FAITH forum 7B WESLEYAN WISDOM Religion provides vital check on market forces


BY DONALD W. HAYNES UMR Columnist


Most European Christian theolo-


gians of the 20th century concluded that democratic socialism was the economic approach most compatible with Christian ethics. Oversimplified, this political imple- mentation of eco- nomic theory used taxes to employ “Robin Hood ethics”—i.e., taking from the rich and re- distributing to the poor. They were the teachers and authors who most deeply af- fected Christian ethics in the seminary classrooms of mainline Christian seminaries in the U.S., both Protestant and Catholic. By the 1960s, liberation theology


Donald Haynes


had gained a voice in most seminary faculties. Liberation theology vali- dates the “expressed conscience” of the poor. In short, as Catholic theolo- gian Michael Novak puts it, “The poor deserve to be heard. . . .” The poor are often desperate, and


desperation in a person—or within a politically disenfranchised racial, reli- gious, economic or ethnic sub-cul- ture—leads to hopelessness, tunnel vision and sometimes to violence. To put it another way, liberation theology gives intellectual warrant to the public opinion of the disenfranchised, the dispossessed and the powerless. But then Mr. Novak finishes his


sentence with a vitally important point, often overlooked by liberation theology. His full sentence reads, “The poor deserve to be heard, but they may have it wrong.” They are afflicted with the same ramifications of origi- nal sin as are the rich and privileged. The opinion of the poor is no more centered in God’s will nor expressive of God’s grace than the opinion of the “high and the mighty.” As St. Paul put it, “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”


Wealth and oppression In its underlying economic theory,


liberation theology insists that profit is the handmaiden of oppression and that affluence rides on the backs of the poor. It often identifies main- stream Christianity with the affluent and powerful. James Cone wrote in his classic


God of the Oppressed, “The ruling class promotes religion because it jus- tifies the present material relations


and also because it serves as a seda- tive for the oppressed, making them remain content with humiliation and suffering.” In this Cone echoes his quotation of Karl Marx’s most famil- iar critique of religion: “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.” The debate is fundamental. How is


wealth created? Is it on the backs of the poor? Must new wealth be accu- mulated by oppression so that we are locked into a construct of the oppres- sor and the oppressed? In the year of the American Decla-


ration of Independence, the classic text for free enterprise economics was written by the professor of moral phi- losophy at the University of Glasgow. Adam Smith’s book, usually short- ened to The Wealth of Nations, is ac- tually entitled An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Smith’s was a protest against the monopolies of the government-li- censed trading companies, primarily English, that kept the cottage indus- tries, primarily Scottish, from reach- ing world markets where they could sell their goods in a “market driven” climate of trade. Smith insisted that while greed is


the perennial ogre of material wealth, more altruistic motivators of entre- preneurial ventures are the enhance- ment of one’s quality of life: honor, respect, social advancement, educa- tion of children, and business ethics. Nathan Hatch, when on the faculty


at Notre Dame, wrote a fascinating essay, “The Puzzle of American Methodism.” He piques one’s interest with this sentence: “Historians are currently probing


the complicated dynamics of how the republican society . . . of artisans, and local farmers became the liberal, competitive, market-oriented democ- racy of the age of Jackson. The most burning questions concern the emer- gence of capitalism. How does Methodism, the largest social move- ment of the period, bear upon these issues?” He continues, “Methodism res-


onated with the logic of capitalism and liberal individualism. In the first generation of the Republic . . . it is the meteoric rise of American Method- ism that offers insight into . . . the pro- totype of a religious organization that took on market form. Methodism sprouted from the same cultural tap- root that nourished a culture of lib- eral individualism and mass


democracy.” Dr. Hatch is not a Methodist. He is


a Presbyterian, once a professor in a Catholic university, and now presi- dent of Wake Forest, a historically Baptist university. Yet he concluded his essay, “If Methodists were moved to the foreground of American reli- gious history, we would gain insight into how religion has so tenaciously gripped the soul of Americans.”


The profit motive Ludwig von Mises is known as the


“father of Austrian economics” and authored Human Action. Forced to leave Austria after the Nazis took power, Mises concluded that the best theory of economics is not theory at all, but the observation of human ac- tion. The statist alternative to fascism was communism. Mises rejected both as systems


that control individual destiny. He in- sisted the future is not fixed, as Marx and other determinists would have us believe; it is freely chosen human acts that change the existing state of af- fairs. The issue is not what people should do, but what they do! Mises spent the rest of his life in


America. His emphasis on the free- dom of human action as the most ef- fective route out of both political oppression and economic depression is in contrast to the philosophical premise of democratic socialism and different from the class warfare polemic of liberation theology. With socialism, the “state” is more


equitable in distribution of wealth and controls the economy. In so doing, it limits free human actions, believing that we must be protected from ourselves. Liberation theology encourages throngs to work for a transfer of “power to the people” to those who are screaming, “Power to the people!” In contrast, the ethos of free enter-


prise, in the words of Peter Drucker, is to “create or serve a customer which leads to mutual benefit.” It is volun- tary. In order to be perpetuated for all stakeholders, and to have resources for research and development, the free enterprise endeavor must pro- duce a profit. These schools of eco- nomic thought are at the root of much debate in America today. The question is profound. Is entre-


preneurism systemically oppressive or is it market-driven risk that is literally amoral? I would argue for the latter. Only religion can inject into the


mainstream of the market a mod- icum of honesty, respect, trust, char-


ity, and a check on greed. Democratic capitalism admits that its Achilles’ heel, as we see in recent scandals, is the persistent evil of human greed. To the contrary, the premise of demo- cratic socialism is that the role of government is to regulate or legislate both policy and process that will work for the “common good.” The re- ality check is that sin is pervasive in all systems. Classic Christian theology rightly insists that no sphere of human behavior is exempt from the affliction of original sin.” Even in a controlled political or


economic environment, with noble and lofty goals, the bureaucrat writ- ing the government rescue program is a biased human being!


Rising tide The “fountain of truth” discovered


by Adam Smith is that accumulated wealth can be redistributed only once. Some wag has put it that “so- cialism cuts the pie more equitably until it is all gone, whereas capitalism ‘bakes more pies.’” By creative human action, new


wealth is created. New wealth brings new stakeholders into the process. It is naïve to say that a rising tide lifts all boats, but it is not naïve to say that


unless there is a rising tide, all boats eventually run aground. There is a vast difference between


hoarded wealth in a no-growth clas- sist economy where the rich are perennially rich and the poor are perennially poor, and productive wealth in a dynamic, wealth-growth economy in which accumulated wealth is the result of productivity, entrepreneurism and creativity. Most biblical references refer to hoarded wealth, since free enterprise capital- ism did not exist in biblical times. But, as Michael Novak has docu-


mented, in United States history, each generation has seen 20 percent of the poor rise out of poverty and 20 per- cent of the rich lose the bulk of their wealth. This is not an ideal world, but it is more economic movement in less time than any other country in human history. So who is right? The liberation


theologians? Or those whose case rests in the freedom and conse- quences of human action?


Dr. Haynes is a retired member of the Western North Carolina Conference. He is the author of On the Threshold of Grace: Methodist Fundamentals. Email: dhaynes11@triad.rr.com.


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UNITED MET HODI S T REPORTER | NOVEMBER 11, 2011


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