A Defense of Capitalism

Last updated on: March 8, 2020 at 4:37 pm By Gene Veith

Americans are flirting with socialism. A major presidential contender, Bernie Sanders, is an avowed socialist. A majority of young adults think socialism is morally superior to capitalism. Even many conservatives are drawing back from capitalism, putting forward “hyphenated capitalism,” such as Marco Rubio’s “common good-capitalism.” Even many businesses are retreating from capitalism, demanding the government protect them from the free market.

Nikki Haley, former governor of South Carolina, has launched a forceful defense of capitalism. In a speech to the conservative think tank the Hudson Institute, she takes on not only the overt socialism of Bernie Sanders and the quasi-socialism of the other Democrats, but also the “socialism lite” that she sees in her fellow Republicans.

You should read her entire speech. I’ll let George Will summarize it:

Speaking in a manner bracingly unusual in this city, Haley minced no words: “The American system is capitalism.” Although “the Founders never used the word, they gave us capitalism in all but the name,” because capitalism is “another word for freedom. And it springs from America’s most cherished ideals.” The Founders understood something the Supreme Court has forgotten for eight decades: Economic freedom is, like freedom of speech and free exercise of religion, a fundamental right. Capitalism has “lifted up more people, unlocked more progress, and unleashed more prosperity” than any other system, yet “many people avoid saying that word, including some conservatives and business leaders.”

Haley said the Business Roundtable, which represents major corporations, wants companies to “focus not on business, but on some vague notion of helping ‘stakeholders,’” meaning customers, employees and communities. “This,” Haley said astringently, “is puzzling.” Companies that do not serve their customers, reward their workers and serve their communities will fail — unless abusive or incompetent companies are saved by misguided government policies. Such business-government entanglement breeds cronyism, self-dealing and bailouts from taxpayers.

“Some conservatives,” Haley said, “have turned against the market system. They tell us America needs a … different kind of capitalism. A hyphenated capitalism. Yet while these critics keep the word capitalism, they lose its meaning. They want to give government more power to make more decisions for businesses and workers. They differ from the socialists only in degree.”

[Keep reading. . .]

Other highlights from the speech:

–She deals with the “myths” about capitalism. E.g, “It is a myth that capitalism is just for the wealthy or big corporations.” And that capitalism creates sweat-shop conditions for workers.

–She cites capitalism’s beneficial impact on the world. “Two hundred years ago, 94% of the world lived in extreme poverty. Today, it’s 10%.”

–She cites capitalism’s beneficial impact on the environment. “You wouldn’t know it from listening to the gloom and doom of the left, but the facts are clear. The world is getting cleaner, healthier, and wealthier.”

–She agrees that there is still much pain and suffering in the world, but she argues that the biggest cause of human suffering is socialism.”

–She cites evidence that “Socialism has failed everywhere it’s ever been tried.”

–She shoots down Bernie Sander’s claim that he is simply advocating the socialism of Scandinavia:

The same Scandinavia where Sweden tried socialism, saw it fail, and went so far in the other direction that it now has one of the freest economies in Europe.The same Scandinavia where Denmark cut its business tax rate by more than half. The Danish Prime Minister criticized Bernie Sanders and said his country is a “market economy.” And get this. Finland’s president was recently asked if his country was socialist. His response: “No, God bless.”

Other democracies have tried socialism. Israel, India, and the United Kingdom went through periods of socialism, only to abandon it. Their people are markedly better off as a result.

–She acknowledges the criticisms of capitalism, but says that the critics are really pointing to deviations from capitalism, not its essence:

They’re right when they say too many businesses engage in corrupt self-dealing. We saw it in the housing crisis of the last recession. We see it today with some anti-market monopolistic behavior. But that’s not capitalism. It’s corruption. It’s often illegal, and it’s always immoral. Corruption has no place in a free market. Everyone deserves an equal shot.

They’re right that too many special interests get special treatment. But that’s not capitalism either. That’s cronyism and corporate welfare. It destroys a level playing field and rigs the economy in favor of the well-connected. We should expose it and root it out. And no company should ever get a taxpayer bailout.

They’re also right that some communities in the American heartland have suffered ill effects from globalist economics. But globalism and capitalism are not even close to synonymous. Take it from me, at the United Nations, I had a front row seat to witness the values of the multilateral bureaucrats. I assure you capitalism was not among them.

Finally, critics of capitalism are right that income levels are unequal in America. Income inequality will always exist in a free economy. That is not capitalism’s proudest feature, but it’s infinitely better than the alternative. Under socialism, everyone is equal. But they are equal in their poverty and misery.

She says much more.

