Is Capitalism Christian?

I ran across an article this morning that I'd like to share with you.  The title of the article is "What the Bible Teaches About Capitalism" by Rabi Aryeh Spero.  This has always been a subject of interest for me.

It's apparently a subject of interest to many others judging by the number of hits when I searched "Is Capitalism Christian" on Yahoo.  Care to take a guess about how many hits?  Over 20 million!

Back in the early to mid 80's I read a book called "Is Capitalism Christian" which was edited by Franky Schaeffer.  It was a collection of essays by different writers on the subject.  Pretty interesting stuff.

As I've written many times, the Bible is a book of balance.  I can think of many scriptures that I could use to support the argument that the Bible teaches socialism.  I can also think of many scriptures  that speak favorably about capitalistic principals like property ownership, commerce, and enjoying the rewards of our labor.  So as with many other topics I think that if we did a careful Biblical study we would find that we end up somewhere in the middle.  What I mean by that is that we have a duty to care for the poor but I happen to think that is best done through the capitalist system voluntarily vs having a government take my wealth and then do it on my behalf. 

Now I happen to believe that the Bible is very compatible with capitalism but there are many who disagree.  All of my kids went to Christian school and even within the Christian School system there was disagreement.  My youngest son actually had a teacher tell him and the rest of the class that you couldn't be a Christian and believe in capitalism which was pretty surprising to myself and all of the other small business owners who sent our kids there!

Anyway I hope you enjoy the article.

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