" Beginig Of The End " - Capitalism and Christianity in Western society

By Michael Skywood

A reporter once asked Mahatma Ghandi what he thought of civilisation in the west. "I think it would be a good idea," he said. The same answer might apply to the question, "What do you think of Christianity in the West?"

Most of the Western Christian 'democracies' have lost much of their Christian culture. Even though many of the words and images still remain, secularism and materialism dominate - especially in the West  today, its people tend to bow more to the god of greed than the God of the Scriptures. 

Napoleon once accused the British of being a nation of shopkeepers, would he call us a nation of supermarket goers now?

 

Jeremiah Wright, Obama's original spiritual advisor explains how frustrated he is about how society has changed in the USA.

 

"If you notice, Jesus taught us to pray, . . . . . . . I realize that the country is not all Christian - but just in terms of the principles that I believe cut across interfaith lines and boundaries is in the prayer. 

The model prayer the Lord taught us as the Lord's disciples has no first person singular pronoun. It's 'our,' 'we,' 'us.' That got lost.

 

"We became a 'me'- focused, kind of dog-eat-dog, Ayn Rand, social Darwinist, survival of the fittest, be strong, and with no care, no concern, no compassion for those that are not born above the scratch line," 

Wright said. "And no concern to make the communities in which they live and the world in which we live a community which really cares about all of God's children, regardless of their colours and regardless of their faith."

 

Prior to the first World War, Christianity had been the bedrock, the mantle and soil of Britain. From Christianity we fuelled our wisdom, our rituals, our traditions, our melodies, our manners, our fairness, our sense of duty, our honesty and our sense of family and community.

        

Indeed, the beginning of the Working Class movement and the Labour Party were crafted out of a combination of chapel and communism, from mysticism and Marxism. The combined agenda was unashamedly to create a fairer society, to look after the poor, the vulnerable, the sick, the aged and to care for each other.

The working classes rebelled against being in service to the rich, or being exploited in filthy work, they looked around at the class system and saw the low social mobility and the terrible inequality of wealth in Great Britain.

The influence of Christian education

 

These days a lot of people hate Christianity - to wit, the propaganda against it has been ferocious and effective! - but my premise is that only two things fight unfettered capitalism: 

1. Christianity (and perhaps other major world religions of an ethical tradition) 

2. Socialism. Eradicate these and unbridled barbarism and Fascism result.

This is because ordinary people lose an important part of their political and ethical education and also because the rulers - instead of providing for the poor, the sick and the vulnerable - see only mammon and status for themselves and regard all below them as Darwinian failures. Such is the terror of Social Darwinism which is replacing Christianity.

 

Christians believed that every young child must be taught about both the evil in the world and the potential evil they carry within themselves. This has been criticised as a bizarre and a cruel practice, a practice that will frighten children and give them nightmares. Yet - even though the child may pass through a phase of this - the basic theory is that when a child is aware of evil, the child seeks to do good.

 

She becomes aware of her own short comings, and he takes his sinful self and tries to improve it, to heal it. Christian educators believe it is important to catch a child's sense of ethics when they are young, because by the time teenage-hood has arrived it is too late to lay a good bedrock for learning if it is not already there.

 

Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it. Proverbs 22:6

Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child; but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him. Proverbs 22:15

 

Very few schools in the UK now teach the seven virtues: Chastity, temperance, charity, diligence, patience, kindness and humility, nor the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit: wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord, nor the twelve fruits of the spirit: Charity, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, generosity, gentleness, faithfulness, modesty, self-control, and chastity - and if they do they are full!

 

If the seven deadly sins were better known would we be astonished by Britain in the 21st Century?

 

1)Wrath - Britain is involved in three appalling wars.

 

2) Avarice - Britain's culture of decency and neighbourliness is dissolving into a culture of turbo materialism.

 

3) Sloth - unemployment is rife and there are few jobs for young people and multitudes of TV channels (pushing out rubbish) are on all day for people to slump in front of.

 

4) Pride - the hero in today's society is the celebrity, the supermodel, the sports star, the pop star. All of who actually produce very little of sustainable value but who get enormous pay outs because they represent certain products and 'the aspiration to be rich'. Whatever happened to real heroes with genuine virtues?