Each occasionally I come throughout a ebook that adjustments the best way I have a look at the world. Dorothy L. Sayers’s The Man Born to Be King was one such ebook (although technically a play cycle somewhat than a standard ebook). So too had been Makoto Fujimura’s Tradition Care, and Sandra Glahn’s No person’s Mom, and Elena Ferrante’s My Sensible Pal. Every of those led to a elementary shift in my excited about a specific matter—religion, or historical past, and even my circle of relatives background—or about life generally.
Malcolm Foley’s The Anti-Greed Gospel is one other such ebook. Foley, a pastor, historian, and advisor to the president of Baylor College, makes a provocative and convincing case for shifting our pondering on racism and tips on how to overcome it. “Opposite to in style opinion,” he writes, “race is just not primarily about pores and skin shade however about individuals looking for to categorize each other to be able to exploit them. It’s about greed.”
Foley backs up this rivalry with an abundance of historic proof and scriptural perception. The tragic historical past of racism, he demonstrates, may be traced on to the lust for wealth. White Europeans and Individuals kidnapped and enslaved Blacks from Africa not as a result of they hated them, however as a result of they wished free labor to assist them accumulate cash, land, and energy. That’s how the sin of racism took root, and that’s the reason, Foley argues, efforts to eradicate racial hatred won’t ever succeed except they take greed into consideration.
The tragic historical past of racism may be traced on to the lust for wealth.
In spite of everything, he exhibits us, greed continued to encourage racial persecution within the post-slavery period. We want solely have a look at the horrifying follow of lynching from Reconstruction onward to see the sample. Foley extensively cites the crusading journalist Ida B. Wells to indicate how flimsy or outright fabricated excuses for lynchings typically lined up the true motive: the will to hoard wealth and property and preserve Black individuals from accessing them.
As Foley explains:
One in all our main questions at any time when we encounter racism on this planet is that this: Who stands to profit politically or economically from racist actions? We are going to discover that when individuals act out of hate, such hate doesn’t emerge from a vacuum. Someplace alongside the road, self-interest crawled into the mind of the offender. After festering, it took a brand new kind: hate.
Foley attracts on Christ’s teachings about greed to drive his level dwelling. “This ebook is precipitated,” he writes,” by the truth that rival gods require blood sacrifice. Mammon is not any totally different. Jesus is just not exaggerating when he says we can’t serve two masters: God and Mammon. … We are going to hate one and love the opposite.”
As I stated, Foley’s highly effective presentation of his case has altered my views on the character of the issue. Within the second half of the ebook, the place he lays out potential options, he misplaced me a bit of, primarily as a result of he’s a dedicated pacifist and I’m not. He spends a great deal of time selling the thought, and I respect the thoroughness of his analysis and the energy of his convictions—particularly as he’s arguing towards his personal self-interest—however ultimately I nonetheless imagine there’s a spot for self-defense (and so did Foley’s heroine Ida B. Wells, as he acknowledges).
So I will not be Foley’s excellent reader, however I nonetheless deeply admire the general ethical imaginative and prescient he gives on this ebook, one which requires Christians to exhibit a love radical sufficient to push again towards our tradition’s profane worship of wealth and its lethal penalties. This battle is fought, he exhibits us, on each the religious and materials ranges, and combating it should require our creativeness, our creativity, our honesty, and our willingness to stroll alongside the oppressed and the struggling. If I can’t agree with Foley on each strategic element, I’m nonetheless very grateful for the knowledge and steering he gives right here. Books that change your pondering don’t come alongside day-after-day; after they do, they need to be savored.
This evaluate was initially revealed on Expensive, Unusual Issues! on Could 11, 2025. Republished right here with the creator’s permission.
