Politics and Religion: President Trump at a National Prayer Breakfast

Politics and religion intermeshed can be a nasty business. Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham, witnessed every venue of his planned tour in Europe cancel because Franklin had “called Islam ‘evil,’ attacked laws increasing rights for transgender people, and told his followers that the legalization of same-sex marriage was orchestrated by Satan.”[1] Although criticizing another religion is religious in nature, turning to laws renders the attack political too. Although Franklin Graham may have assumed that many of his co-religionists would agree with him both in religious and political terms, wading into controversial political matters risks alienating people who are or would otherwise be religious followers. Even the willingness to traverse into the political realm may not be liked by some religionists, whether followers or not, especially if the incursion is into a controversy. Some co-religionists may agree with the distinctly religious belief, yet hold dissimilar political views. Such distance created between religionists can weaken a religious leader’s credibility and even following in the religious domain. Politicians dragging their respective religious faiths into the political domain can also be problematic, though authentic applications can pay off even if there is a cost politically. The incursion of Christianity at the end of U.S. President Trump’s trial in the Senate and as he took a victory lap can demonstrate the complexities of religion distended into another domain.

The full essay is at "Politics and Religion: President Trump."

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[1] Rob Picheta, “Evangelist Preacher Franklin Graham Planned a Seven-City UK Tour. All Seven Venues Have Dropped Him,” CNN.com, February 6, 2020(accessed same day).

American religion and politics: Overreaching Realms

Even though they are formally separated in the U.S. under the constitutional rubric that the federal government cannot lawfully establish a religion and infringe on the free exercise of religion, religion has ventured into politics and vice versa. Valued ideals pertain to both even though the highest in religion are transcendent, meaning that they extend beyond the limits of human cognition, perception, and sensibility, according to St. Denis (aka Pseudo-Dionysius) in the sixth century. So far is the political variety from such ideals as being in heaven! Yet the political sort has enjoyed a near monopoly in the world, including its public discourse. At least as 2019 was giving way to a new decade, captivation on President Trump’s tweets (i.e., brief statements made on the internet’s social media) and the process of impeaching him in the U.S. House of Representatives was strangely devoid of any religious discussion in the public square. This is all the more extraordinary because of the significant role that religion had played historically in presidential politics.

During the U.S. presidential campaign of 1928, for example, Al Smith was chastised for being a Catholic, and therefore thought to be under the sway of the Pope in Rome. During the campaign of 1960, John F. Kennedy found himself subject to the same charge. The simple assumption of papal dictate turned out to be naïve. For one thing, the American presidency is firmly within the governmental realm, and the Second Amendment bars the use of the office to establish (or give preference to) a religion or sect/denomination thereof. Kennedy ran against Richard M. Nixon, whose Quaker background, which presumably disdained lying, turned out in his own presidency (1968-1974) to be particularly lacking as revealed in the Watergate hearings. In short, the impact of a president’s inner religious sense and identity on his conduct (and mentality) can be massively overstated.

The role of religion in politics has been present, however, in reactions to the assumed, overstated impact of a candidate’s religion on his role should he get to the office. For example, based on the overblown fears held by protestant Americans, some protestant leaders, including Jerry Falwell and Billy Graham, and their allies in the political realm were able to gain popularity and power. Graham secretly met with other protestant pastors in 1960 to coordinate campaigning against Kennedy, essentially capitalizing on the popular fear among Protestants. This movement in turn prompted Kennedy to give a speech on September 12, 1960 to the Houston Ministerial Association. He insisted that his Catholicism would not direct or obstruct his policy-making judgment. Interestingly, the push of religion into the political sphere was made by religious figures ostensibly in the religious realm—overextending into the other realm.

In 1980, however, a presidential candidate by the name of Ronald Reagan realized that politicians like himself could make use of the political lobbying of religious leaders and groups. Implicitly, he showed Americans just how trivial the political divide had really been between Catholics and Protestants in presidential politics. While Reagan was still the governor of California in the 1970’s, Phyllis Schlafly, a Catholic, was reaching out to evangelical women to lobby against the Equal Rights Amendment (for women). Along with evangelical political action committees, she established the Eagle Forum in the next decade, when Ronald Reagan was president of the United States. By the time he was in office, he had already realized that he could publically galvanize evangelicals and conservative Catholics to support his political ambitions.

