“The white man’s dollar is his god,” wrote the Black journalist and civil rights activist Ida B. Wells wrote in her 1892 pamphlet, Southern Horrors. “The appeal to the white man’s pocket has ever been more effectual than all the appeals ever made to his conscience.”
Wells’s writings inspired the Rev. Malcolm Foley, a historian at Baylor University, who started his academic career studying early medieval theology, to investigate the historic relationship between money and race. His book, The Anti-Greed Gospel: Exposing Greed as the True Root of Racism (Brazos, out now), draws from early Christian sources to modern African-American theology to make a connection he says too few Christians make—that greed is at the heart of the evil of racism. Foley spoke with PW about why resisting greed is urgent work for Christians today.
Why do you say Christianity is anti-greed?
In Acts 2 after the Holy Spirit descends on the people of God, they're described as taking part in four actions that show they are devoted to the apostles: teaching; prayer; eating together; and the fellowship of sharing their goods. What that indicates to me is that one of the most significant witnesses of Christian communities is their economic witness.
Where do you draw a historical connection between greed and racism?
When the Portuguese first got involved in chattel slavery in the 15th century, they didn’t do so because they were racist. They did so because they had markets they wanted to expand. As their wealth started to build, they had to justify that practice, both to themselves and to the Pope. So, they said, these Africans are savages that need to be civilized, or heathens that need to be Christianized. They said, just ignore the fact that people are making a whole bunch of money off the slavery system.
How do you see your book in the context of the current political and financial climate?
At a time when it seems so abundantly clear that greed is in charge and running rampant, I think people need to be equipped to build communities that resist those assumptions, and to build communities of solidarity in the midst of uncertainty. If we want to build Christian communities that resist racism, we have to resist greed. Otherwise, we’re just dealing with the extremities of the demon, rather than its eyes and its heart.
How can churches be anti-greed and antiracist?
The particular mode of capitalism that we're under encourages us to be either producers or consumers. The Christian gospel actually encourages us to be fundamentally sharers. All of us should see all of the resources that we have at our disposal as gifts from the Lord, meant to be shared. It’s a church budget question: how do the people in those communities see their resources?
How do you hope readers will use your book?
I hope it takes root in small groups in churches. I hope pastors get a hold of it and are reminded of the fact that greed is the sin that Jesus talks about the most. The cosmic battle for our soul between God and riches lies at the root of most of the issues that we're dealing with today. I hope it ultimately revives the American church to one that's not complicit in the ways of in the ways of greed, but one that's deeply committed to the priorities of the kingdom of God.
