Why do most religious conservatives support capitalist ideology?

Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨jungekatz@lemm.ee⁩ to ⁨[deleted]⁩

I wonder why religious conservatives are mostly synonymous with capitalism supporters ? I mean arent most religions inherently socialistic ? What makes conservatives support capitalism , despite not being among the rich?

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BumpingFuglies@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Fox News. Televangelists. Trump.

Religion can be a very positive tool to bring communities together and support one another, but capitalism means exploitation, and nothing’s easier to exploit than blind faith.

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- jungekatz@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  I wonder why would a person keep a rich persons interest over their own ? Free or affordable healthcare and college would be such a great help , and while the planet can support food and housing for all , many are deliberately kept hungry and homeless and that is rooted in corporate greed most of the times . Gulliblity at another level!
  
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  - 007v2@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    The guise that they will someday be the one with the boot, they don’t wanna miss their chance be be the very boot they lick. Propaganda is a powerful tool.
    
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  - dmonzel@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    
    I wonder why would a person keep a rich persons interest over their own ?
    
    There’s no such thing as a poor Republican voter, just a temporarily embarrassed millionaire.
    
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  - gramathy@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    They get told the current hierarchy is gods will and they’re not allowed to subvert that
    
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- dandroid@dandroid.app ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  I agree with the other two. But I think it’s disingenuous to say Trump, because this behavior has existed since long before Trump was relevant in politics.
  
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  - BumpingFuglies@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    True. He’s more a symptom than a cause. He certainly isn’t helping.
    
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  - key@lemmy.keychat.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    It also existed since long before Fox News and even Televangelists
    
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- jballs@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  While I 100% agree with you, I think you listed the symptoms rather than the root cause. Religious people have been supporting the Republican party well… religiously since as long as I can remember, well before Trump and Fox News.
  
  I think it’s something that the Republican party has specifically built their messaging around and then those things have grown out of it as a result. Someone posted a good article the other day about how politicians supporting segregation were able to manufacture a wedge issue (abortion) in the 70s to capture the religious vote, who didn’t see it as a religious issue until they were basically told it was.
  
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- krayj@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Religion has been sucking the tit of conservative politics for a LOT longer than Fox News, Televangelist, and Trump have been around.
  
  It goes for deeper and is way more fundamental than those things.
  
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  - BumpingFuglies@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    I agree completely, but on the surface, those are the three biggest modern contributors.
    
    A lot of people’s “sincerely held” beliefs are only skin-deep, so surface-level agitators and misinformation peddlers do have a lot of power in our society. If they ceased to exist, I suspect a lot of the hatred and vitriol their followers spew would cease, as well - assuming an equally-evil replacement didn’t immediately rise.
    
    A lot of people are stuck in their echo chambers, and just getting a breath of fresh air could do them wonders.
    
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- FartsWithAnAccent@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Trump is a symptom, not a cause.
  
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  - BumpingFuglies@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    He’s a bit of both, I’d say.
    
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pqdinfo@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I suspect you can find ways to read into the Bible whatever you want to read. As a basic example, modern Catholics are convinced the Bible outlaws abortion, and there’s a ton of road side billboards next to Catholic churches that supposedly quote anti-abortion statements. But the Catholic church didn’t adopt this position until the late 19th Century. It literally took nearly two millennia for anyone in the primary Christian religion to notice their book had these (supposedly) anti-abortion messages. What’s more likely, they missed them, they ignored them because it was inconvenient, or none of these quotes are as clear cut as the billboards would imply?

Then you have the allegiance to the King James edition of the bible, which most Christian churches do, and that generally feeds into a more direct answer to what you’re asking.

Why King James? What makes him more of an authority on what the Bible means than Jesus, his disciples, and the other contemporaries and near contemporaries who put the Bible together? Well, he’s a King of course.

…crickets…

And God loves powerful people?

…crickets…

Uh, OK, well, what about if God didn’t want him to be King, he wouldn’t be a King, therefore, ergo, God thought King James was a pretty cool dude and should be able to do whatever he wanted? Including edit the Bible and put some stuff in there that wasn’t in there originally?

Ding ding ding!

