Of all the enemies that have combined to bring about the downfall of Christianity in the West none has been more deadly or more relentless than capitalism. The fact is that it is impossible to imagine two systems more completely incompatible than Christianity and capitalism.
Capitalism is the most thoroughly materialistic ideology that can be conceived of. Capitalism is interested only in things that can be objectively measured, and in the capitalist system there is only one standard of measurement – money. More money is good. Less money is bad. This standard applies to people as well as things. A person’s success in life is measured by how much money he has. Nothing else is relevant.
The incompatibility between Christianity and capitalism should have been obvious from the start. And it was obvious to some Christians. Unfortunately most Christians chose to shut their eyes to the contradictions. Even worse, many American Christians convinced themselves that capitalism was Christian. This is why American Christianity has failed so spectacularly. American Christians have embraced an ideology that was always inevitably going to destroy them.
There is no room for morality in capitalism. You can’t measure morality in monetary terms so therefore morality has no validity. More seriously, morality interferes with profits. Profits are good. Therefore morality is bad.
The big mistake Christians (especially in the US) made in the culture wars was to think that they could fight moral issues as individual battles. They focused on specific attacks on Christian morality, such as abortion and homosexuality. They were certainly correct in seeing abortion and homosexuality as evils, but they failed to see the big picture. They failed to see that they weren’t dealing with isolated attacks on Christian sexual morality. They were dealing with a system, capitalism, that was hostile to all Christian morality and all Christian values. And they were dealing with a system that was not going to compromise. This became (or should have become) clear with the emergence of globalist capitalism. The globalist capitalists intended to remove every obstacle in their path.
A major potential obstacle was Christianity. The idea that money is the measure of the good was obviously in pretty serious conflict with Christian teachings. The idea that the only motivations anyone should have were the accumulation and spending of money was not exactly in harmony with Christianity.
Global capitalists today are intensely hostile to Christianity but even without this overt hostility capitalism would still have the effect of undermining and eventually destroying Christianity. It’s simply in the nature of capitalism.
American Christians made another catastrophic mistake. Back in the 50s they convinced themselves that the real enemy was communism. They became obsessed with the communist threat. This led them to a tragically mistaken conclusion. Since communism was bad, capitalism must be good. Since communism was ungodly, capitalism must be godly.
Communism was a threat, but it was never anywhere near as serious a threat as capitalism.
Christianity can survive under communism. Communists might not approve of Christianity but they have no absolute need to destroy it. It’s not really particularly incompatible with communism. On the other hand Christianity cannot survive under capitalism.
Unfortunately Christians have made yet another strategic error, getting distracted by the social justice nonsense. Again they’re wasting their energies and failing to see the big picture. They’re putting themselves in a no-win situation. If they oppose the SJWs they’ll be painted by the media as nasty meanies. If they support the SJWs they’ll simply look weak and pathetic, and showing weakness to SJWs is a fatal mistake. Christians should focus on the real enemy, the globalist capitalists. Defeat them and the social justice nonsense will simply evaporate.