Politics and Religion at the Dinner Table Part III

The Protestant – Capitalist Fusion

Adapted from Overturning Tables by Scott A. Bessenecker. Copyright (c) 2014 by Scott A. Bessenecker. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL. www.ivpress.com

While still in her mid-twenties, Queen Elizabeth had inherited a nearly bankrupt country and a seriously inferior military. She turned to a group of swashbuckling men of valor for help—men referred to as Elizabeth’s Merchant Adventurers. It was through Protestants like Queen Elizabeth and her merchant captains that the first corporation came into being in the form of the trading company.

One such merchant captain was Sir John Hawkins. Like Elizabeth, Hawkins was a devout Protestant who liked to use a pious benediction with his men: “Serve God daily, love one another, preserve your victuals, beware of fire, and keep good company.” Commissioned by the Queen and financed by a list of London’s rich and famous, Hawkins and his fleet of ships arrived off the coast of West Africa to gather their merchandise. Human chattel.

In their quest for profit, four hundred slaves were packed aboard the 700-ton flagship, ironically named Jesus of Lubeck. As a devout believer, Hawkins did not associate slave trading with immorality. In addition to his ship the Jesus, he had two other slave ships named the Angel and the Grace of God.

The Protestant Reformation coincided with the birth of the great ocean-going vessels like Jesus of Lubeck, which could carry hundreds of tons of goods. These massive sailing ships greatly accelerated intercontinental exchange—whether the exchange of cannon fire, merchandise or religious ideas. These ships exponentially increased the risk and the profit made through international trade. And it was in the cargo holds of these ships financed and captained by early Protestants that international capitalism along with her sister, commercial colonization, took off.

Catholic nations engaged in international colonization and trade, but these were either state-run or papal-sponsored ventures, not private ones. The idea of gathering investors and forming a corporation to make a profit from overseas trade appears to have been a concept which took root much more vigorously on Protestant soil. So it is not surprising to discover that from very early on Protestant missions were fused with corporate for-profit ventures like the slaving missions of Sir John Hawkins.

Weber and Luther

German sociologist, philosopher and political economist Max Weber was among the first to point out the capitalist–Protestant fusion in his monumental book of 1904–1905, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.

For Weber, the spirit of capitalism was not so much the pursuit of greed as it was the pursuit of profit. And Weber’s understanding of Protestantism, or more accurately, Calvinism, is that profit gained by thrift and industry proves ones goodness or even godliness. By not letting wealth sit idle, the accumulation of it is a sign of “the elect.”

Capitalism doesn’t work so well in societies where people are satisfied with daily bread and choose time with family and friends over working longer to earn a greater profit. Capitalist societies require a desire for profit at the expense of other things. Working hard and investing idle wealth are moralized in Protestantism, and this Protestant work ethic provided the engine for capitalism to spread according to Weber.

The capitalist corporation utilizes a hierarchical power structure – investors, boards of directors, executives, employees and customers. To a large degree, it is the investors and board of directors who make key decisions carried out by the employees to tap into customers, all guided by the quest for profit.

This same structure exists in our larger churches and non-profits with donor/investors and boards of directors who make key decisions for employees to carry out for ministry expansion. Often, large donors and boards of directors are those successful in the corporate business world. But we’ll look later at how the worldview and structure of corporate capitalism is not well suited to the “meek-shall-inherit” shaped Kingdom of God

Martin Luther (1483 – 1546) witnessed the early stages of capitalism and warned of its dangerous undercurrents. He cautioned Christians against allowing this worldview to run amuck in society. Trafficking in money, particularly in charging interest and profiteering, was considered by Luther spiritually and societally hazardous.

I have been urged and begged to touch upon these financial misdoings and to expose some of them, so that even though the majority may not want to do right, some, if only a few, may yet be delivered from the gaping jaws of avarice. For it must be that among the merchants … there are some who belong to Christ and would rather be poor with God than rich with the devil, as it says Psalm 37:16.

Martin Luther “On Trading and Usury”

The Reformer went on to denounce how one person’s need will inspire a merchant to raise prices far beyond what it cost to produce an item. Where is the motivation to meet a need out of love or Christian charity while still covering the cost of our labor and expenses?

The merchants have among themselves one common rule … They say: I may sell my goods as dear as I can. This they think their right. Lo, that is giving place to avarice and opening every door and window to hell. What does it mean? Only this: “I care nothing about my neighbor; so long as I have my profit and satisfy my greed, what affair is it of mine if it does my neighbor ten injuries at once?” There you see how shamelessly this maxim flies squarely in the face not only of Christian love, but of natural law.

Ibid

Luther could not imagine a day when Christian ministry executives would make ten times more than those who work under them, or that companies run by devout followers of our peasant Savior would seek to depress wages and inflate prices so as to gain massive profits. Nor could he imagine that the organizational structure of the profit-driven capitalist corporation would become the predominating structural paradigm for ministries run by those who came out of the Protestant Reformation.

In the next entry, we’ll see how the Protestant missionary enterprise and the early non-profits became colonized by the capitalist corporation.