NOW is it starting to make sense? Because if God didn’t want Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos or Rupert Murdoch or Peter Theil or Sheldon Adelson or (long list of other rich jerks) to be rich and powerful, they wouldn’t be rich and powerful, right?

Now, never mind the contradictions here, I mean, I’m pretty sure the Bible does, in fact, have some choice words to say about rich people, and they’re not positive, and it’s pretty anti-Roman Empire in parts, especially the bit about crucifixions, but that all requires reading the Bible, and not trying to find double meanings to justify the status quo.

Add to that the fact the rich and powerful control the narrative and always will, and you’re left with Prosperity theology and all its ramifications becoming more and more a consensus in countries that allow people to become that rich and powerful.

What the Bible says… well, “it’s not meant to be taken literally, it refers to any manufacturers of dairy products” The eye of a needle might be too small for a camel, but the loophole of not being meant to be taken literally certainly can be.

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- exegete@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  The comment that it took two thousand years for the church to land on its current stance on abortion is not entirely accurate. The Didache, an early Christian writing including a section on Christian ethics, explicitly forbids it.
  
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  - pqdinfo@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    I’m aware various groups and individuals appeared at various times during the last two millennia that opposed abortion on Biblical grounds. But I was specifically referring to the Catholic church. The quote you’re responding to was “(…) the Catholic church didn’t adopt this position until the late 19th Century. It literally took nearly two millennia for anyone in the primary Christian religion to notice their book had these (supposedly) anti-abortion messages.”
    
    Now, true, “anyone in the (Catholic church)” is probably hyperbole, but certainly “anyone in position to make decisions in the (Catholic church)” is accurate. They didn’t adopt their current stance until the late nineteenth century.
    
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- Jay212127@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Your KJV is a really weird tangent. The KJV is the cornerstone in the Anglo-world because it was one of the only English translations. The Catholic Church continued to primarily use Latin Bibles (The Vulgate) until Vatican 2 when the Novus Ordo used local vernacular.
  
  Wanting a Bible in the language you speak and your subjects speak isn’t putting yourself over God. Please let us know what critical changes were made in the KJV that supports capitalism, a mode of economics that wouldn’t be theorized for atleast another century.
  
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  - ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    The first widely published English Bible was the Tyndale bible, which is what the KJV is mostly based on.
    
    en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyndale_Bible
    
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  - pqdinfo@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    I didn’t say it (directly) supported capitalism, I said the fact modern Christians accept it despite significant changes to biblical canon was a demonstration that modern Christians believe that power is given by God.
    
    Also Capitalism isn’t that new. The term is, but it’s always been used to describe pre-existing market based economies and concentrations of wealth, and pretty much every significant civilization has had that.
    
    Your thing about English translations: Nobody’s criticizing translations into English. But the King James edition included, for example, the “sodomite” language which didn’t appear to come from any legitimate translation of the bibles. So it did significantly change the meaning of the Bible in places, in fairly negative ways.
    
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themeatbridge@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Because “conservative” isn’t an ideology, it’s a mindset. It’s based on the idea that the in-group is good, not because of what they believe but because of who they are. So because they are good, whatever they want is good. It does not matter if their wants are contradictory or hypocritical or irrational in any way. They define the parameters for what is worth preserving, and then anyone who wants to stop them is part of the out-group and therefore bad. The out-group is not bad because they hold bad positions. The out-group could change their positions, and they would still be bad becauae it is part of their identity.

Conservatives also do not require any justification for their wants, but having a religious justification is like catnip. Because of the conservative mindset, they have no problem picking and choosing the religious beliefs that support what they want while ignoring or attacking the ones that don’t.

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- croix@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  This is honestly an extremely weak take. Not going to start a debate with you, I’m not a conservative, but oversimplification and vilification does more harm than good.
  
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  - ProvableGecko@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Eh, is it vilification when they are actual villains?
    
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  - TwoGems@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Are you kidding me? Do you see the current conservatives in the United States right now?
    
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the_dopamine_fiend@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
The just-world hypothesis plays a big part.

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- jungekatz@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Basically karma ? So do they believe that their actions will reap them benefits ? While they want to discrimiate people on basis of race and sexuality ?
  
