I wonder why religious conservatives are mostly synonymous with capitalism supporters ? I mean arent most religions inherently socialistic ? What makes conservatives support capitalism , despite not being among the rich?

  • pqdinfo@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I suspect you can find ways to read into the Bible whatever you want to read. As a basic example, modern Catholics are convinced the Bible outlaws abortion, and there’s a ton of road side billboards next to Catholic churches that supposedly quote Biblical anti-abortion statements. But the Catholic church didn’t adopt this position until the late 19th Century. It literally took nearly two millennia for anyone in the primary Christian religion to notice their book had these (supposedly) anti-abortion messages. What’s more likely, they missed them, they ignored them because it was inconvenient, or none of these quotes are as clear cut as the billboards would imply?

    Then you have the allegiance to the King James edition of the bible, which most Christian churches do, and that generally feeds into a more direct answer to what you’re asking.

    Why King James? What makes him more of an authority on what the Bible means than Jesus, his disciples, and the other contemporaries and near contemporaries who put the Bible together? Well, he’s a King of course.

    …crickets…

    And God loves powerful people?

    …crickets…

    Uh, OK, well, what about if God didn’t want him to be King, he wouldn’t be a King, therefore, ergo, God thought King James was a pretty cool dude and should be able to do whatever he wanted? Including edit the Bible and put some stuff in there that wasn’t in there originally?

    Ding ding ding!

    NOW is it starting to make sense? Because if God didn’t want Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos or Rupert Murdoch or Peter Theil or Sheldon Adelson or (long list of other rich jerks) to be rich and powerful, they wouldn’t be rich and powerful, right?

    Now, never mind the contradictions here, I mean, I’m pretty sure the Bible does, in fact, have some choice words to say about rich people, and they’re not positive, and it’s pretty anti-Roman Empire in parts, especially the bit about crucifixions, but that all requires reading the Bible, and not trying to find double meanings to justify the status quo.

    Add to that the fact the rich and powerful control the narrative and always will, and you’re left with Prosperity theology and all its ramifications becoming more and more a consensus in countries that allow people to become that rich and powerful.

    What the Bible says… well, “it’s not meant to be taken literally, it refers to any manufacturers of dairy products” The eye of a needle might be too small for a camel, but the loophole of not being meant to be taken literally certainly can be.

    • exegete@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      The comment that it took two thousand years for the church to land on its current stance on abortion is not entirely accurate. The Didache, an early Christian writing including a section on Christian ethics, explicitly forbids it.

      • pqdinfo@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I’m aware various groups and individuals appeared at various times during the last two millennia that opposed abortion on Biblical grounds. But I was specifically referring to the Catholic church. The quote you’re responding to was “(…) the Catholic church didn’t adopt this position until the late 19th Century. It literally took nearly two millennia for anyone in the primary Christian religion to notice their book had these (supposedly) anti-abortion messages.”

        Now, true, “anyone in the (Catholic church)” is probably hyperbole, but certainly “anyone in position to make decisions in the (Catholic church)” is accurate. They didn’t adopt their current stance until the late nineteenth century.

        • FourPacketsOfPeanuts@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          The Catholic church has nearly entirely considered abortion a sin since the first century (yes there are exceptions, but a minority). You are thinking of the adoption of “life begins at conception”, which was ruled in 1869. Prior to that the church considered early abortion an immoral sin on par with contraception. What changed in 1869 was the category from sin of contraception to sin of murder. But it was still “sin” beforehand.

    • Jay212127@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Your KJV is a really weird tangent. The KJV is the cornerstone in the Anglo-world because it was one of the only English translations. The Catholic Church continued to primarily use Latin Bibles (The Vulgate) until Vatican 2 when the Novus Ordo used local vernacular.

      Wanting a Bible in the language you speak and your subjects speak isn’t putting yourself over God. Please let us know what critical changes were made in the KJV that supports capitalism, a mode of economics that wouldn’t be theorized for atleast another century.

      • ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net
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        1 year ago

        The first widely published English Bible was the Tyndale bible, which heavily influenced the Geneva Bible, both of which is what the KJV is mostly based on and competed with until King James banned the Geneva Bible.

        While no Bible mentions or supports capitalism for the reasons you mentioned, both of those earlier translations had an anti-authoritarian bent to them that King James certainly didn’t like, and had edited.

        Soon after Elizabeth I took the throne in 1558, the flaws of both the Great Bible and the Geneva Bible (namely, that the Geneva Bible did not “conform to the ecclesiology and reflect the episcopal structure of the Church of England and its beliefs about an ordained clergy”) became painfully apparent.

        The Bishop of London added a qualification that the translators would add no marginal notes (which had been an issue in the Geneva Bible). King James cited two passages in the Geneva translation where he found the marginal notes offensive to the principles of divinely ordained royal supremacy: Exodus 1:19, where the Geneva Bible notes had commended the example of civil disobedience to the Egyptian Pharaoh showed by the Hebrew midwives, and also II Chronicles 15:16, where the Geneva Bible had criticized King Asa for not having executed his idolatrous ‘mother’, Queen Maachah (Maachah had actually been Asa’s grandmother, but James considered the Geneva Bible reference as sanctioning the execution of his own mother Mary, Queen of Scots). Further, the King gave the translators instructions designed to guarantee that the new version would conform to the ecclesiology of the Church of England. Certain Greek and Hebrew words were to be translated in a manner that reflected the traditional usage of the church. For example, old ecclesiastical words such as the word “church” were to be retained and not to be translated as “congregation”. The new translation would reflect the episcopal structure of the Church of England and traditional beliefs about ordained clergy.

        Tyndale’s use of the word ‘Congregation’ instead of church had pretty far reaching implications:

        When Tyndale translated the Greek word ἐκκλησία (ekklēsía) as congregation, he was thereby undermining the entire structure of the Catholic Church.

        Many of the reform movements believed in the authority of scripture alone. To them it dictated how a “true” church should be organized and administered. By changing the translation from church to congregation Tyndale was providing ammunition for the beliefs of the reformers. Their belief that the church was not a visible systematized institution but a body defined by believers, however organized, who held a specifically Protestant understanding of the Gospel and salvation was now to be found directly in Tyndale’s translation of Scripture.

        I wouldn’t say any of that explains how the KJV would influence religious conservatives to support capitalism, but I guess it could potentially have an influence over an acceptance of dogmatism within the Republican party? But I think most religious people don’t actually read the Bible anyway, so even that is a stretch. The more likely explanation is due to Protestant ‘work ethic’ as mentioned by @Copernican@lemmy.world

      • pqdinfo@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I didn’t say it (directly) supported capitalism, I said the fact modern Christians accept it despite significant changes to biblical canon was a demonstration that modern Christians believe that power is given by God.

        Also Capitalism isn’t that new. The term is, but it’s always been used to describe pre-existing market based economies and concentrations of wealth, and pretty much every era has had a significant civilization that had that.

        Your thing about English translations: Nobody’s criticizing translations into English. But the King James edition included, for example, the “sodomite” language which didn’t appear to come from any legitimate translation of the bibles. So it did significantly change the meaning of the Bible in places, in fairly negative ways.