Hildegarde

One of the problems I have discussing religion on the Net is that I seem to be out of place and out of time for the present discussion.  When I think of  “Christianity,” I think not just of the high intellectual end of Roman Catholicism, but of the high intellectual end of Roman Catholicism in the Middle Ages and Renaissance.  Christianity is Augustine for me, and Aquinas, and Teresa of Avila, and, for that matter, Hildegarde.

When people these days say “Christianity,” however–especially in America, but not only here–what they tend to mean is American folk Protestantism, that vast web of vaguely independent churches that call themselves “Christian” without any other designation, that may or may not be affiliated with any traditional denomination, and that help make up what is called here politically “the religious right.”

What’s more, these churches also tend to be associated with a particular set of stands on a particular set of social issues–against government recognition of gay marriages;  against the theory of evolution and legal abortion; and more or less in favor of “small government” but against “the separation of church and state.”

I’ve put scare quotes around all of that because the definitions of those things are in contention, sometimes even in the “religious right” itself. 

And the entire situation is made ever more complicated by the fact that most of the people who reject religion in the US seem to be solidly on the other side of those issues, making it seem as if the issues themselves are about “religion” even if they are not.

Right at the moment, though, I want to take up one thing, and that is something that has bothered me for years. 

The non-specific “Christian Churches” are almost all self-declared as conservative, and by that they almost always mean conservative on economics as well as on social issues. 

In the present-day US, conservative on economics means lower taxes, smaller government (in the sense of a government that does fewer things, not necessarily one that is cheaper), and fewer regulations.  That is, conservative in the US today is what liberal is in the rest of the West:  in favor of capitalism.

But here’s the thing: one of the other things these churches are known for is their adherence to the idea of Biblical literalism, meaning reading the Bible as if everything in it were literally true.

Let’s skip the part about how they don’t actually do that.  American folk Protestantism is perfectly happy to declare that the Bible is using a metaphor when it suits its purpose, such as not being too Catholic in its beliefs.  It therefore assumes that “Take, eat, for this is my body” is a metaphor, and that Christ didn’t mean the bread was being turned into his actual body.  It also assumes that the keys given to Peter didn’t actually mean that Peter and his successors could forgive sins in Christ’s name and make it stick.

And let’s also skip the part about how this is what I think of as the great fault line in Protestant Christianity.  A lot of Protestant denominations have claimed to admire Augustine, but in fact Augustine was not a literalist, and his idea of how the world actually came to be created sounds in some respects a lot like Darwin.  And sola scriptura can get you into a lot of trouble, because the scriptures were not the original expression of Christianity as a religion and are not now exhaustive of the traditions of that religion. 

But what I want to get to now is a lot simpler:  how did we get from the Acts of the Apostles to Christian conservative championship of capitalism?

I’m still reading Augustine, in case you can’t tell.  And at one point in Book VI, Augustine makes a point of the fact that the apostles lived, in the years immediately after the death of Christ, communally, and without personal property, “holding every thing in common.”

For Augustine, the point of bringing this up is to counter Roman pagan arguments about the power of the Roman gods to bring good fortune, riches, power, privelege to their worshippers. 

Augustine did not think that the Roman gods did not exist.  He just thought they were demons, fallen angels under control of Satan, who showed up in various societies and established themselves as “deities” in an attempt to keep men and women from knowing the True God.

This was necessary because God gave to every man and woman the ability to find the truth about God’s existence and His Law “by reason alone”–meaning without the grace of revelation.

That was why some people who called themselves Christians would go to Hell, even though they knew that Christ was their Savior, while some pagans would be rewarded after death even though they didn’t.  Belief was not enough for Augustine, nor was lack of it.  Which puts quite a spin on the sola fideii business.

My point here, however, is that one of the ways Augustine counters the Roman pagan arguments in favor of Roman pagan gods is exactly because those gods are supposed to provide their worshippers with the good things of this world.  The one true God would never do that, he says, because the one true God deals in the things of true and lasting value, such as eternal life.  The ephemerally good things of this world can actually be bad for us, because they can alienate our affections from God, lead to sin on a lot of different levels, and end with sending us to hell.

Maybe in a handbasket.

Never mind.

But Augustine proved the truth of these assertions by pointing out that the early Christians lived without personal property of any kind, and by the fact that holy men and women lived that way still.

My question is:  how did we get from there to modern day Christian right capitalism?

Or even to eighteenth century Puritanism?

When I’ve asked this question of people in the past, I’ve been told that the reason is that the doctrine of original sin means that Christians think of men and women as fallen and inevitably imperfect, so they look for a political and economic system that takes into account that fallenness.

Socialists expect men and women to be like angels, because they think men and women can learn to control themselves and live well by the use of their own reason without the help of God.  Christians know that men and women are not perfectable, and therefore do not try to erect social systems that require their perfection.

There’s a level on which this makes perfect sense, and Edmund Burke said it better than I can.  But the fact remains that the early Christians are reported, in Acts, as living in common without personal property, and life in holiness was considered to be life without property for centuries after the apostolic era.

How did we get from there to here? 

And what does it mean–assuming you’re relying on sola scriptura–to take no care for the things of this world?  Where and when did the “common sense” interpretation of these admonitions–take care of your responsibilities in this world, just don’t get overattached to them–come in?  

If we are really meant to take the scriptures literally, why not take these scriptures literally? 

St. Paul said that not everyone would have the grace to try to live perfectly, but it seems to me a long way from that to megachurches, Christian publishing and Christ-centered retirement villages, never mind ending the income tax.