With the political realm dipping into the religious realm and vice versa, the societal issue of abortion also played an important role at the time in uniting socially conservative Protestants and Catholics. After the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Roe v. Wade in 1973, Francis Schaeffer brought in prominent evangelicals including Jerry Falwell to oppose abortion politically. Gay marriage in the early 2000’s would play a similar role in uniting the division that had hitherto hampered Al Smith and John Kennedy. James Dobson’s Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council, which had formed in the 1980s during Reagan’s flourishing years in office, pushed what they publicized as family values against both abortion and gay marriage. Both Focus and the Council were both church-related and lobbyists close to the Republican Party. For example, the groups lobbied for conservative fiscal policies—something near and dear to the Party but less obviously based in Christianity, especially as Jesus espouses giving to the poor and giving up one’s wealth to follow him. The rich man getting into the Kingdom of Heaven is like getting a camel through a needle. Even so, the evangelical lobbying groups became wealthy, using the prosperity gospel from the Old Testament—that God would make Israel prosperous if it keeps the covenant—as a rationale. To be sure, the pro-wealth paradigm had long become dominant over the anti-wealth paradigm, which hitherto had been dominant.[1] Perhaps this shift within Christianity made it easier for evangelical/Catholic political groups to not only pursue wealth themselves, but also appeal to the Republican Party that Reagan had made (i.e., fiscal and social conservatism). 

 

In conclusion, Americans could look back by the end of the twentieth century and see the old religious division as politically artificial, and thus not nearly as important as Americans had believed in 1928 and 1960. But could those same Americans see their contemporary divisions as just as artificial or at least over-drawn? In the Middle Ages amid the Commercial Revolution, the sin of usury (i.e., charging interest on loaned funds) was the moral/religious/political controversy in Europe. By Reagan’s time, the charging of interest even on consumption loans was a dead issue, whereas abortion could be viewed as an extremely important matter. Could this presumed overriding importance of the issue of the day be questioned by looking back at how the salience of the usury debate had run its course in its own time? In other words, in matters of religion and politics, and even their intermeshing, can the human mind put even its most cherished ideals in proper perspective? Can we question our own presumed importance, including that of our ideological ideals, whether religious or political (or both!)?

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1. Skip Worden, God’s Gold (1915), available at Amazon.

Political Power and Jesus' Way: A Dictator Comes to Value the Kingdom of God

Religion and political power can be dangerous if combined and aimed at people deemed to be apostate or heretical. In calling for the Crusades, our Roman Catholic popes put their political power behind the theocratic and political goal of taking back Jerusalem “for Christ.” Those popes and the kings and soldiers who went to war with the Muslims there wittingly or unwittingly violated Jesus’s preachment to love rather than fight enemies. Christianity and political power have not mixed well, historically. The U.S. Constitution forbids the federal government and, presumably, the states, to establish or sponsor a religion or even favor one. Theocracies, such as those in the Calvinist colonies in New England (except for Rhode Island, which allowed freedom of religion), would be excluded as a political form for the Union as well as its member-states. Rather than meaning “sub-unit” or “province” as in Normandy in the E.U. state of France, the American Continental Congress has applied “state” in the generic sense of a polity with a yet-to-be-determined political system. Hence while the Articles of Confederation were in force, before the U.S. Constitution, the states could legally form theocracies. The film, The President (2014), is fictional, but this doesn’t stop its portrayal of a toppled president in hiding from looking realistic, given the cases of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya and Saddam Hussein in Iraq. The character arc of the president while he is in hiding, or “on the run,” captures a generally unknown way in which Jesus’ preaching on how to enter the unknown Kingdom of God can apply to political power in a good way. This is not to advocate theocracy, however. Rather, individuals who wield power, whether in government or business, can come to see the very nature of power differently and gain new insight into the Kingdom of God preached by Jesus.

The full essay is at "The President."

Is God the Invisible Hand?

A Baylor University survey on religion and economics in 2011 revealed something that may be distinctly American, culturally speaking. The results indicated that about “one in five Americans combine a view of God as actively engaged in daily workings of the world with an economic conservative view that opposes government regulation and [advocates] the free market as a matter of faith.”[1] Specifically, those Americans believed that the “invisible hand” of a competitive market is actually God at work. Put another way, the assumption is that the economy “works” because God wills it to by intervening directly in the market mechanism itself. Government regulation, in diverting economic supply and demand from “the invisible hand,” is thus sinful. Regulating the economy challenges God’s omnipotence (i.e., power) by interfering with God’s intervention in our daily lives via the operation of the market mechanism. 

The full essay is at "Is God for Regulation?"