What do you think of her analysis?

If leftists, liberals, conservatives, and businesses are clamoring for some kind of socialism, if only “socialism lite,” does that mean America is going socialist? Does capitalism need some protections to address those “deviations” that are giving it a bad name? Isn’t that what the “hyphenated capitalism” is aiming at?

Image: Official Photo of Nikki Haley, United States Department of State / Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Premium Content

Criminalizing Christian Teachings about Sex

Last updated on: February 13, 2020 at 12:21 pm By Gene Veith

0 Comments

Police in Finland are investigating the leader of an entire denomination for publishing a booklet that disapproves of homosexuality. The author of that booklet,which sets forth the Biblical teachings about sexuality, is also under investigation for the crime of “agitation against an ethnic group,” a statute which added “sexual orientation” to the list of protected classes. The maximum punishment is two years in prison.

I have blogged about Christianity in Scandinavia and Finland in particular, based on what I learned during my speaking engagements in those regions. See my posts on the subject, for example, Confessional Lutheranism in Finland, Scandinavia’s Two Tracks of Christianity, and Challenges for Conservative Churches in Scandinavia.

The police came for the Rev. Dr. Juhana Pohjola, Dean of the Evangelical Lutheran Mission Diocese of Finland. This is a church body that broke away from the established state church. It was started by members of independent mission organizations, which have become the home of evangelical, conservative Christianity in the nordic countries. The Evangelical Lutheran Mission Diocese is committed to confessional Lutheranism and is a member, along with the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, of the International Lutheran Council.

The church published a 24-page booklet entitled in English Male and Female Created He Them. (The link will take you to the English translation.) There is nothing hateful in the booklet. It simply lays out what the Bible says about sexuality, including the teaching that homosexuality is against God’s design.

Also being prosecuted is the author of that booklet, Dr. Päivi Räsänen. She is a member of the Finnish parliament and a former Minister of the Interior, no less! She is also under criminal investigation for a tweet she wrote last year in which she asked leaders of the state church what their doctrinal basis was for supporting a gay pride parade.

The booklet was written back in 2004, long before Finland legalized same-sex marriage in 2017. An earlier investigation of the book concluded that no crime had been committed, but the Prosecutor General has re-opened the case, saying there is reason to believe that it “incites hatred.”

You have got to read Rod Dreher’s interview with Dr. Räsänen, who is very impressive in her integrity–she might have avoided prosecution for her tweet by taking it down, but she refused to do so–and in the way she speaks up for Christian truth in the public square. (For example, she points out that the Finnish state church is obligated, by law, to base its teachings on the “Holy Scriptures,” and asks, how could it then be illegal to teach what the Holy Scriptures say?) Here is a sample of what Dr. Räsänen, a medical doctor, has to say:

I believe that ultimately the purpose of these attacks is to eliminate the Word of God and discard the Law of God. It is very problematic that expressing Christian beliefs is often seen as insulting in the West. For example, marriage between a man and a woman has become a concept that is understood as restrictive, even threatening. Concepts such as man and woman, father and mother, are dearly loved concepts, and as old as the history of humanity. The attempt to break down the gender system based on two different genders hurts especially children. It is unfortunate how uncritically the ideology of sexual diversity and LGBT activism has been supported and endorsed even by churches.

I believe that every person has the right to hear the whole truth of God’s Word, both the Gospel and the Law. Only people who recognize their sins need Jesus, the propitiation for our sins. We must have the courage to speak about the dangerous effects of LGBT activism. Debatable themes such as immoral sexual relations have to do with guilt. Guilt cannot be solved by denying it, but only by confessing it and receiving mercy and the message of forgiveness in Jesus’ sacrifice. It is impossible to think that classical Christian doctrine would become illegal in the West.

I know both Juhana Pohjola and Päivi Räsänen. Dr. Pohjola took my wife and I out to a Finnish feast. I had a wonderful conversation with him, and he introduced me to other leaders of the confessional church in Finland who got together to meet me and for an informal presentation on my part.

My wife and I also had lunch with Dr. Räsänen. We talked about the political scene in Finland and about her political party, the Christian Democrats, which combines economic liberalism with social conservatism.

I didn’t get to know them well in such a short amount of time, but our acquaintance gives a special resonance as I read these stories about how their strong witness to their faith is putting them in legal jeopardy.

As it happens, Dr. Pohjola is scheduled to meet with the police on February 11, which is today. Pray for him. Also pray for Dr. Räsänen. And for the other faithful Christians in Finland. And in other parts of the world, where many are enduring much worse persecutions. And pray for Christians in the United States of America. Our Constitution guarantees our freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and freedom of the press, giving us much greater legal protections than are common even in advanced democracies such as Finland. But we sometimes find it hard to stand up for our beliefs if they are merely unpopular? How would we bear up if our beliefs were to become criminalized?

