Here is the section of a speech in which he used the phrase:

"The earth, entire peoples and individual persons are being brutally punished. And behind all this pain, death and destruction there is the stench of what Basil of Caesarea called “the dung of the devil.” An unfettered pursuit of money rules. The service of the common good is left behind. Once capital becomes an idol and guides people’s decisions, once greed for money presides over the entire socioeconomic system, it ruins society, it condemns and enslaves men and women, it destroys human fraternity, it sets people against one another and, as we clearly see, it even puts at risk our common home."

The Bible Teaches Neither Capitalism or Socialism?

The Bible doesn't command either capitalism or socialism, say some. So we must choose a third way, something in between, the best of both worlds. Right? Most theologians straddle the fence like that. 

An old article by Craig L. Blomberg, Professor of New Testament at Denver Seminary,  prompted this blog because it seems Blomberg's points speak for many theologians today. His article, "Neither Capitalism nor Socialism: A Biblical Theology of Economics," gives seven (a Biblical number) reasons for his ambivalence. 

The Samaritan's Dilemma and universal basic income

 In Luke chapter ten, Jesus responded to the question, who is my neighbor, with the story of the Good Samaritan. The story condemns a priest and Levite for refusing to help the wounded man while praising the Samaritan, whom Jews despised, for providing medical help and paying for him to stay at an inn while he recovered. 

The parable ends well. But the economist and Nobel Laureate James Buchanan wanted to know the rest of the story. He asked, what if the victim refused to leave the inn? What if he decided to stay at the inn forever and let the Samaritan support him? After all, the Samaritan had given the inn keeper money to pay for the victim's room and board and told the inn keeper that if that amount didn't pay all of the expenses, the Samaritan would repay him when he passed by the next time. 

Jesus said nothing about that possibility because in his day there was no need to fear people would give too much to the poor. They didn't give enough. And the leaders stole what little the poor had left. Jesus didn't exaggerate when he said the high priest had turned the temple into a den of thieves. 

Still, Christians in the early church began to face the problem of charity abuse. When Peter had the church in Acts chose deacons, it was supporting mostly widows. In 2 Thessalonians 3, Paul warned that the church should refuse to feed idle men who could work. And Paul left strict instructions for the church on how to care for widows. “But if a widow has children or grandchildren, these should learn first of all to put their religion into practice by caring for their own family and so repaying their parents and grandparents, for this is pleasing to God” (1 Timothy 5:4). Apparently, widows and lazy men had been abusing the church's generosity.