Thought for the day

20 December 2008

God rest ye merry capitalists

‘Behold, I bring good news for all the people,’ the Christmas angel reassures the shepherds. Given that ‘all the people’ includes capitalists, has the Church a gospel for them, other than ‘Don’t be’?

Christianity’s down on capitalism surely stems from Christ. His impoverished birth in a stable sets the stamp on a life where market stalls are overturned, outcasts befriended, the poor championed, the powerful humbled. In dying a death reserved for the lowest of the low, Christ ends as he began: consistently setting his face against wealth and privilege.

Yet restricting Christ to a Che Guevara role fails to do justice to his sheer breadth. His parables invariably feature capitalists in a neutral and usually sympathetic light. Margaret Thatcher forced the point that the Good Samaritan needed money as well as good intentions to treat the Jew mugged on the Jericho road. Yet this most famous parable has a capitalist theme: how even when your fortunes dive, help comes from a surprising source. Another parable stars an ‘unjust steward’ facing sudden redundancy; this erstwhile Del Boy wheels and deals with his master’s debtors, slashing their bills so that they will later repay his ‘creative accounting’ by easing his enforced leisure. Despite this succession of shady deals, Christ commends him for taking action in the face of imminent crisis.

Other parables with capitalist themes? Market forces drive one vineyard owner, faced with an urgent harvest, to increase the hourly rate for his hired labourers by an eye-watering 1,200 per cent: at the end of the shift, those who’ve worked the final hour receive the same amount as those who’ve slogged for the whole day. When those who contracted in at the lower rate complain, the owner responds with the free-market creed, ‘Surely I am free to do what I like with my own money?’ His profligacy is just a pale reflection of God’s unconditional and indiscriminate love.

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