UPDATE: For an account of Dr. Pohjola’s five-hour police interrogation, go here.

Photo of Dr. Päivi Räsänen, by Soppakanuuna [CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)] via Wikimedia Commons.

HT: Paul McCain

Premium Content

My Article on Art for an Israeli Christian Journal

Last updated on: March 13, 2019 at 8:54 am By Gene Veith

0 Comments

Those who keep up with me on this blog know that I’ve been doing some things with Scandinavian Christians. In Finland a while back, I spoke at an apologetics conference about imagination and the arts, drawing on my recent book with Matt Ristuccia, Imagination Redeemed: Glorifying God with a Neglected Part of Your Mind.

(Also from that conference: I met and was introduced to the work of Klaus Härö, a major award-winning Finnish filmmaker, who happens to be an evangelical, Lutheran Christian. More on him later after I finish tracking down all of his movies that are available here.)

As I have blogged about, the mission societies in the Scandinavian countries–rather than the state churches–are the bastions of conservative, evangelical, Lutheran, confessional Christianity. And they continue to do the work that got them started a couple of centuries ago: sending missionaries. Having played a big role in the evangelization of Africa, as well as starting churches in the early days of the United States, the mission societies today do not draw back from some of the toughest and most dangerous challenges, such as reaching Muslims in Afghanistan.

I was approached by a missionary to Israel, Terho Kanervikkoaho, who was at the conference and who is the editor of Mishkan, a journal for Israeli Christians and Jewish Christians more generally. (See, for example, their two special issues on Luther and the Jews, here and here.) They were planning an issue focusing on the arts and invited me to contribute.

I thought that the perfect topic would be what I had already written about the calling and the gifts of Bezalel, the artist of the Tabernacle, a topic that opens up into the other teachings of the Bible about the arts. I wrote about this in my book State of the Arts: From Bezalel to Mapplethorpe. That section, in turn, was taken from my very first book, The Gift of Art: The Place of the Arts in Scripture.

So I got permission from my publisher, Crossway, to reprint the two key chapters as a contribution to Mishkan. You can read the article here.

It was strange and oddly gratifying to work over material from my very first book–which got me started as a Christian writer–having retired and now being closer to the end of my writing career. Bezalel represents the first treatment of vocation in the Bible. At the time, I mentioned that, but little did I know that I would be studying vocation much more extensively, to the point of writing three books on the topic. I saw in this project how my writing has had a unity throughout my career from beginning to end, all tied together here in a bow.

Illustration: Bezalel and Oholiab, from the Nuremberg Bible Biblia Sacra Germanaica (15th century) [Public Domain]

Premium Content

The Rebirth of Socialism

Last updated on: March 5, 2019 at 4:31 pm By Gene Veith

0 Comments

With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, people were saying that socialism had been “consigned to the dust bin of history.” Free market capitalism and liberal democracy were so ascendant that people were talking about the “end of history,” in the sense that the wars and ideological conflicts that make up so much of history were over with.

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics ceased to exist as of Christmas day, 1991. But just 28 years later, socialism is back in vogue. Among Democrats, 57% have a favorable impression of socialism, with a minority of 47% saying that about capitalism (the overlap liking both systems). Two avowed socialists, Bernie Sanders and Alexandra Ocasio-Cortes, dominate the party. Almost half of Millennials, 48%, identify themselves as socialists.

A big article in the latest New Yorker magazine, entitled Pinkos Have More Fun, chronicles the way socialism has become fashionable among the cool people.

. . .Among New York’s creative underclass — cash poor but culturally potent — it feels like everything but socialism is now irrelevant. “I’ve noticed that there’s a kind of baseline assumption in the room that everyone is a socialist,” says Brostoff. “And if they’re not, it’s because they’re an anarchist.” Coolheaded Obaman technocracy is out; strident left-wing moral clarity is in. And while this atmospheric shift is felt most acutely among the left-literary crowd, it’s also bled into the general discourse, such that Teen Vogue is constantly flacking against capitalism and one of the most devastating insults in certain corners of the internet is to call someone a neoliberal.

To be sure, most of the neo-socialists are unclear about the concept. From the New York Post editorial Socialism’s millennial fans don’t even know what it is:

Today’s Democratic socialists don’t seem to embrace the classic definition of socialism as government control of the means of production — which has traditionally meant nationalizing whole industries.