1. Cathy Lynn Grossman, “Religion Colors Money Views,” USA Today, September 20, 2011. 

God's Gold through the Centuries

In the wake of the financial crisis that came to a head in September of 2008, people might have been wondering if sufficient moral constraints on the greed on Wall Street are available, even possible. The ability of traders to create complex derivative securities that are difficult for regulators to regulate, much less understand, may have people looking for ethical or even religious constraints. It would be only natural to ask if such “soft” restraint mechanisms really do have the puissance to do the trick. Here’s the rub: the tricksters are typically the last to avail themselves of ethical or religious systems, and they the wrongdoers are the ones in need of the restraint. Blankfein said of his bank, Goldman Sachs, that it had been doing God’s work. About a week after saying that, he had to walk his statement back and admit that the bankers had does some things that were morally wrong. Although divine omnipotence is by definition not limited by human ethical systems, it is hard to imagine a divine decree telling bankers to tell their clients one thing (buy subprime mortgage derivatives) while taking the opposite position on the bank’s proprietary position (shorting the derivatives, beyond being a counterparty to clients). Divine duplicity seems to represent an oxymoron on a megascale rather than a justification for greed. As the crisis erupted and was subsequently managed by public officials in government and new managers brought in to salvage AIG, I was researching the history of Christian thought on profit-seeking and wealth. I have since published an academic text and a nonfiction book, which develops further on the treatise on the topic. As the book is too recondite for sane people (i.e., outside of academia), I am writing a non-fiction book on the topic for a broader readership. To whet the appetites of those of you who are waiting for something more readable that a recondite thesis, I present a brief account of my original research on the topic here. 

For the full essay, see "God's Gold through the Centuries."

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See related essay: "Religious Sources of Business Ethics"

The academic treatise: Godliness and Greed: Shifting Christian Thought on Profit and Wealth 

The non-fiction book: God's Gold: Beneath the Shifting Sands of Christian Thought on Profit-Seeking and Wealth.

Is Modern Banking Fundamentally Flawed?

Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan Chase and board member of the New York Federal Reserve (a banking regulatory body), advocates not only that financial regulation reform is not necessary, but also that deregulation is the best course for the American financial sector. Meanwhile, JP Morgan lost $2 billion in an effort to reduce risk. President Obama quickly pointed out that if one of the smartest bankers in the room can preside over such a massive loss, then a deregulated financial sector would likely present us with an unacceptably high level of risk to the entire financial system (and economy). Elizabeth Warren suggested that relying on bankers to regulate themselves would not reduce the systemic risk. The alternative would seem to be strengthening financial regulation, even though—according to Sen. Dick Durbin—“the banks own Congress.”

Perhaps the problem with systemic risk in modern banking goes deeper—beyond how it can be effectively regulated—meaning made regular in line with the public good—and, moreover, beyond what our reigning modern perspective will permit us to acknowledge, let alone see. In ecclesiastical terms historically, lending was classified as a kind of charity, specifically to the poor, as the rich presumably are not in need of lent funds (by definition). In other words, the leverage assumed by the wealthy and corporations is unnecessary. Starbucks needs the funds to build four hundred more stores in China. Wal-Mart needs additional money to buy land for new stores in major American cities. Capital from stockholders is presumably not good enough. The capped cost of leverage relative to a lack of limit on profit attracts greed to favor borrowing over raising capital through stock. The vested interests of existing stockholders (often including the executives who control their corporate boards) seals the deal on leverage as the drug of choice, even if it is not in the long-term best interests of the respective companies. Such a view of borrowing and paying (and earning) interest is worlds away from the original purpose of lending.

Viewing a loan as alms to the poor, lending with interest was originally thought to be unjust. At the very least, it was viewed as unseemly to profit in the giving of charity (although modern corporations do it all the time and get tax deductions for it, besides good public relations). Furthermore, the property (i.e., the substance of the money) lent was viewed as being inseparable from its use (i.e., as a means of exchange). The substance of money is its use, according to that view, so charging more than the money itself (i.e., the principal) is undeserved surplus. Such profit was historically reckoned as being theft. It is not good form to steal from the poor to whom one is giving alms. It is like biting someone while handing him a $20, which he needs to buy lunch (and will return later).  “Hey, I forgot my wallet today and I didn’t bring my lunch. Can you help me out? I’ll pay you back tomorrow.” If of charitable good-will, the acquaintance would reply, "Sure, here you go." If of ever greater (i.e., self-less) good-will, the lender would add, "and don't worry about paying it back." This is lending at its finest. Demanding that the borrower pay more than simply returning the $20 would represent far less than accepting the principal back. Beyond unfairness, taking interest regardless of the borrower's circumstance evinces self-idolatry.

