Why do most religious conservatives support capitalist ideology?
I wonder why religious conservatives are mostly synonymous with capitalism supporters ? I mean arent most religions inherently socialistic ? What makes conservatives support capitalism , despite not being among the rich?
Fox News. Televangelists. Trump.
Religion can be a very positive tool to bring communities together and support one another, but capitalism means exploitation, and nothing's easier to exploit than blind faith.
I wonder why would a person keep a rich persons interest over their own ? Free or affordable healthcare and college would be such a great help , and while the planet can support food and housing for all , many are deliberately kept hungry and homeless and that is rooted in corporate greed most of the times . Gulliblity at another level!
They get told the current hierarchy is gods will and they’re not allowed to subvert that
While I 100% agree with you, I think you listed the symptoms rather than the root cause. Religious people have been supporting the Republican party well... religiously since as long as I can remember, well before Trump and Fox News.
I think it's something that the Republican party has specifically built their messaging around and then those things have grown out of it as a result. Someone posted a good article the other day about how politicians supporting segregation were able to manufacture a wedge issue (abortion) in the 70s to capture the religious vote, who didn't see it as a religious issue until they were basically told it was.
Religion has been sucking the teet of conservative politics for a LOT longer than Fox News, Televangelist, and Trump have been around.
It goes far deeper and is way more fundamental than those things.
I agree completely, but on the surface, those are the three biggest modern contributors.
A lot of people's "sincerely held" beliefs are only skin-deep, so surface-level agitators and misinformation peddlers do have a lot of power in our society. If they ceased to exist, I suspect a lot of the hatred and vitriol their followers spew would cease, as well - assuming an equally-evil replacement didn't immediately rise.
A lot of people are stuck in their stale echo chambers, and just getting a breath of fresh air could do them wonders.
Trump is a symptom, not a cause.
He's a bit of both, I'd say.
The just-world hypothesis plays a big part.
Basically karma ? So do they believe that their actions will reap them benefits ? While they want to discrimiate people on basis of race and sexuality ?
There's an authoritarian theme to it all. They believe their god to be all-powerful and all-just. Therefore, that god must reward good actions and punish bad ones. The reward that our global society seems to run the most on is money. Therefore, any actions that gain you a lot of money must be good actions, thereby justifying the means of capitalism.
Prosperity theology, they call it.
Because "conservative" isn't an ideology, it's a mindset. It's based on the idea that the in-group is good, not because of what they believe but because of who they are. So because they are good, whatever they want is good. It does not matter if their wants are contradictory or hypocritical or irrational in any way. They define the parameters for what is worth preserving, and then anyone who wants to stop them is part of the out-group and therefore bad. The out-group is not bad because they hold bad positions. The out-group could change their positions, and they would still be bad becauae it is part of their identity.
Conservatives also do not require any justification for their wants, but having a religious justification is like catnip. Because of the conservative mindset, they have no problem picking and choosing the religious beliefs that support what they want while ignoring or attacking the ones that don't.
This is honestly an extremely weak take. Not going to start a debate with you, I’m not a conservative, but oversimplification and vilification does more harm than good.
Eh, is it vilification when they are actual villains?
Are you kidding me? Do you see the current conservatives in the United States right now?
Because they only use the Bible to pretend to be more holy than everyone else. It's just a moral license, they don't actually believe in the teachings of Jesus. They want to be in a holy club where everyone on the outside is inferior.
Its like libertarianism in America. They look at it like you can do anything you want. But the ignore the "not affecting anybody else" part of it.
And expect corporations not to shit in your water
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...
Success = hard work.
Hard work = not lazy.
Not lazy = good.
Rich / successful people = good people (unless they're involved in godless entertainment, of course)
Not successful = not working hard enough.
Not working hard enough = lazy.
Lazy = bad.
Poor / unsuccessful people = bad people
They do not think hard enough to see nuance. They just don't.
An old friend of mine once ranted to me about how poor women will keep popping out babies to get free government money & food. Like.... removed, do you know how actually difficult it is to get """free money""" from the government? Are you seriously mad that children are being fed? Do you think that poor people fund their "lavish lifestyles" off government funds? removed, POOR PEOPLE DON'T DO THAT!!! RICH PEOPLE DO!!!!
Does anyone else see "removed" in this comment? Is the instance editing comments to censor certain words or is it just the user?
The puritans at lemmy.ml censor "word-for-female-dog-beginning-with-B". All comments that you see as a member of that instance are censored before being shown to you.
They don't really support capitalism. They are simply submissive to authorities and support whatever their leaders say.
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?
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.
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.
In a term? Dominion mentality. Add a little master/servant hierarchy, a pinch of patriarchy and stir well.
...with a heavy does of the Property Gospel to keep the plebs in line.
I think what leads one to hold onto their religion and to support the social status quo are the same things: Attachement to what is familiar and reassuring and rejection of what is new and scary. Conservatives often try to appropriate religion to appear as the side of comfy, reassuring tradition, and represent progressives as the side of scary disrupters.