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  - the_dopamine_fiend@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    There’s an authoritarian theme to it all. They believe their god to be all-powerful and all-just. Therefore, that god must reward good actions and punish bad ones. The reward that our global society seems to run the most on is money. Therefore, any actions that gain you a lot of money must be good actions, thereby justifying the means of capitalism.
    
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SpunkyBarnes@geddit.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
In a term? Dominion mentality. Add a little master/servant hierarchy, a pinch of patriarchy and stir well.

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- RecursiveParadox@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  …with a heavy does of the Property Gospel to keep the plebs in line.
  
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Stinkywinks@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Because they only use the Bible to pretend to be more holy than everyone else. It’s just a moral license, they don’t actually believe in the teachings of Jesus. They want to be in a holy club where everyone on the outside is inferior.

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Adderbox76@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Because they’re generally religious in name only. To them, religion is a tool to be used to get ahead. Networking through your church, appealing to other religious people in order to get votes, etc… etc…

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cloudless@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
They don’t really support capitalism. They are simply submissive to authorities and support whatever their leaders say.

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- Gelcube69@reddthat.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Have you considered that they happened to just be born into the best country in the world, the one true religion, and it’s everyone else’s job to step in line?
  
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- jungekatz@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  They have socialistic choices too , if we dont talk about the US , there are actual socialistic parties , and still the religious conservatives support partys those are capitalistic.
  
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  - cloudless@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Let’s use Hong Kong as an example.
    
    Conservatives in Hong Kong are pro-Beijing. Most Buddhist and Taoist organisations in Hong Kong are pro-Beijing as well. Catholic communities in Hong Kong seem to be very divided politically.
    
    That’s what I observed in Hong Kong. Most of the conservatives don’t seem to care about capitalism vs socialism, they just blindly follow their leaders.
    
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SharkEatingBreakfast@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Success = hard work.

Hard work = not lazy.

Not lazy = good.

Rich / successful people = good people (unless they’re involved in godless entertainment, of course)

Not successful = not working hard enough.

Not working hard enough = lazy.

Lazy = bad.

Poor / unsuccessful people = bad people

They do not think hard enough to see nuance. They just don’t.

An old friend of mine once ranted to me about how poor women will keep popping out babies to get free government money & food. Like… bitch, do you know how actually difficult it is to get “”“free money”“” from the government? Are you seriously mad that children are being fed? Do you think that poor people fund their “lavish lifestyles” off government funds? BITCH, POOR PEOPLE DON’T DO THAT!!! RICH PEOPLE DO!!!

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loaExMachina@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I think what leads one to hold onto their religion and to support the social status quo are the same things: Attachement to what is familiar and reassuring and rejection of what is new and scary. Conservatives often try to appropriate religion to appear as the side of comfy, reassuring tradition, and represent progressives as the side of scary disrupters.

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Gsus4@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Because it’s remarkably similar in form:

“each one takes care of himself and god takes care of all”

Vs

“Everybody pursues their own gain and the market takes care of everything”

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- jungekatz@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Market takes care of is a liberatarian myth !
  
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  - Gsus4@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    I know, but when you said religious conservative, I immediately assumed American and economically conservative, but there are plenty of Christian social democrats in Europe.
    
    I think I may have misunderstood your question: which ideology did you expect religious conservatives to support? And, where? Maybe they could be socialists, because the new testament encourages generosity. Or maybe they could be really conservative and rabidly monarchist, imperialist. Maybe it does not matter and they just “support” what there is in their country at the time, because religion is separate from the state.
    
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GiddyGap@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Important to add that it’s really just in the US that this tie exists between religious conservatives (especially evangelicals) and capitalism. In many other parts of the world, religious people are more on the leftwing, especially to take care of the weakest among us.

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- Microw@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Yeah. In my country, the religious conservatives and the turbo capitalists still sit in the same party, so they generally work with each other, but they clearly are different factions. The capitalists mostly arent religious at all, and the religious conservatives care way more about the state of the agrarian sector and the social system than about capitalism.
  
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- mojo@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
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misk@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Religion is not the goal of conservatives, it’s a tool to preserve hierarchy in the society. Capitalism is another tool that achieves that.

The people that aren’t wealthy but are conservative benefit from hierarchy enforced by religion. It ensures that they’re not on the bottom of society - that place is intended for undesirables comprised of various minorities.