These socialists insist they don’t support repressive states like the Soviet Union or North Korea. But Sanders and the rest refuse to say a critical word about Venezuela, which is on the brink of social and economic collapse due to socialism.

Instead, they point to Scandinavian-style socialism in nations like Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden as “true socialism.” One problem: Those countries aren’t socialist.

As Danish Prime Minister Lars-Lokke Rasmussen has said: “Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy. Denmark is a market economy.”

These “socialist” states have no mandated minimum wage or guaranteed jobs. Taxes are higher than US rates, but largely by making the middle and working classes pay big via the Value Added Tax — which hits consumption, not income or wealth.

True socialism, in fact, is reflected in Venezuela, Cuba and the Soviet Union. All are or were economic disasters and brutally repressive states.

And yet, at least some of the new socialists are the real thing. The New Yorker article describes “red parties” and the “red dating” scene, but it also gives accounts of intense discussions of Marxist theory, of the sort that must have characterized the Communist cells of the 1930s. “Socialist discourse,” we are told, is “in contrast to the pieties of the identity-politics left, the righteousness of the #resistance, or the smug wonkishness of Vox.” This is real working-class Marxism, opposed to the alternative progressivism of identity politics that is competing for the soul of the Democratic party.

For a good sense of the new socialism, see the magazine Jacobin, named after the radicals of the French Revolution. It is unabashedly Marxist, revolutionary, and critical of bourgeois liberals. Interestingly, it supports Bernie Sanders for president while thinking his revolution, should he get elected, will also require some more direct action.

“Democratic Socialists” believe radical change can come from peaceful political action, like voting. But the harder core Marxist socialists believe that radical change can only be implemented by violent revolution. Can we expect Marxist terrorism, along the same lines as Islamist terrorism? Let’s hope not, but it could happen.

So why has socialism come back? Marxist socialism fell apart because of its economic failures and political oppression–as is happening today in Venezuela. But socialism is coming back in the teeth of capitalism’s unparalleled success and prosperity.

Matthew Continetti, in his essay What to Do About the Rebirth of Socialism, sees some spiritual reasons for this. Traditional religion and moral beliefs have faded. What’s left in the West is an economic system stripped of its former human values. Thus, that system seems unfulfilling at best and evil at worst. And to fill the religious void, many people turn to secular ideologies to provide inspiring ideals. Says Conteinetti, “Socialism is the attempt to derive from the political sphere the direction and purpose to human life that is the traditional province of morality and culture.”

Some socialists are saying essentially the same thing themselves, putting forth socialism as the alternative to religion. See, for example, “The Spiritual Case for Socialism” in the New Republic.

Continetti raises the key question, without being able to supply an answer. Quoting Irving Kristol, he writes,

“What can a liberal-capitalist society do about the decline of religious beliefs and traditional values — a decline organically rooted in liberal capitalism’s conception of this realm as an essentially ‘private affair’ neither needing nor meriting public sanction?” Here is the toughest question to answer. At the very least we must defend religious freedom, and promote religious and civic education, if we are ever to address the denuded moral and cultural system that has become the breeding ground of the socialist revival.

Illustration via Pixabay, Creative Commons license

Premium Content

More About Me

Last updated on: September 9, 2018 at 5:24 pm By Gene Veith

0 Comments

Google has some new algorithms, so Patheos told its writers to bolster the E.A.T. factor (“Expertise.Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness”) for our posts. One way to do that is to beef up our biographies on the “About” section of our blogs. So I swapped out my cursory couple of sentences about myself to a more detailed account that had been written for another purpose. If you’re interested in knowing more about me–though I can’t imagine why you would be–check out my new bio page.

Also, perhaps of greater interest, the Patheos tech people have revamped the page that gives my publications. Now there is an extensive description of each book (I think it’s the editorial review on Amazon). Click the title and you go to the book’s Amazon page, should you want to “look inside” or buy it. The page does this for the 26 books available from Amazon, which includes some–though not, I think, all–that are out of print. I’ll bet even those of you who have been reading me for a long time will find titles that you didn’t know about. Anyway, check out this blog’s publications section.

Finally, while we’re talking about the Cranach blog, you may have noticed that I have cut down from three posts a day to two posts a day, to, more recently, just one post a day. No, I don’t have a progressively wasting disease. As I explained on this blog’s Facebook page (take advantage of that, too!), I am working on a sequel to one of my most popular books: Postmodern Times: A Christian Guide to Contemporary Thought and Culture.

That was published back in 1994, and while it still holds up remarkably well, there have been some new developments since then. This new book, also to be published by Crossway, will be called Post-Christian Times: A New Christian Guide to Contemporary Thought and Culture. The manuscript is due on January 1, 2019, so I’m having to work hard to make the deadline.