Specifically, for a lender to receive surplus (above the principal) without labor or uncertainty (having transferred the risk to the borrower by requiring repayment) is not only unjust because it violates the risk/return relationship (i.e., a higher return is justified by assuming more risk), the certainly assumed (artifiically) by refusing to accommodate or share in any losses incurred by the borrower is rightfully only that of God. That is to say, it is self-idolatry to assume a divine quality like certainty. Furthermore, the power that some lenders presume to have over delinquent borrowers can be interpreted as an attempt to claim God's power (omnipotence) for oneself. Altogether, arrogance and the infliction of harm come from making oneself an idol (i.e., as if divine).

That which usury risks in terms of morals and self-idolatry is utterly foreign to us moderns. The original charitable purpose of lending is also lost to us in part because we are so used to our own view of lending being the default and the necessary of commercial lending in our economy. Moreover, we assume our assumptions cannot be wrong, and so we do not question whether merely charging interest is inherently unjust and a sin against God. We assume we know the purpose of lending as if it had no history.

In 1612—exactly 400 years before this writing yet late enough that commercial lending was already well-ensconced in the economy—Roger Fenton, a Puritan divine in England, opined strenuously that the sin of usury is inherently unjust. “Where we finde no iustice, what hope can there be of charitie?” Salomon puts mercy as the opposite of usury. “Wherefore vsurie may well be termed a biting . . . it eateth out the very bowels of compassion.” Usury perverts the act of charity, “turning it into an act of selflove.” Usury is against “the Canon of that Charitie which seeketh not her owne, to respect the good of others; [usury] is turned to his owne proper lucre and gaine.” (Fenton, 1612, p. 106)

Injustice does not admit of mercy manifesting as charity. We moderns are so wrapped up in our self-love that we can scarcely imagine lending as an act of compassion. The Canon of Charity to which Fenton refers is the Golden Rule, whose equity guides the Calvinist view of justice as love and benevolence to all. Such benevolence is fueled by selfless love (agape), rather than higher self-love (caritas) directed to God. We moderns can scarcely recognize this theory of justice, so used are we to strict legal justice which limits one’s duty to paying for one’s crime. That the other theory of justice might be applicable to lending is apt to strike us as odd at best.

Nevertheless, the problem behind even the best bankers of today being reckless even as they advocate for deregulation may extend beyond the antiquated debate on regulation to include the making of something borne of something natural (compassion) into something artificial. That lending was designed to be a species of charity may mean that problems are necessarily entailed in using banking for leverage.

By analogy, a person might have been brought up one way and therefore have considerable trouble in adjusting to a way of life that is at odds with that upbringing. The problem facing the person would go beyond simply regulating the new life because a basic inconsistency is in such a drastic change. Were the person to know only the new life, having forgotten one’s upbringing, she would have no clue as to why she feels fundamentally ill at ease. She would look for things in her new life to assuage the difficulties, which nonetheless transcend that environment and therefore require a more basic solution.

Besides relying too much on debt for personal and business use, we as a society are cut off from the original (i.e., designed) use of lending as a means of mercy rather than to profit. Perhaps our perspective is more limited than we think, and the problem much deeper than we realize. Given that “cloudie conceits do hang in the braines of men, which cast a dye and tincture vpon the vnderstanding,” seeing usury “so much practiced of all sorts . . . men are euen thereby without further examination much moued to thinke it lawfull.” (Fenton, pp. 108-9). Yet further examination demonstrates just how limited our tiny window in modernity is—even in spite of our lauded technological development. Our “advancement,” in other words, may blind us to being so wrong about lending even as it is ubiquitous in our world.

By 2012, for example, $1 trillion in student loan debt had accumulated in the United States. Rather than the mercy of charity in waiving interest and even the principal in particular cases of dire need, such a load on poor students represented the hubris of a society run amuck on its own conceit and greed. Such a disparity exists between such selfishness and charity that the notion of debt forgiveness even for the poor is thought of as an unforgivable unfairness rather than as charitable equity that is essentially agape seu benevolentia universalis.

Source:

Fenton, Roger, A Treatise of Usurie (London, 1612). In The Usury Debate in the Seventeenth Century: Three Arguments (New York: Arno, 1972).

On the Place of Religion in Business: Refusing to Serve Gays

The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in December 2017 in a case on whether a baker in Colorado had been justified in refusing to sell a wedding cake to a same-sex couple. He claimed that his Christian faith forbid him from making wedding cakes for gay couples. “I follow Jesus Christ,” he declared when interviewed at his store. The Gospels are silent on the issue of homosexuality—it being said to be a sin only in the Old Testament—so the inference that following Jesus requires opposition to gay marriage (not to mention that homosexuality is an important issue in following Jesus) can be questioned. If the inference is tenuous, then it is the baker’s ideological stance that was actually at issue before the court. More broadly, is religion vulnerable to acting as a subterfuge, or cover, for what are really personal prejudices?

