When Did Jesus Become a Capitalist?
How Evangelicals Came to Embrace Capitalism !
When I was a young pastor on an island in the Puget Sound.
A woman began attending our church. She asked if she could meet with me. Sitting across from me, she told a story that everyone on the island seemed to know.
Her husband was in federal prison.
He owned the local telephone company. In those days the Bell System dominated telecommunications in America. Bell wanted to buy his small independent company. He refused to sell.
Not long afterward, federal prosecutors charged him with fraud.
The accusation centered on the way long-distance phone calls were billed. Sometimes the actual charge included a fraction of a penny. Like all phone companies at the time, his company rounded those fractions up to the nearest penny. Federal prosecutors claimed that they constituted fraud.
He was convicted and sent to prison.
I began visiting him in federal prison. Apart from his family and attorneys, I was one of the few people who showed up regularly.
Over the next eighteen months we became friends.
When he was released, he filed a lawsuit against Bell. During the proceedings, evidence proved that Bell had played a significant role in pushing for the prosecution. He won his case and received an $800,000 judgment.
He invested much of the money in real estate. Over time he became extraordinarily wealthy.
He was one of the most generous people I have ever known. He supported our church. He funded missionaries. He gave generously to organizations serving the poor.
One day he described how he managed his philanthropy.
“I have three full-time employees,” he told me, “whose job is to vet people and organizations that are asking for help.”
Then he said something I have never forgotten.
“My investments make more money than I can responsibly give away. No matter how much I donate, I continue to get richer.”
At the time I admired his generosity. I still do.
But over the years I have come to realize that he wasn’t simply describing himself.
He was describing a system.
A system in which accumulated wealth naturally creates more wealth.
A system in which money can grow faster than labor.
A system in which assets often earn more than work.
A system many American Christians have come to believe is not only effective, but biblical.
Here’s my question.
When did Jesus become a capitalist?
For many evangelical Christians, the answer seems obvious. Capitalism is viewed as the economic system most compatible with Christianity. Free markets are often spoken of with the same reverence reserved for freedom of religion or freedom of speech.
But that wasn’t always true.
In fact, for most of Christian history, the question would have sounded strange.
The early Christians lived under the Roman Empire. They knew nothing of stock markets, investment portfolios, hedge funds, venture capital, or multinational corporations.
The Book of Acts describes believers sharing resources and ensuring that no one among them lacked necessities. The church fathers consistently warned about the dangers of wealth and the moral responsibility of the wealthy toward the poor.
They were not socialists in the modern sense. Neither were they capitalists.
They simply believed that possessions carried obligations.
The central question was never, “How much can I accumulate?”
The question was, “What do I owe my neighbor?”
Modern capitalism did not emerge until many centuries later. Historians generally trace its development to the growth of trade, banking, investment, and private enterprise between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries.
Eventually capitalism helped create unprecedented prosperity.
It also created unprecedented concentrations of wealth.
The relationship between Protestant Christianity and capitalism became stronger over time. Certain Protestant virtues of hard work, discipline, thrift, delayed gratification fit well within emerging market economies.
The real marriage between evangelical Christianity and capitalism occurred during the twentieth century.
The Great Depression had shaken confidence in business. Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal expanded government programs and regulations. Then came the Cold War.
Communism became the great enemy.
Since communist governments were officially atheist, many Christian leaders understandably opposed them. But something else happened.
A false choice emerged.
Americans were increasingly told there were only two options:
Atheistic communism or Christian capitalism.
Socialism became associated with godlessness.
Capitalism became associated with faith.
Large business interests actively promoted this message. They funded ministers, organizations, educational programs, and public campaigns that linked free-market economics with religious values.
Gradually, many Christians came to believe that defending capitalism was part of defending Christianity itself.
The result is that today many evangelicals can quote Ronald Reagan more easily than the Hebrew prophets when discussing economics.
The Old Testament repeatedly places limits on wealth accumulation.
Every seventh year debts were to be forgiven.
Every fiftieth year, under the Jubilee system, land was to return to its original families.
Farmers were instructed not to harvest the corners of their fields so the poor could gather food.
The prophets thundered against those who exploited workers, manipulated markets, or used wealth to crush the vulnerable.
Again and again God’s concern was directed toward widows, orphans, foreigners, debtors, and the poor.
Then Jesus arrives.
His teachings make modern Christians uncomfortable.
He warns about wealth more than almost any other subject.
He tells a rich ruler to sell his possessions.
He says it is difficult for the wealthy to enter the Kingdom of God.
He warns that we cannot serve both God and Mammon.
Notice what Jesus does not do.
He never endorses an economic system.
He never says capitalism is God’s chosen arrangement.
Instead, he continually asks how we treat one another.
The irony is that many evangelicals who take the Bible literally in matters of sexuality, family, and personal morality suddenly become remarkably flexible when Jesus talks about money.
The church often condemns personal sins while ignoring systemic greed.
We criticize individuals while blessing structures that concentrate wealth and power.
Communist systems have often crushed freedom, stifled initiative, and concentrated power in the hands of the state.
The Bible does not offer capitalism.
The Bible does not offer socialism.
The Bible offers something far more challenging.
It offers a moral vision.
A vision where wealth exists to serve people rather than people existing to serve wealth.
A vision where economic success carries social responsibility.
A vision where the measure of a society is not how rich its richest citizens become but how it treats its most vulnerable.
I still think about my friend.
He was generous beyond anything most people will ever experience.
Yet his observation remains with me.
“My investments make more money than I can responsibly give away.”
That sentence reveals both the brilliance and the danger of modern capitalism.
The brilliance is that wealth can create more wealth.
The danger is that wealth can create more wealth.
The question for Christians is not whether capitalism works.
Clearly it does.
The question is whether economic efficiency is the same thing as biblical justice.
And those are not necessarily the same thing.
In 1989 a youth leader in Holland Michigan began making simple bracelets for her youth group to wear. WWJD The question that spread around the country. What Would Jesus Do? How would He treat the poor, immigrants, refugees and the marginalized ? How would society be organised to best serve those who are the least among us?
This was so well said! Thank you for speaking out about this topic.