That requires not spending quite as much time blogging as has been my custom. I’m devoting the weekends to writing blog posts, then timing them to pop up throughout the week. Usually that will be one per day. Sometimes, though, I might put up an extra one when something happens that I feel deserves your and my urgent attention. Doing the blog this way means that the items might not be quite as current or newsy as they used to be, so please bear with me.

Thanks for reading and supporting this blog! I’ve been doing this for a long time, by my calculations for about 15 years–first with World Magazine‘s blog, then on my own, and now with Patheos. Some of you have been with me for that whole time. I really appreciate that.

Enough about me. We will return to our regularly scheduled programming. . . .

Photo: Me in Finland

Premium Content

“The Assumption of the Humanity into God”

Last updated on: May 9, 2018 at 1:17 pm By Gene Veith

0 Comments

The resurrected Jesus was with His disciples for 40 days, and then He returned to His Father. So on the 40th day after Easter, making it always fall on a Thursday, we celebrate Ascension Day. Today is that day.

This is one of the most significant and yet strangely neglected observances of the Church Year. Part of the problem is that it is so misunderstood today.

Christ’s Ascension does not mean that He goes away and is no longer with us. To the contrary, shortly before that event, Jesus said, “behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20). In His time on earth, Jesus was spatially limited to being in one time and one place. But now that He is “seated at the right hand” of God the Father (Ephesians 1:20), the Son of God “fills all in all” (Ephesians 1:23).

What the Ascension Makes Possible

Because of the Ascension, Jesus can be present with us in a more intimate way than ever before, even those of us who are living thousands of years after He walked the earth. Now He can dwell in our hearts (Ephesians 3:17). Now He can be in our midst where two or three are gathered in His name (Matthew 18:20). Now He can be present in Holy Communion (1 Corinthians 11:23-29).

Because of the Ascension, Jesus can intercede for us continually before the Throne of God. We can pray to Him, confess our sins to Him, and He can save us. “We have such a high priest, one who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven, a minister in the holy places” (Hebrews 8:1-2). Therefore, “he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them” (Hebrews 7:25).

Because of the Ascension, the Church is created. Yes, His body was taken up into Heaven. But His body is also still here, because the Church is His body (1 Corinthians 12: 12-27), made such by our baptisms (1 Corinthians 12:23) and His continual gift of His body in the Lord’s Supper (1 Corinthians 10:16-17). These are not metaphors, but realities.

Because of the Ascension, the Church is empowered. “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father” (John 14:12). Jesus healed many, but how many has He healed through the Church, which invented hospitals? Jesus fed 5000 at one time, but how many has the Church fed? Jesus preached and taught multitudes, but how many more have heard Christ’s Word through the preaching and teaching of the Church?

The Ascension and the Incarnation

As if all of this were not enough, the Ascension is the fulfillment of the Incarnation. I have heard it said that the Ascension marks the end of the Incarnation, but nothing could be further from the truth. Jesus ascended bodily into Heaven. The incarnate Son of God takes His place in the Trinity.

The Athanasian Creed, unpacking the Trinity and the mystery of the Incarnation, says this of Christ:

Although He is God and man, He is not two, but one Christ: one, however, not by the conversion of the divinity into flesh, but by the assumption of the humanity into God.

Celebrating the Ascension

Ascension Day doesn’t involve buying Ascension presents to put under the Ascension tree, and there is no Ascension Bunny. So it doesn’t have the traction of Christmas and Easter. But many of us have been calling for a Christian holiday that is non-commericalized and non-secularized. We have one. So why don’t we celebrate it?

Though still a national public holiday in a number of countries, both Catholic and Protestant (specifically, Austria, Belgium, Colombia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Haiti, Iceland, Indonesia, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Madagascar, Namibia, the Netherlands, Norway, Swaziland, Sweden, Switzerland, and Vanuatu), most American congregations tend to skip over Ascension Day, with some–including Catholics–pushing off the observance to Sunday.

What would be some good ways to celebrate?

Go to church if you can. If your congregation doesn’t have an Ascension service on Thursday or at least on Sunday, visit one that does. (Your friendly neighborhood Lutheran church probably will.)

Take advantage of the Ascended Christ’s presence with you. Ideally, that would include worship and receiving the Sacrament. But if that isn’t possible, or even if it is, pray to the Ascended Christ as your intercessor, your high priest in the heavenly places

Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. (Hebrews 4:14-16)

Illustration: Rembrandt’s “The Ascension” (1636), [Public domain or CC0], from Wikimedia Commons

Premium Content