Capitalism and Christianity, American Style

Connolly William E. Connolly

Description

Capitalism and Christianity, American Style is William E. Connolly's stirring call for the democratic left to counter the conservative stranglehold over American religious and economic culture in order to put egalitarianism and ecological integrity on the political agenda. An eminent political theorist known for his work on identity, secularism, and pluralism, Connolly charts the path of the "evangelical-capitalist resonance machine," source of a bellicose ethos reverberating through contemporary institutional life. He argues that the vengeful vision of the Second Coming motivating a segment of the evangelical right resonates with the ethos of greed animating the cowboy sector of American capitalism. The resulting evangelical-capitalist ethos finds expression in church pulpits, Fox News reports, the best-selling Left Behind novels, consumption practices, investment priorities, and state policies. These practices resonate together to diminish diversity, forestall responsibility to future generations, ignore urban poverty, and support a system of extensive economic inequality.Connolly describes how the evangelical-capitalist machine works, how its themes resound across class lines, and how it infiltrates numerous aspects of American life. Proposing changes in sensibility and strategy to challenge this machine, Connolly contends that the liberal distinction between secular public and religious private life must be reworked. Traditional notions of unity or solidarity must be translated into drives to forge provisional assemblages comprised of multiple constituencies and creeds. The left must also learn from the political right how power is infused into everyday institutions such as the media, schools, churches, consumption practices, corporations, and neighborhoods. Connolly explores the potential of a "tragic vision" to contest the current politics of existential resentment and political hubris, explores potential lines of connection between it and theistic faiths that break with the evangelical right, and charts the possibility of forging an "eco-egalitarian" economy. Capitalism and Christianity, American Style is William E. Connolly's most urgent work to date.

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• USA
• Economics
• États-Unis

Informations

• Publié par: Duke University Press
• Date de parution: 09 avril 2008
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780822381235
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

c a p i t a l i s m a n d c h r i s t i a n i t y , a m e r i c a n s t y l e

c a p i t a l i s m a n d c h r i s t i a n i t y , a m e r i c a n s t y l e

w i l l i a m e . c o n n o l l y

d u k e u n i v e r s i t y p r e s s d u r h a m a n d l o n d o n 2 0 0 8

2008 duke university press All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper$ Designed by Amy Ruth Buchanan Typeset in Scala by Keystone Typesetting, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data appear on the last printed page of this book.

c o n t e n t s

Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii

Introduction: The Spirit of Capitalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

1. The Volatility of Capitalism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

2. The Evangelical-Capitalist Resonance Machine . . . . . . . 39

3. Between Science and Faith . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69

4. Is Eco-egalitarian Capitalism Possible? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93

5. Christianity, Capitalism, and the Tragic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119

Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169

p r e f a c e

My relation to capitalism has long been ambiguous. When I was a boy in Flint, Michigan, I would observe my father returning from the auto factory, unclean, worn out, and somewhat short tempered. I was also acutely aware of men in our neighborhood who had worked in the auto paint shop. Several were wasting away from cancer in bedrooms with the shades drawn down, while General Motors assured everyone that it was safe to spray lead-based paint in small, enclosed spaces. At the age of eleven I stood on a few picket lines with my dad, absorbing the wisecracks and idealism of the men with whom we stood. I attended several union meetings, including one memora- ble national meeting of delegates to theuawin Detroit, where five hundred men roared in unison as Walter Reuther, their president, regaled them with the di√erence between ‘‘trickle-down economics’’—which ‘‘management,’’ newspapers, and the Republican Party celebrated—and the ‘‘trickle-up eco- nomics’’ of the union. The delegates roared, stamped their feet, and laughed from the gut when Reuther spoke. They participated in a vibrant movement. The drive back to Flint after Reuther’s speech was interesting too, with six local leaders and me squashed into a large, old Chevy. On the way to Detroit, prodded by my dad (who was president of local 598), they had sco√ed at Reuther for opposing ‘‘wildcat strikes’’—local strikes called on the spur of the moment to protest a speed-up or firing. On the way home there was embar- rassed silence, as these no-nonsense men doubtless gauged the gap between that skepticism so recently expressed and their rampant enthusiasm when Reuther spoke. ‘‘Too bad Emile Mazey’’ (the secretary-treasurer of theuaw) ‘‘can’t deliver a speech for the life of him,’’ one guy finally said. ‘‘Reuther seemed good, though,’’ I intoned, listening with delight as they broke into guilty laughter. They loved the charismatic leader they purported to disdain, remembering his courage during the sit-down strike in 1937 in which my dad