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- robotrash@lemmy.robotra.sh ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  But it seems like in general white conservatives are at the extreme bottom in most scenarios… they’re just also blinded by the “it’s just not my turn to be rich yet” fallacy.
  
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  - xuxebiko@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    “If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.”
    ― Lyndon B. Johnson
    
    Both religion and capitalism ensure that white conservatives always have someone to look down on and they in return lends them their loud voice & violence.
    
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  - misk@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    If you’re at the extreme bottom there’s little chance to move upwards in capitalism but it’s comforting to have some undesirables who have it even worse than you.
    
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DonnieDarkmode@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
An important thing to keep in mind is that the practice of religion changes over time alongside culture, and is itself a part of culture. The Christianity of people living in places like Judea and Anatolia in the 1st century CE differs from the Christianity of, say, the Teutonic (not up on my post-Roman ethnicities, so might not be using the right term) tribes of Western Europe in the 6th century. This again differs from the Christianity of indigenous peoples in the Americas post-Columbus. In all these cases, these people had pre-existing cultural and religious beliefs which Christianity syncretised with instead of wholly replacing.

The Bible has been used to endorse slavery as well as oppose it, to condone violence and warfare as well as serve as the basis for radical non-violence. It is not “univocal”, because the various people who wrote and compiled it had their own beliefs and perspectives.

The various sects of Christianity differ in their values, beliefs, and even canon literature, and that’s before you get into Christianity as cultural practice rather than strict religion. Like all religions, Christianity is wonderfully human, encompassing our wide range of idiosyncrasies and contradictions, and that even includes people who don’t read the damn book! So yes, you’re going to find commonly accepted “Christian” practices which seem to clearly contradict the doctrine, but the doctrine contradicts itself, and serves people just as much as people should ostensibly serve it. The conception of Christianity as a unified religion, with 1 canon and 1 accepted interpretation, has never been accurate.

FWIW Early Christians did practice communal living and sharing of property (the New Testament tells us as much), and you can still see these things in practice today, albeit rarely. I also wouldn’t use modern terms like socialism to describe that sort of thing, because the economic order and class structures which Socialism and Communism are a response to literally did not exist at the time.

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cerevant@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
The Protestant Work Ethic equated Christian values with material success.

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- relative_iterator@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  This should be higher up
  
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mojo@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Conservatism is based on ignorance. They don’t even know what capitalism means.

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- SCB@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Most people do not seem to know what capitalism means
  
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motorheadkusanagi@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
They do it because of capitalism’s decentralized properties.

First, they fear a government having power over them. This can seem irrational, but they interpreted WW2 as 1.) proof that a government can be used to wipe out people it disagrees with, and 2.) that absolute sovereignty in the hands of man made institutions is a thread to god as the supreme sovereign.

The decentralization of capitalism, and democracy, gives them the ability to disconnect as much as possible from anything they dont agree with. This is why they talk about freedom while doing hateful things in the name of their lord. Theyre economically free (to be hateful).

A lot of this mentality really starts after WW2. First the war is won. Then they push to make America as christian as possible. About 50% of US citizens claimed to be christian in 1950, but it is 90% by the 1970’s. In God We Trust is put on US money and added to the national anthem in the 50’s. This is important because the US is starting to fight the cold war against atheistic communists. The power of capitalism becomes part of a global propaganda effort to demonstrate the weakness of the godless systems. The republicans align themselves with christianity, locking it in with Reagan’s election in 1980, and now capitalism and christianity are intertwined and propagandized to the point of not resembling the original ideas anymore. Give that 44 years, and here we are.

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Smokeydope@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Hypocritical self interest I think. Many people who claim to be Christians don’t understand or care about the teachings of Christ. Religion is used by these people more as a social boon than a means of philosophical/spiritual teachings. Look up ‘supply side jesus’

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- jungekatz@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Just read a news that evangelicals called christs teachings as weak !
  
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  - xuxebiko@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    If Jesus returned, they'd lynch him.
    
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Copernican@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Max Weber’s “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism” goes into how protestantism cradled capitalist growth. But I think it’s a bit heavy handed to say folks support capitalist ideology. You don’t really support ideology. The ideology is what supports capitalism or is capitalism itself. But Protestantism is generally has individualistic beliefs. No longer does the clergy intermediate relation to God. Protestants believe individuals have a personal and individual relation to god. This sense of individualism can overlap with capitalist mentalities of individual success and profi.