I didn’t check all of the comments, but most of the ones I saw were really poor jokes or just plain wrong. The reason that religion is so tied into conservatism goes back to Nixon, and the attempts made by Roger Ailes and others, including Ronald Reagan, to make sure a right wing president could never be held accountable again. This included a meeting with Reagan and hundreds of pastors in which they literally trained the pastors on how to convert their congregations to the rights hateful rhetoric, a big part of which was the demonization of abortion and the lionization of “the free market”. They’ve since been exporting this hateful rhetoric around the world by force and through traditional missionary style missions.
While I don’t doubt this happened, this isn’t the first real link between capitalism and religion, specifically Christianity. It can actually go way further back, like to the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Capitalism was beginning to take on its early forms, and doing what capitalism does best, which is reinforcing currently existing social hierarchies. When European ‘ancient farmers’ came over to the americas they needed labor, and ended up using Africans. Problem was, under English common law you weren’t supposed to own christian slaves. (Some slaves actually used this defense to escape slavery see Elizabeth key), and the region where slavery first popped off was Angola which was a largely christian country, so the colonies detached themselves from English comon law (which was one of the many stepping stones leading up to the American revolution) and changes various rules so that they could. That way they can keep holding slaves while using their religion to justify what they were doing. Religion was used to bolster capitalism, capitalism made religions people rich.
Abrahamic religions (as are most organized religions) are insanely heiarchical. Like we said before, capitalism has a habit of reinforcing those social heiarchies, so it’s not really that surprising that there a huge overlap there. Just like there’s a huge overlap between billionaires and capitalism supporters, or landlords and anti-union support.
I appreciate that addition, and agree. Thanks for adding on.
The Protestant Work Ethic equated Christian values with material success.
This should be higher up
Diligence, discipline and frugality? In America?
You will find that very often the scams, advice, self-help, doctrine, etc that draw these populations have one thing in common: if whatever it is doesn't work, it is because you are doing it wrong, not because the guidance is bad. That's why conservatives will defend the tax rates of people who have 5 orders of magnitude more wealth than they do - they believe that it is their own fault they aren't rich, and that anyone can become rich if they just try hard enough. It is why religious conservatives will still attack birth control in the face of their own kids having unwanted pregnancies. It is why natural medicine people will defend their practices even after it sends them to the hospital. They are more willing to believe that they themselves are at fault than the principles they believe in.
An important thing to keep in mind is that the practice of religion changes over time alongside culture, and is itself a part of culture. The Christianity of people living in places like Judea and Anatolia in the 1st century CE differs from the Christianity of, say, the Teutonic (not up on my post-Roman ethnicities, so might not be using the right term) tribes of Western Europe in the 6th century. This again differs from the Christianity of indigenous peoples in the Americas post-Columbus. In all these cases, these people had pre-existing cultural and religious beliefs which Christianity syncretised with instead of wholly replacing.
The Bible has been used to endorse slavery as well as oppose it, to condone violence and warfare as well as serve as the basis for radical non-violence. It is not “univocal”, because the various people who wrote and compiled it had their own beliefs and perspectives.
The various sects of Christianity differ in their values, beliefs, and even canon literature, and that’s before you get into Christianity as cultural practice rather than strict religion. Like all religions, Christianity is wonderfully human, encompassing our wide range of idiosyncrasies and contradictions, and that even includes people who don’t read the damn book! So yes, you’re going to find commonly accepted “Christian” practices which seem to clearly contradict the doctrine, but the doctrine contradicts itself, and serves people just as much as people should ostensibly serve it. The conception of Christianity as a unified religion, with 1 canon and 1 accepted interpretation, has never been accurate.
FWIW Early Christians did practice communal living and sharing of property (the New Testament tells us as much), and you can still see these things in practice today, albeit rarely. I also wouldn’t use modern terms like socialism to describe that sort of thing, because the economic order and class structures which Socialism and Communism are a response to literally did not exist at the time.
Because it's remarkably similar in form:
"each one takes care of himself and god takes care of all"
Vs
"Everybody pursues their own gain and the market takes care of everything"
PS: "the lord works in mysterious ways" Vs "the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent"
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1999/03/the-market-as-god/306397/
Market takes care of is a liberatarian myth !
I know, but when you said religious conservative, I immediately assumed American and economically conservative, but there are plenty of Christian social democrats in Europe.
I think I may have misunderstood your question: which ideology did you expect religious conservatives to support? And, where/when? Maybe they could be socialists, because the new testament encourages generosity. Or maybe they could be really conservative and rabidly monarchist, imperialist like in the past. Maybe it does not matter and they just "support" what there is in their country at the time or it doesn't matter where religion is separate from the state.
Important to add that it's really just in the US that this tie exists between religious conservatives (especially evangelicals) and capitalism. In many other parts of the world, religious people are more leftwing, especially to take care of the weakest among us.