In terms of constitutional law, the baker contended that the First Amendment, “whose guarantees of free speech and religious exercise supersede any state law, exempts him from [Colorado’s] antidiscrimination act,” which has covered sexual orientation since 2007.[1] The question, I submit, is whether free speech and religious exercise are salient in a business context. Colorado was not contesting the baker’s freedom to speak out against gay marriage and engage in religious worship (i.e., expression) on his own time; the problem is the baker’s assumption that political speeches and religious practice apply directly in business. To claim that decorating a cake—and artistic expression more generally—is free speech over-applies the constitutional doctrine and ignores the fact that a product to be sold is being produced.

Moreover, the domain of business can be distinguished from both the political and religious domains. Even though they may be related, each has its most salient attributes, customs, and laws. In opening a business to serve the public, serving customers trumps making political or religious statements or decisions at the expense of customers. Put another way, in opening doors to serve the public, political and religious differences cannot justify refusing some of the public; the responsibility in serving the public thus supersedes circumscribing service based on personal political and religious prejudices.

“’No one disputes that [the baker] is ‘a man of deep religious faith whose beliefs guide his work, or that the Free Speech Clause protects his right to give voice to those beliefs,’ Colorado’s brief argues. ‘But when a business opens its doors to the public, a state may require that [the business] serve customers on equal terms, regardless of their race, sex, faith, or sexual orientation.”[2] The baker’s religious faith is most salient in the religious domain (e.g., at church), while serving the public is most salient in business. That which is foremost in one domain cannot legitimately claim such a status in another domain, even over its foremost customs and laws. In assuming that his business was a place for free speech and expression of his religious faith at the expense of serving the public, the baker misconstrued the distinct nature of business. In being open to the public, a business takes on an obligation to be open to the public rather than a part thereof based on religious grounds, especially if the religiosity is mere cover for what is actually a personal prejudice.  Overstating the importance or status of minor factors even over major ones in a given domain applies also in giving priority to an Old Testament dictum in what it means to follow Jesus Christ. In Christianity, as distinct from Judaism, the New Testament is more important than the Old Testament. The baker seems to have overlooked the main point in the New Testament: self-giving love towards others, especially when it is inconvenient (i.e., even toward enemies).

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[1] Jess Bravin, “Supreme Court Set to Hear Gay-Rights Case,” The Wall Street Journal, December 4, 2017.

[2] Ibid.

Obama Standing up to Wall Street: Fact or Fiction?

An interesting bit of news-reporting from the time of the Obama Administration sheds light on business and government: “What haunts the Obama administration is what still haunts the country: the stunning lack of accountability for the greed and misdeeds that brought America to its gravest financial crisis since the Great Depression. There has been no legal, moral, or financial reckoning for the most powerful wrongdoers. Nor have there been meaningful reforms that might prevent a repeat catastrophe. Time may heal most wounds, but not these. . . . After the 1929 crash, and thanks in part to the legendary Ferdinand Pecora’s fierce thirties Senate hearings, America gained a Securities and Exchange Commission, the Public Utility Holding Company Act, and the Glass-Steagall Act to forestall a rerun. After the savings-and-loan debacle of the eighties, some 800 miscreants went to jail. But those who ran the central financial institutions of our fiasco escaped culpability (as did most of the institutions). . . . The weak Dodd-Frank financial-reform law that rose from the ruins remains largely inoperative, since the actual rule-writing was delegated to understaffed agencies now under siege by banking lobbyists and their well-greased congressional overlords. . . . Rather than purge the crash’s crimes, Wall Street’s leaders are sticking to their alibi: Everyone was guilty of fomenting this “perfect storm,” and so no one is. Too-big-to-fail banks are bigger than ever, and ­Masters of the Universe swagger is back.”

Analysis:

 The hegemony of the moneyed interest in any republic renders the public weal subject to a plutocracy—rule by wealth. In the wake of the credit crisis of 2008, U.S. Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois observed that the banking lobby still owned Congress even as the public regarded the banks as at least partially culpable for the crisis. Durbin made his remark after the Senate defeated his amendment that would have allowed foreclosure judges to modify mortgages in trouble. Even though mortgage companies had written steep interest rate hikes into the subprime mortgages that the mortgage writers must surely have known the borrowers could not afford, the servicers stood by the vaunted sanctity of contract doctrine—a faithfulness conditioned, no doubt, by the article serving their interests. Financial influence over elected representatives enabled the U.S. Government to provide cover, or at least to refrain from going after the financial institutions that had been so culpable. That government also refused to break up the banks too big to fail, whose very concentrations of wealth, increased by the TARP program, stood even more as systemic risk.