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Laticauda@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Because capitalism helps enforce a hierarchy, and conservative L’s love hierarchies. Religion is just another tool used for this since it generally preaches obedience with a consequence for not following the right “rules”. Most religion has nuance to that aspect, but if you erase the nuance it’s an effective tool for enforcing those hierarchies those people love so much.

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WtfEvenIsExistence@reddthat.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Because communism bad mkay? These god-hating commies trying to take away our religious freedumz. Don’t you know there’s only 2 ecomonic systems in the world? It’s Capitalism vs Communism and communism bad because authoritarianism. There’s totally no possible mixed economy compromises like that those idiots tried in Norway where a democracy still exists.

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frankPodmore@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Because conservatism is more important to them than religion, essentially.

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- jungekatz@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Does not explain why do they support capitalistic policies , and this is not just in the US but other countries too!
  
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  - swallowyourmind@geddit.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    It does.
    
    (You can say the same about existing socialist democratic policies, too.)
    
    It’s just indoctrination.
    
    People believe what they are taught, and relatively few questions anything seriously.
    
    The majority of people continue to believe the religion they were raised in.
    
    The majority of people believe in the economic system they were raised in.
    
    The majority of the world’s countries use mixes of capitalist & socialist policies (ie free-market economies with social safety net programs).
    
    So most people support capitalist free-market systems, and would say they are pro-capitalism.
    
    They also don’t want you to cut their retirement government program levels.
    
    And though most won’t claim to support socialism, they love firefighters or libraries or roads, and they can’t tell there’s no difference. Because they aren’t taught to question.
    
    And most don’t want to replace their existing systems with completely different systems. They just want them to provide better tesults and be less costly.
    
    Religion is most effective at converting those more inclined to believe propaganda & appeals to authority.
    
    So these dichotomies are even worse & more prevalent for the religious.
    
    Those people breed children of mostly similar sentiment. If raised capitalist, those religious children won’t question the obvious conflict. Their authorities tell them it’s ok.
    
    Their authorities may even modify the religion to fit the mold (ie Prosperity Gospel).
    
    The religious authorities who suggest questioning existing systems receive pushback from followers and the system itself when they encourage critical thinking regarding the conflicts of capitalism and religion.
    
    Examples include Martin Luther King Jr & the current Pope, both of whom were not well received with their criticisms of capitalism.
    
    So again, it is just indoctrination with a sprinkling of ignorance.
    
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joel_feila@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
This is not a an easy answer. Part of it is Prosperity gospel. Basically what if god showed you who was righteous by making the righteous rich. Why are you not rich, because you are not righteous. It started in the early part of the 1900s and quickly moved to tevevalgelism, even back during the days of radio.

Combine that with a string believe in the great man theory of his troy. Something right wing people are more likely to strongly believe in. Add to that a need for a social hierarchy that clears say “These are the better and by divine right they should rules and these are the lesser to be ruled over” you have a powerful mix. God is at the most top point of a hierarchy and below must be the best people, the real great men who will shape history. How so I tell who these great men are? The rich, if they are righteous then god will reward them with riches.

Then add a very distinct American version of Christianity. If it the christian thing to do then America will do and if Amercia does then it must the christian thing to do. America is capitalist therefore it is christian to be a capitalist.

These circles of logic all feed into the one conclusion of hyper christian national capitalism.

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PerCarita@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
This is about the Americas, yes? I believe its original roots was in Calvinism, that is, the brand of Christianity in the reformation era that was brought over to the Americas by early European settlers/colonisers as proposed by the theologian John Calvin. It’s something about how God chose its people and gave them the grace of worldly wealth. Wealth is good because it comes from God, so it follows, that poverty is due to a lack of God’s grace = immorality (laziness, lack of personal qualities, wickedness).

I think I read about this in a book about US American economy a couple of years ago, but I can’t remember which book it was.

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- ZombieTheZombieCat@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  …wikipedia.org/…/The_Protestant_Ethic_and_the_Spi…
  
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quadropiss@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Plain brainwashing. They’re used to being coerced into believing stuff by fear mongering

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kromem@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Because religious conservatism has pretty much always been focused on supporting systems of authority, and in the US the system of authority is capitalism.