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and a couple of others in that car had participated as young men, remember- ing too how that strike—aided by lucky breaks—had forced General Motors to recognize theuawand set the table for a period of union advance. We took this trip when the welfare state was on the upswing, as achieve- ment and projected future. A relatively high proportion of blue-collar workers were organized, they typically voted Democratic, wages were rising, workers’ rights and job security received decent protection, the union supported racial integration, community colleges were sprouting up, retirement programs were improving, a ‘‘committee man’’ could be called on the spot when a worker had a ‘‘grievance,’’ thegiBill was in full swing, and above all, union families imagined a future democratic capitalism in which these achievements would grow. Indeed, the distance between the dominant meaning of ‘‘welfare state’’ then—as a symbol of economic programs for both citizens in general and those who had hit a bad spot—and now—as the sign of programs aimed at the permanently unemployed—shows how successful the evangelical-capitalist resonance machine has been in recoding its meaning and substance. I ad- mired these worker-activists, forgiving them for the occasional heavy drink- ing, carousing, and neglect that punctuated their commitments to work, family, activism, and education. My relation to Christianity harbors similar ambiguity. As a youth I heard radio programs in which Christian leaders called for equality and justice. But alongside the white families in my neighborhood who had lived in Michigan for sometime was a large cohort of white families who had recently migrated from Tennessee, West Virginia, and Kentucky. Union supporters sometimes called them ‘‘hillbillies’’ behind their backs. Few displayed positive feelings about the union. Their kids talked a lot on the street about Jesus and the Bible. Between the ages of six and twelve I heard repeatedly that you must be baptized or go to hell, that hell was a place of fire and brimstone, that ‘‘the Jews’’ killed Jesus, that Catholics were headed for eternal agony, and that Christ would return very soon to judge us all. Since my parents had broken with Catholicism and Protestantism respectively, it troubled me to think that we—and several members of our extended family—were on the road to hell. We left that neighborhood when I was twelve, and I lost touch with those kids. I would love to meet a couple of them again, seeing how they have come to terms as adults with the actual deaths of relatives and acquaintances they once consigned to hell. They were already inhabited by Proustian layers, nooks, and sparks that exceeded the stories they recited. Our di√erences often dissolved in the dust kicked up by the neighborhood street games that pro-

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vided the center of life for many of us. Nor did they disrupt the little bands we formed to steal candy bars from local stores: one guy buying a pack of gum, another chatting to the owner, and the third loading his pockets. There were no pear trees in that neighborhood. The intensity of these neighborhood exchanges along with the inspiration of my parents doubtless helped to forge the nontheistic outlook in me that has lingered and evolved. I was a proud atheist as a teenager, impressed with the power of reason to dissolve religious superstition and prepared to test its power at a moment’s notice. I now confess nontheism: it is not proven by reason or evidence, though impressive considerations can be advanced on its behalf. It is one creed among others, a minority stance to express in public as you also acknowledge the contestable elements in it. Each layer of the self is loaded with a deposit of faith. And faith—same as it always was—is a many- splendored thing. One afternoon, when I was six or seven and my father had recently re- turned home from a two-year stint in the navy, he was yelling loudly at my mother. ‘‘Why don’t you just kick her in the belly, dad?,’’ I blurted, staring up in defiance and fear at this large figure who darkened the horizon. The two adults laughed, and that little crisis dissipated. My father regaled his brothers with this story, spicing it up in the Irish style loved by them and annoying to others. Those who enjoyed the story are now dead, dispatched to hell or oblivion as the case may be. Apparently I was more identified with my mother at that time than my father, a feeling no doubt filtered through an oedipal screen. My mother frowned on jokes about other creeds, even as she assured me that neighborhood announcements about baptism, hell, Jews, Negroes, Catholics, and a second coming could be taken with a grain of salt. She hoped that I would not forgo college to follow my father into the factory out of loyalty, the prospect of decent wages, and the desire to be a labor activist. It turned out that my dad agreed with her. Now, when I recall the sermons at neighborhood churches that I occasion- ally attended with friends, I feel again the passions circulating through those assemblies. These devotees expressed in di√erent tones many of the griev- ances they shared with union loyalists. The union and the church set two poles of attraction around which factory families were organized, with many folding bits and pieces from each into their lives. None of the evangelical families with whom I was acquainted was ‘‘politi- cal’’ in a secular sense of the word. They avoided union meetings, seldom voted, and dedicated their extra-familial life to their congregations. They ac-