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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atempuser23@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
So I don’t agree with it , but it may have something to do with ‘work’ there is part of Christianity that assigns value to work and that work will be rewarded by god. They are supposed to be works of faith, but some sects of Christianity assigns value to all work.

So they see riches as a just reward from god for being hardworking and honest. They inherently see riches as a reward for good work and poverty as a punishment for lack of ethic. As well anyone can better their position and get rich by becoming more aligned with god. So bring rich is an outward manifestation of one’s reward from God.

This is a simplification and extrapolates out a bunch of things.

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bigschnitz@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I would say that most “MAGA” or whatever equivalent regressive movement exists anywhere is not at all conservative (MAGA supporters attempted a coupe, which is radical, the opposite of conservative), that’s just branding. In much the same way as the people’s democratic republic of Korea is not democratic, “liberals” in the USA political landscape are usually leftists (typically with a lot of illiberal positions) etc.

It isn’t that these people support capitalism (they are often ignorant of what capitalism even entails, the same way they think communism means anything they disagree with) it’s that they vaguely support existing power and class structures, though again, from what I’ve seen they can rarely coherently describe what they support and what they oppose, outside of a few tailor designed talking points like abortion or transgenderism.

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cogman@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Behind the bastards did a 2 part podcast on this

[Behind the Bastards] Part One: How The Rich Ate Christianity 🅴 #behindTheBastards podcastaddict.com/…/137287957 via @PodcastAddict

chtbl.com/track/5899E/podtrac.com/…/audio.mp3?utm…

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blazera@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
They dont want to be inconvenienced by their religion.

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BilboBargains@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Could they be more credulous and hence more susceptible to the lies corporations tell us?

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bouh@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
A few reasons: first, they are a central part of the power hierarchy since the middle age ; second communists and revolutionaries are anti-clerics, like they murdered religious people as much as nobles or capitalists.

So either they’re bourgeoisie/artistocracy/nobility, or they’re traumatised by the fanatical atheism.

Still, in many countries there weren’t so many problems, so they made the Christian-Democrats. They are usually center-left or center-right parties, supporting economic help to the poors but very conservative for cultural freedom.

Some believers, even high in the Catholic hierarchy, are also very much leftists. They are more common in Africa or south America as far as I can tell.

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nednobbins@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I’d start by narrowing the scope of this question to conservative Christians in the US and Europe. India has a larger population that the US and the EU combined, is quite religiously conservative and leans socialist. Even though the Catholic Church issued a “Decree Against Communism” in 1949, that has since been amended and many Catholics around the world embrace socialism. While modern Muslims do participate in market economies, Islam has some fairly strict laws against capitalism; Sukuk is the complex workaround they use in order to get against their prohibition against charging interest.

For Christians in the US and Europe I think there are a few major components.

Christianity has had strong capitalist elements for a long time. In particular, John Calvin argued, among other things, that God rewards good Christians in this life as well as the next. These rewards can take the form of material wealth and therefore material wealth is evidence of God’s favor. This philosophy was obviously extremely popular among the wealthy.

After WWII the US government wanted a way to convince people that our erstwhile allies, the USSR and China should now be considered enemies. One obvious element to emphasize was that they were both Communists. An element of Communism was godlessness, “Religion is the opiate of the masses.” So the US took the contrary stance and presented itself as a Christian nation. Two of the more obvious results were that “under God” was added to the pledge of allegiance and Congress replaced the unofficial “E Pluribus unum” (out of many, one) with, “In God we trust.” Since it was primarily intended to be anti-communist it was, effectively, pro-capitalist.

In the US there was also a deliberate shift when George HW Bush realized that evangelical Christians made up a large part of the Republican base. At the time churches had a fairly strong aversion to politics. They generally considered politics and economics to be part of the profane world and thought it was beneath them. He managed to convince them that the profane wasn’t just irrelevant to spiritual health, it was an active threat. By this view, good Christians couldn’t ignore politics they had to take an active role to help fight Satan. Since the Republicans were the ones actively recruiting Evangelicals into politics they made sure the message stayed supportive of their policies (including economic policies).

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Blamemeta@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Actual conservative here.

Not all progress is good. Its best made in measured doses.

Life is good. Sure there are problems, but they can be solved without completely changing the system. Better laws and regulations, going after those abusing the system, that sort if thing.

Also the only alternative presented is communism. And historcally, whats been advertised as communism has lead to a 100 million deaths, the oppression of everyone else involved, and generally bad shit. (No, Im not arguing about what is true communism)

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- ren@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  WWJD?
  