 Historically, Americans have looked to independently-minded occupants of the U.S. Presidency to stand up to powers of the day to protect the viability of the states. Andrew Jackson, for example, stood up to the moneyed interest before his reelection in 1832 in depleting the Second National Bank of the United States of funding (the bank ended in 1836). Doubtless Jackson spent many nights before the election worried that standing up to money might cost him the election. Of course, he won and enjoyed distinct respect.

 I suspect that Barak Obama did not enjoy respect in the wake of the credit crisis precisely because he did not stand up to the banking lobby. Relatedly, he caved to the demands of the health insurance industry lobby that he no longer push for a public option and resist a mandate for guaranteed customers. I suspect that people sense a lack of political courage and recalibrate their respect accordingly. The political weight of such a collective judgment at the ballot box is an open question; the reward such as Jackson received in 1832 is likely more certain even as it is thought less. Herein occupies the political trap wherein the path of least resistance may gain the upper hand in a president’s political calculation. Faith in the people rewarding courage against concentrated interests can be difficult to embrace even as such reward is perhaps germane to the office as it was designed and intended. Americans seem to innately know this, even as their collective judgment is difficult for politicians to discern.

 In the want of a Jacksonian presider standing for the public weal against being overrun by the private moneyed interest, the historical answer would have been to look to normative, even religious, constraints. Frank Rich includes this type among the more contemporaneously popular legalistic and economic ones where he writes, “There has been no legal, moral, or financial reckoning for the most powerful wrongdoers.” Even so, he concentrates on government regulation as essentially the only means available to constrain the unrepentant greed of Wall Street. Historically, ethical constraint against greed was thought to depend on religious, and specifically Christian, auspices. Frank Rich’s focus alone may be read as rendering a verdict on the efficacy of Christian ethics in countering the fundamental desire for more. Yet how many Jackson’s have the States seen that we may rely on presidential leadership and any ensuing regulation to constrain the moneyed interest?  Moreover, what if greed is so entrenched in human nature that virtually any bulwark must ultimately be found wanting?  

 Source:

 Frank Rich, “Obama’s Original Sin,” The New Yorker, July 3, 2011.

Related essay: “Godliness and Greed”

On the Arrogance of False Entitlement: A Nietzschean Critique of Business Ethics and Management

Nietzsche is perhaps most stunning in his eviscerating critiques of modern morality and, relatedly, Christianity. His pessimistic attitude toward modern management is less flashy, but no less radical, for the business world would look very different were it populated by Nietzschean strength rather than so much weakness that in spite of which—and because of which, seeks to dominate even and especially people who are stronger. Accordingly, this book provides formidably severe critiques of both business ethics and management and sketches Nietzsche’s notion of strength as an alternative basis for both. Nietzsche’s notion of the ascetic priest as a bird of prey with an overwhelming urge to dominate eerily similar to both the business manager and the ethicist. Therefore, the last two chapters are on Nietzsche’s unique take on Christianity, and John D. Rockefeller, a devout Baptist ostensibly compatible even with being an acidic monopolist. 

On the Arrogance of False Entitlement: A Nietzschean Critique of Business Ethics and Management is available in print and as an ebook at Amazon. 

SEC Investigating a Hedge-Fund Priest: Christianity’s Pro-Wealth Paradigm Lapsing into Greed?

It is against U.S. securities law to knowingly make false statements or publish false information about a company you are shorting (selling stock now and buying the shares later, hence betting the stock price will go down). In other words, you can’t try to drive the company’s stock price down you are shorting so you can profit from the trade. Besides being illegal, the practice is unethical. Just go to Kant for that! The guy was fanatical against lying.

You wouldn’t expect to read, therefore, that the SEC is investigating a Greek Orthodox priest who sidelines as a hedge-fund manager for trashing commercial reputations in order to make money off shorting stock.  BloombergBusiness reported on March 18, 2016 that the SEC was “examining whether the Reverend Emmanuel Lemelson of Massachusetts made false statements about companies he was shorting.”.”[1] He reportedly referred to his trading skills as a “gift from God.”[2] Such a claim is on a slippery slope, theologically speaking.

The priest who may have lapsed off the plank of Christianity's pro-wealth paradigm onto outright greed hidden under rationalizations as to means and ends. Is Christianity itself at risk for having gone so far into this worldly realm? The again, the Medieval Roman Church was very worldly as a political power.

