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AttackBunny ,
@AttackBunny@kbin.social avatar

@jungekatz all the other answers are far more nuanced, and explain a lot more detail, but the most simple answers to your question are 1. Propaganda and 2. Herd mentality/echo chamber thinking.

Adderbox76 ,

Because they’re generally religious in name only. To them, religion is a tool to be used to get ahead. Networking through your church, appealing to other religious people in order to get votes, etc… etc…

cloudless ,
@cloudless@feddit.uk avatar

They don’t really support capitalism. They are simply submissive to authorities and support whatever their leaders say.

jungekatz OP ,

They have socialistic choices too , if we dont talk about the US , there are actual socialistic parties , and still the religious conservatives support partys those are capitalistic.

cloudless ,
@cloudless@feddit.uk avatar

Let’s use Hong Kong as an example.

Conservatives in Hong Kong are pro-Beijing. Most Buddhist and Taoist organisations in Hong Kong are pro-Beijing as well. Catholic communities in Hong Kong seem to be very divided politically.

That’s what I observed in Hong Kong. Most of the conservatives don’t seem to care about capitalism vs socialism, they just blindly follow their leaders.

m0darn ,

Very interesting perspective, thanks for sharing!

Gelcube69 ,
@Gelcube69@reddthat.com avatar

Have you considered that they happened to just be born into the best country in the world, the one true religion, and it’s everyone else’s job to step in line?

nednobbins ,

I’d start by narrowing the scope of this question to conservative Christians in the US and Europe. India has a larger population that the US and the EU combined, is quite religiously conservative and leans socialist. Even though the Catholic Church issued a “Decree Against Communism” in 1949, that has since been amended and many Catholics around the world embrace socialism. While modern Muslims do participate in market economies, Islam has some fairly strict laws against capitalism; Sukuk is the complex workaround they use in order to get against their prohibition against charging interest.

For Christians in the US and Europe I think there are a few major components.

Christianity has had strong capitalist elements for a long time. In particular, John Calvin argued, among other things, that God rewards good Christians in this life as well as the next. These rewards can take the form of material wealth and therefore material wealth is evidence of God’s favor. This philosophy was obviously extremely popular among the wealthy.

After WWII the US government wanted a way to convince people that our erstwhile allies, the USSR and China should now be considered enemies. One obvious element to emphasize was that they were both Communists. An element of Communism was godlessness, “Religion is the opiate of the masses.” So the US took the contrary stance and presented itself as a Christian nation. Two of the more obvious results were that “under God” was added to the pledge of allegiance and Congress replaced the unofficial “E Pluribus unum” (out of many, one) with, “In God we trust.” Since it was primarily intended to be anti-communist it was, effectively, pro-capitalist.

In the US there was also a deliberate shift when George HW Bush realized that evangelical Christians made up a large part of the Republican base. At the time churches had a fairly strong aversion to politics. They generally considered politics and economics to be part of the profane world and thought it was beneath them. He managed to convince them that the profane wasn’t just irrelevant to spiritual health, it was an active threat. By this view, good Christians couldn’t ignore politics they had to take an active role to help fight Satan. Since the Republicans were the ones actively recruiting Evangelicals into politics they made sure the message stayed supportive of their policies (including economic policies).

kibiz0r ,

Basically… because of slavery.

If you take a look at an indigenous population and decide that both:

  1. They are lazy, because their labor only produces subsistence and isn’t captured as surplus value stored in currency
  2. Their laziness is a moral failing which will doom them to eternal suffering

…then you have now put yourself in a mental model where you have a moral duty to force that person to work for (your) profit instead of subsistence, in order to save their soul.

If you have a whole country that thinks this way, they will try to enslave the whole world and feel good about doing so.

So in a Darwinian way, that mentality is the most “fit”. It’s very uhhh “successful”. And so it propagates.

vlad76 ,
@vlad76@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

This isn’t how it is. But it’s how they see it. Again, this is from their point of view. Or at least, it’s what I heard from them.

Capitalism is about self reliance, “pulling yourself up by bootstraps”, getting out there and making your own way with no higher power (as in humans) standing in your way. They see socialism as a government forcing people to give up their own hard earned gains to give to others. The difference with Christianity is because God is telling them to do it. If God tells you to go feed the poor, then it’s OK. If you choose to do it yourself, then it’s also fine. If the government wants to do it without promoting their religion, then it’s bad. Because you’re not doing it for God.

Nemo ,

Two reasons:

In the 70’s and 80’s in the US, the economic right wing formed an alliance of convenience with religious social conservatives (notably not Roman Catholics, Episcopalians, and other non-Protestant sects) to seek polit8cal power.

