Dan’s Thoughts: Christianity and Capitalism

Dan’s been working on a series on Christianity and Capitalism that is well worth your time. Here’s a snippet from his latest post in the series:

Unfortunately, just as the outsourcing of blue-collar jobs devastated life in many North American inner-cities, so the outsourcing of charity work has had a similarly devastating impact upon the life of the Church. Generally what we find are Christians who provide others with the material resources that those others need in order to engage in charitable actions. So, for example, instead of feeding the hungry, they make a financial donation to a soup kitchen; instead of clothing the naked, they give some used clothes to the Salvation Army; instead of inviting the homeless poor into their homes, they donate some money to a homeless shelter. Consequently in these (and other) ways, charity is outsourced. Christians have learned how to share material resources with the poor, while also ensuring that their actual lives are well separated from the poor. Therefore, if we are to learn to share our lives together with the poor, we must move beyond this approach to charity. (read the rest here)

Here is the series thus far:

• Christianity and Capitalism Part 1: A Community of Beggars
• Christianity and Capitalism Part 2: Imagining more than a Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing
• Christianity and Capitalism Part 3: Journeying Toward a Christian Political Economics
• Christianity and Capitalism Part 4: Sharing as Nonsensical Charity
• Christianity and Capitalism Part 5: Sharing and Debt
• Christianity and Capitalism Part 6: The Reformation of Desire
• Christianity and Capitalism Part 7: Sharing Life Together
• Christianity and Capitalism Part 8: Missional Sharing (Priorities and Life-Trajectories)
• Christianity and Capitalism Part 9: Missional Sharing (Life Together with the Poor)

A great series. Worth taking the time to read through.

for further reading . . .

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