When the story broke, I had just days earlier finished revising my second book on Christian attitudes toward profit-seeking and wealth in relation to greed. Lemelson’s “gift from God” language reminds me of the pro-wealth writings during the Italian Renaissance two centuries before the Calvinist work-ethic of industriousness. The Italian theologians of the fifteenth century tended to lighten up on profit-seeking and wealth. Cosimo de Medici got a pass from Pope Eugene IV in spite of a fortune based on usury (lending at interest). One priest, Fancini, went so far as to claim that humans are gods on Earth, given the dominion we have over its resources. Far from the camel who could not get through the eye of the proverbial needle, a Christian during the Renaissance (and after) knew he had to be rich in order to exercise the Christian virtue of munificence. Whereas liberality pertains to typical gifts, munificence involves donating money to build a cathedral, for instance. Being able to make a lot of money was a “gift of God” that would enable the successful Christian to give philanthropically on a scale worthy of God’s majesty.

Of course, the pro-wealth paradigm in Christianity is vulnerable to lapsing into love of gain (i.e., greed). Luther’s extremely anti-wealth stance can be interpreted as an effort to put on the brakes before the by-then dominant pro-wealth attitude in Christianity hit the skids and flipped over into greed. Luther did not succeed. Nor did Calvin or the Puritans, though they were more accommodating to the dominant perspective. The result was a clear line to the Prosperity Gospel—the notion that God rewards true believers with not just salvation, but material wealth as well. This idea came from the Old Testament, wherein God promises Israel that material wealth would come if His People hold to the covenant.

In my book, God’s Gold, I search for a theological undercurrent below the graduate shift from anti-wealth to pro-wealth dominance. I discount the impact of the commercializing context. With regard to the hedge-fund priest, I would be hesitant simply to say he was a manifestation of a pro-business American culture. This may be so, more significant, I submit, are the rationalizations presumably going on in the guy’s head. Bearing false-witness (i.e., lying) to harm others is difficult to view as a gift from God. Even as a means to a salubrious end, the juxtaposition of a gift from God and lying without concern for others’ welfare is odd at best.

In the book, I come to a discussion of how the human brain functions in the domain of religion. If we are vulnerable to certain “short-circuiting” cognitively and yet we have a religious instinct, are we not as a species in a double-bind? Put another way, if Lemelson can neither cognitively nor perceptually recognize his own rationalization, is his urge to be religious compromised? I don’t think so; rather, other aspects of the brain, or mind, may obstruct or circumvent it as it manifests itself. I do think these short-comings can be made transparent, and thereby reduced at least somewhat in severity, or swollenness, but denial is indeed a formidable and intractable obstacle. I suppose the dominance in Christianity since the Renaissance of the pro-wealth paradigm (i.e., profit-seeking and wealth decoupled from the stain of greed) renders the “mind-games” that much more harmful in terms of rationalizing some rather un-Christian behavior toward others. For one thing, in order to make money in order to serve God better can enable some pretty nasty means-ends justifications.  In this way, Christianity itself is now more vulnerable than the religion was when being wealthy and Christian were presumed to be mutually exclusive (i.e., greed was assumed to be tightly stapled to virtually any wealth). Ironically, the theology may be partially to blame, in so far as anthropomorphism unwittingly lifts the religious status of money and property.[3]

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1. Matt Robinson, “Hedge Fund Priest’s Trades Probed by Wall Street Cop,” BloombergBusiness, March 18, 2016.

2. Ibid.

3. The secret to that sauce is in chapter 12 of the book, God’s Gold. I got so into the writing of that chapter in revising it that in retrospect the chapters on the historical shift seemed a bit like a very long preface.

Gay Marriage: God’s Law, Legal Reasoning, and Ideology

Mixing religion, jurisprudence, and ideology together is one potent drink. Ingestion can cause palpable heart-burn as well as migraine headaches. In the case of gay marriage in the U.S., sorting out and evaluating the three elements can be rife with controversy and thus confusion. In this essay, I discuss the county clerk in Kentucky who refused to grant marriage licenses to gay couples because doing so would violate God’s law and thus betray Jesus. Her religious rationale makes for interesting legal reasoning. I then look at the U.S. Supreme Court’s gay-marriage decision. I contend that a natural-right (and thus human right) basis clashes with ideological anger. Human nature itself is on display throughout, particularly as it wades into religion, legal reasoning, and ideology.

The complete essay is at “Gay Marriage: God’s Law, Legal Reasoning, and Ideology.”

Should Entitlement Programs Be Cut?