Second, Christianity holds that humans tend to be sinful and selfish, and thus utopian schemes that rely on participants to be unselfish and egalitarian are doomed at scale, becoming instead forces of oppression.

Throw in Communism’s historical opposition to religion as icing on the cake.

Smokeydope ,
@Smokeydope@lemmy.world avatar

Hypocritical self interest I think. Many people who claim to be Christians don’t understand or care about the teachings of Christ. Religion is used by these people more as a social boon than a means of philosophical/spiritual teachings.

Check out this comic strip ‘the gospel of supply side Jesus’ to understand the version of Christ they truly worship

imgur.com/gallery/bCqRp

jungekatz ,

Just read a news that evangelicals called christs teachings as weak !

xuxebiko ,

If Jesus returned, they'd lynch him.

misk ,

Religion is not the goal of conservatives, it’s a tool to preserve hierarchy in the society. Capitalism is another tool that achieves that.

The people that aren’t wealthy but are conservative benefit from hierarchy enforced by religion. It ensures that they’re not on the bottom of society - that place is intended for various minorities.

robotrash ,

But it seems like in general white conservatives are at the extreme bottom in most scenarios… they’re just also blinded by the “it’s just not my turn to be rich yet” fallacy.

misk ,

If you’re at the extreme bottom there’s little chance to move upwards in capitalism but it’s comforting to have some undesirables who have it even worse than you.

xuxebiko , (edited )

“If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.”
― Lyndon B. Johnson

Both religion and capitalism ensure white conservatives always have someone to look down on and they in return lends them their loud voice & violence.

ETA : Religion + capitalism's symbiotic behaviour is not restricted to white conservatives. They have the same relationship with every ethnic & religious majoritarian conservative. India has been experiencing it since 2014 where Hindu supremacists support big corporates even when the corporates have created enormous inflation. In return these corporates control mainstream media and fund Hindu supremacist leaders who paint targets on the back of minority religions (currently, Muslims & Christians).

WtfEvenIsExistence ,

Because communism bad mkay? These god-hating commies trying to take away our religious freedumz. Don’t you know there’s only 2 ecomonic systems in the world? It’s Capitalism vs Communism and communism bad because authoritarianism. There’s totally no possible mixed economy compromises like that those idiots tried in Norway where a democracy still exists.

cogman ,

Behind the bastards did a 2 part podcast on this

[Behind the Bastards] Part One: How The Rich Ate Christianity 🅴 podcastaddict.com/…/137287957 via @PodcastAddict

chtbl.com/track/5899E/podtrac.com/…/audio.mp3?utm…

blazera ,
@blazera@kbin.social avatar

They dont want to be inconvenienced by their religion.

OldWoodFrame ,

What is the percentage of the Western world that believes in profit motive and private ownership of property, 90%? I don’t think it’s BECAUSE they are religious conservatives.

I don’t think religions are inherently socialistic. There’s a socialist reading of the text, but in terms of like the historical role of the Catholic church it was more like a government than a commune. Governments aren’t inherently socialistic (unless you’re using a pretty broad view of the word). They help the poor and set rules to follow but they’re only directly managing their portion (10%-30%) of the economy, the rest can be anything.

DeepThought42 ,

Besides some of the other good points brought up here, I’d like to say that it’s because communist countries typically were/are anti-religion, so it makes sense that religious leaders in capitalist countries would oppose any form of government that seeks to limit organized religion. So, they support capitalism because it’s the opposite of communism.

motorheadkusanagi ,
@motorheadkusanagi@lemmy.world avatar

They do it because of capitalism’s decentralized properties.

First, they fear a government having power over them. This can seem irrational, but they interpreted WW2 as 1.) proof that a government can be used to wipe out people it disagrees with, and 2.) that absolute sovereignty in the hands of man made institutions is a thread to god as the supreme sovereign.

The decentralization of capitalism, and democracy, gives them the ability to disconnect as much as possible from anything they dont agree with. This is why they talk about freedom while doing hateful things in the name of their lord. Theyre economically free (to be hateful).

A lot of this mentality really starts after WW2. First the war is won. Then they push to make America as christian as possible. About 50% of US citizens claimed to be christian in 1950, but it is 90% by the 1970’s. In God We Trust is put on US money and added to the national anthem in the 50’s. This is important because the US is starting to fight the cold war against atheistic communists. The power of capitalism becomes part of a global propaganda effort to demonstrate the weakness of the godless systems. The republicans align themselves with christianity, locking it in with Reagan’s election in 1980, and now capitalism and christianity are intertwined and propagandized to the point of not resembling the original ideas anymore. Give that 44 years, and here we are.

On Christian Soverignty, written by an influential christian just after WW2 providencemag.com/…/christian-view-sovereignty/

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