  Jesus was a socialist.
  
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  - Blamemeta@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Socialism is charity at gun point, otherwise known as theft. Jesus was about voluntairly giving, because he understands consent.
    
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- counselwolf@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  What do you mean by “the only alternative presented is communism”?
  
  Can you give examples of that, I’m interested to hear your thoughts.
  
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  - Blamemeta@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    What other alternatives are given? Monarchy?
    
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kibiz0r@midwest.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Basically… because of slavery.

If you take a look at an indigenous population and decide that both:

They are lazy, because their labor only produces subsistence and isn’t captured as surplus value stored in currency

Their laziness is a moral failing which will doom them to eternal suffering

…then you have now put yourself in a mental model where you have a moral duty to force that person to work for (your) profit instead of subsistence, in order to save their soul.

If you have a whole country that thinks this way, they will try to enslave the whole world and feel good about doing so.

So in a Darwinian way, that mentality is the most “fit”. It’s very uhhh “successful”. And so it propagates.
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vlad76@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
This isn’t how it is. But it’s how they see it. Again, this is from their point of view. Or at least, it’s what I heard from them.

Capitalism is about self reliance, “pulling yourself up by bootstraps”, getting out there and making your own way with no higher power (as in humans) standing in your way. They see socialism as a government forcing people to give up their own hard earned gains to give to others. The difference with Christianity is because God is telling them to do it. If God tells you to go feed the poor, then it’s OK. If you choose to do it yourself, then it’s also fine. If the government wants to do it without promoting their religion, then it’s bad. Because you’re not doing it for God.

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OldWoodFrame@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
What is the percentage of the Western world that believes in profit motive and private ownership of property, 90%? I don’t think it’s BECAUSE they are religious conservatives.

I don’t think religions are inherently socialistic. There’s a socialist reading of the text, but in terms of like the historical role of the Catholic church it was more like a government than a commune. Governments aren’t inherently socialistic (unless you’re using a pretty broad view of the word). They help the poor and set rules to follow but they’re only directly managing their portion (10%-30%) of the economy, the rest can be anything.

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EatMyDick3@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Socialism isn’t sustainable, it’s a fairy tale. The only way things work is if we have money, Money also offers freedom to do what we want and take hold of our destiny, as opposed to having to give it all to some lazy ass who doesn’t want to work, socialists don’t want to work, they want to sit on their asses all day and have other people pay for their daily needs, stupid pigs.

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xc2215x@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Religious when it is about gay and trans people mostly.

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- Pandoras_Can_Opener@mander.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  And evolution. And maybe climate change.
  
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Thorny_Thicket@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
When people say they don’t support capitalism then what is the system you see as a more viable alternative?

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- legion@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Plenty of people who are critical of capitalism aren’t necessarily advocating for an entirely different system. Rather, they’re advocating for dealing with the problems of capitalism head-on, rather than pretending that they don’t exist and allowing them to become worse.
  
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- bigschnitz@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Socialism is defined by the elimination of the purely capitalist class, wherin workers own the means of production.
  
  That doesn’t necessarily mean that capital isn’t assigned for investment based upon market demand or that “EvEryoNe gEts pAId tHE SAmE” like others claim. Socialism in a modern economy can (and likely would be) market based, it just means that shareholders would be entirely made up of employees of a company (obviously this would lead to better conditions for workers, lower wages for executives and no dividend payments to people who aren’t working). Taking a more academic definition of capitalism, it’s entirely possible to be both socialist and capitalist. Few people are arguing against capitalism in entirety.
  
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- ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Socialism. Check out how the Anarchists structured their society in Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War. George Orwell faught alongside them and wrote a book about it called Ode To Catalonia, where he describes how utopian it was while it existed. It also deeply soured him on communism, because he saw how the communists betrayed the anarchists during the war and how authoritarian they were compared to the left libertarian anarchists.
  
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AttackBunny@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
@jungekatz all the other answers are far more nuanced, and explain a lot more detail the the most simple answers to your question are 1. Propaganda and 2. Herd mentality/echo chamber thinking.

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Nemo@midwest.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Two reasons:

In the 70’s and 80’s in the US, the economic right wing formed an alliance of convenience with religious social conservatives (notably not Roman Catholics, Episcopalians, and other non-Protestant sects) to seek polit8cal power.

Second, Christianity holds that humans tend to be sinful and selfish, and thus utopian schemes that rely on participants to be unselfish and egalitarian are doomed at scale, becoming instead forces of oppression.

Throw in Communism’s historical opposition to religion as icing on the cake.

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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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