People would probably be really surprised to see what ‘heretical’ sects of Christianity were talking about in the first few centuries compared to the version that was green lit by the Roman empire on the notion that political power was divinely intended.

Straight up comments attributed to Jesus decrying dynastic rule (seemingly referred to by Paul in 1 Cor 4), a parable about assassinating a powerful person, discouraging giving any money or rewards to prophets or priests, rejection of prayer and fasting and alms as either useful or necessary, and even discussions around Greek atomism and Lucretius’s version of survival of the fittest.

And that’s all in only one work/tradition.

But it’s one that was buried in a jar for millennia after canonical Christianity was endorsed by the emperor, which followed with deciding what texts to allow and what to ban on eventual penalty of death.

The thing most people in the US believe today is the version that passed the filter of the Roman empire’s oversight and involvement, from killing the initial leader to endorsing the eventual version that’s probably at odds with the original teachings in places.

It shouldn’t be a surprise that it goes hand in hand with boot licking and anti-critical thinking.

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benwubbleyou@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I’d recommend checking out “Jesus and John Wayne” it’s a book that digs into a lot of these ideas.

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johnlawrenceaspden@thelemmy.club ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I can’t answer for America, but generally in democracies you get two parties.

Before Socialism was a thing, England had ‘Liberals/Whigs’ (what you’d call libertarians) and ‘Conservatives/Tories’ (king and country and church).

And of course, like all political groups do, they hated each other.

The Church of England was once known as the Tory Party at Prayer.

With the rise of socialism, the ‘conservatives’ and ‘liberals’ were squeezed, and combined to oppose socialist thought, which hated them both and wanted to destroy everything they thought was worthwhile in the world.

So there’s an uneasy alliance in England between classical liberals and religious loonies, who’d naturally detest each other. That’s the modern Conservative party, who want to use radical social transformation to go back to the glorious past.

Socialism has rather collapsed as an idea, leaving Labour as the party of ‘every problem can be solved by stealing more money and spending it on subsidies’. A position which is popular with those who benefit from subsidy, and unpopular with those who get their stuff stolen.

Obviously this is a shit system, but it’s better than regular civil war, which is the only system that can rival democracy for stability.

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- ThrowawayPermanente@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  *Democracies using first-past-the-post without proportional representation
  
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- dublet@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  
  I can’t answer for America, but generally in democracies you get two and only two parties.
  
  Your answer is both incredible specific to the UK and subtly incorrect. I don’t quite have the time to write a full rebuttal, but the more egregious of errors is this one:
  
  The Liberals were the radicals, the party of industry and progress and free markets and who cares who it hurts as long as it’s the future.
  
  One of the core tenets of liberalism is the harm principle. Sure progress is important but so is not harming anyone. Your post seems to equate only socialism with bringing good to British society, when that quite simply is just not true, and refutable. The Labour Party in the UK quite successfully adopted a lot of the items on the liberal agenda, such as gender equality.
  
  The FPTP system is quite poisonous to the political debate in the UK as the natural tendency that only one of two parties can dominate and thus removes all nuance and creates toxic tribalism.
  
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  - johnlawrenceaspden@thelemmy.club ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Thank you for the correction! Where can I find the list of philosophical axioms espoused by the Whigs?
    
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- itsAsin@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  that was the most readable version of modern politics i have ever come across.
  
  i learned a lot. thank you so much!
  
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  - johnlawrenceaspden@thelemmy.club ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    So kind! Thank you.
    
    Forgive me, I am editing it in-place as more thoughts occur to me, so do make sure you still agree with it when I stop doing that, and edit your comment appropriately.
    
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DeepThought42@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Besides some of the other good points brought up here, I’d like to say that it’s because communist countries typically were/are anti-religion, so it makes sense that religious leaders in capitalist countries would oppose any form of government that seeks to limit organized religion. So, they support capitalism because it’s the opposite of communism.

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flipht@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Because most religious conservatives don't think beyond "what is acceptable to my group" and do that. Or appear to do that. And not rocking the boat is highly valued in those communities, so people who want to abuse others financially find ripe ground for it.

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