If human beings have survival among our inalienable rights as citizens for whom both rights and duties apply, then we as a society must grapple with how sustenance can be guaranteed to those among us who are not meeting their own needs. I put it this way to highlight the lack of conditionality in the right. That is to say, if it is inalienable, then it is irrelevant whether the person is lazy or of a bad temperament.

 Sustenance or "extra" cash? Only one is a human right.   (Image source: timthethief.com)

To be sure, in 2 Thessalonians 3, the Apostle Paul  declares, “For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat.” I suspect that many moderns, particularly in America, agree with Paul here. Unpacking the quote, I submit that a number of subterranean assumptions lurk just below the surface. We naturally assume that Paul was not referring to a woman who cannot work because she was so brutally gang-raped that she is mentally and/or physically unable to work. We assume the Apostle did not have a blind and mute old man in mind. Rather, we assume that the person is a deadbeat, seeking to have others work while he enjoys himself, or that the person has a pernicious personality and therefore cannot secure even a menial job because no one could stand being around him. The punishment we dish out against the deadbeat and the rude man is a death sentence, in effect.

That the rest of us might be engaged in self-idolatry in setting ourselves up as Judge goes without punishment in our convenient scheme. Our presumed entitlement to omniscience (all-knowing) goes under the radar screen. We presume we are fit to know why some among us do not meet their sustenance needs on their own in an interdependent modern economy, and we feel at liberty to pronounce judgment based on the motives of others that we presume to know. Perhaps the poorest among us should pronounce judgment on the rest of us! The unassuming poor in spirit could quote the following from Matthew (19:30), “But many who are first will be last, and many who are last will be first.” This line refers to the Kingdom of God, which in crucial ways turns the world’s logic upside-down or ties it up like a pretzel so the worldly wise are confounded into fools even as they count themselves as clever.

The typical rationale made by those citizens among us who do not regard sustenance as an inalienable human right in a civilized society hinges on the assumption that charity can fill the gap. Even though human beings need at least one meal a day (many of us used to three!), the assumption here is that such a demanding requirement can be met by chance as people give to charity. The fallacy here lies in presuming certainty in something that is not.

Indeed, an examination of the giving pattern of the wealthy in America suggests that sustenance is not even a priority. According to the 2011 report of the American Association of Fundraising Counsel, 32 percent of the $298 billion given away by Americans went to religious organizations, 13 percent to cultural organizations, and only 12 percent to social services. It cannot be assumed that the bulk of the money going to religious and cultural organizations went directly to sustenance for the poor.

Furthermore, the Chronicle of Philanthropy indicates that the top five donations, totaling $190 million, in New York went to Columbia University’s business school, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Brooklyn Bridge Park Corporation (for the building of an indoor cycling track). Not one of the top 49 gifts went to support social services explicitly, yet somehow charity can be relied on to bridge the gap in health-care, housing and food for those who would otherwise die without such sustenance.  Rarely if even do we as a society ask whether an indoor cycling track should be conditioned on the sustenance of every citizen (or legal resident) having been satisfied. A new terminal or runway is typically viewed, at least implicitly, as having an equal (or higher) claim on our resources, societally.

Were sustenance treated as an inalienable human right to which an explicit duty of citizenship would correspond, society would be more than an aggregate of individuals out for themselves. Lest we assume that no one would work if a basic security based on the value of solidarity were known to be met, personal ambition would doubtless show itself as going beyond a concern for mere sustenance. In other words, enterprise would not falter. We have no idea how it would feel to live life with a basic, or existential, security in knowing that if the worst were to happen to us, we would not starve or be homeless or go without needed medicine for want of voluntary charity by others. We have no idea how such a basic psychological security would permeate and thus impact society, not to mention something called "quality of life."

Instead of exercising statesmanship for the good of each other, we as a body politic make it harder on even ourselves than need be because we presume that such a basic security would be at our expense and undeserved by the beneficiaries. In other words, our selfishness is ultimately at our own expense, and society itself is held back in the process. In other words, we get the cities we deserve. The sad thing is that the perpetuation of the existential insecurity is so unnecessary and ultimately in nobody’s interest. Even so, we keep stumbling over ourselves in avarice so to keep what we have, and relatedly in fear that someone might possibly get something for nothing at our expense.  In our presumed omniscience, we conveniently assume that we cannot be wrong, and this seals the deal on our small fate.

Source:

Ginia Bellafante, “Bulk of Charitable Giving Not Earmarked for the Poor,” The New York Times, September 8, 2012. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/09/nyregion/bulk-of-charitable-giving-not-earmarked-for-poor.html?hp