Didn't the evangelists in Brasil massively support Bolsonaro?
Yes. Brazil and the US are among the few countries where evangelicals are hard right.
Yeah. In my country, the religious conservatives and the turbo capitalists still sit in the same party, so they generally work with each other, but they clearly are different factions. The capitalists mostly arent religious at all, and the religious conservatives care way more about the state of the agrarian sector and the social system than about capitalism.
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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.
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.
“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).
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.
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
Just read a news that evangelicals called christs teachings as weak !
If Jesus returned, they'd lynch him.
Max Weber's "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism" goes into how protestantism cradled capitalist growth. But I think it's a bit heavy handed to say folks support capitalist ideology. You don't really support ideology. The ideology is what supports capitalism or is capitalism itself. But Protestantism is generally has individualistic beliefs. No longer does the clergy intermediate relation to God. Protestants believe individuals have a personal and individual relation to god. This sense of individualism can overlap with capitalist mentalities of individual success and profit.
But I think your use of ideology is too vague and understanding of religion is too generalized. You really need to talk about particulars of specific religious beliefs and particulars of specific attitudes towards capitalism. There's not much to really comment on with such broad and vague brushstrokes.
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 https://providencemag.com/2020/07/christian-view-sovereignty/
Conservatism is based on ignorance. They don't even know what capitalism means.
Most people do not seem to know what capitalism means
Plain brainwashing. They're used to being coerced into believing stuff by fear mongering
This is about the Americas, yes? I believe its original roots was in Calvinism, that is, the brand of Christianity in the reformation era that was brought over to the Americas by early European settlers/colonisers as proposed by the theologian John Calvin. It's something about how God chose its people and gave them the grace of worldly wealth. Wealth is good because it comes from God, so it follows, that poverty is due to a lack of God's grace = immorality (laziness, lack of personal qualities, wickedness).
I think I read about this in a book about US American economy a couple of years ago, but I can't remember which book it was.
I’d recommend checking out “Jesus and John Wayne” it’s a book that digs into a lot of these ideas.
I'd assume same reason most politicians are. In a capitalist society, those that pool the most money will tend to gain the most power and influence. So the churches that talk to the rich man and say "of course god is blessing you because you are such a good person" get more money, and thus more influence, than the churches that pay attention to the "It's harder for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven". "Succesful" religious leaders become the ones to teach the next generation of religious leaders. Causing more drift into the same idea.
Then of course the pro-corporate candidates also do really good virtue signaling. Because when the religious leaders do not want to focus on the Rich, they still need a bad guy to rally against, and since nobody needs the church to tell them murderers and thieves are bad... the church takes a more strong stand against things that are accepted by society that they can consider against their faith. (abortion, LGBT etc...)
Because capitalism helps enforce a hierarchy, and conservative L's love hierarchies. Religion is just another tool used for this since it generally preaches obedience with a consequence for not following the right "rules". Most religion has nuance to that aspect, but if you erase the nuance it's an effective tool for enforcing those hierarchies those people love so much.
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.
This is not a an easy answer. Part of it is Prosperity gospel. Basically what if god showed you who was righteous by making the righteous rich. Why are you not rich, because you are not righteous. It started in the early part of the 1900s and quickly moved to tevevalgelism, even back during the days of radio.
Combine that with a string believe in the great man theory of his troy. Something right wing people are more likely to strongly believe in. Add to that a need for a social hierarchy that clears say "These are the better and by divine right they should rules and these are the lesser to be ruled over" you have a powerful mix. God is at the most top point of a hierarchy and below must be the best people, the real great men who will shape history. How so I tell who these great men are? The rich, if they are righteous then god will reward them with riches.
Then add a very distinct American version of Christianity. If it the christian thing to do then America will do and if Amercia does then it must the christian thing to do. America is capitalist therefore it is christian to be a capitalist.
These circles of logic all feed into the one conclusion of hyper christian national capitalism.
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.
Religious when it is about gay and trans people mostly.
And evolution. And maybe climate change.
Because conservatism is more important to them than religion, essentially.
Does not explain why do they support capitalistic policies , and this is not just in the US but other countries too!
It does.
(You can say the same about existing socialist democratic policies, too.)
It's just indoctrination.
People believe what they are taught, and relatively few questions anything seriously.
The majority of people continue to believe the religion they were raised in.
The majority of people believe in the economic system they were raised in.
The majority of the world's countries use mixes of capitalist & socialist policies (ie free-market economies with social safety net programs).
So most people support capitalist free-market systems, and would say they are pro-capitalism.
They also don't want you to cut their retirement government program levels.
And though most won't claim to support socialism, they love firefighters or libraries or roads, and they can't tell there's no difference. Because they aren't taught to question.
And most don't want to replace their existing systems with completely different systems. They just want them to provide better tesults and be less costly.
Religion is most effective at converting those more inclined to believe propaganda & appeals to authority.
So these dichotomies are even worse & more prevalent for the religious.
Those people breed children of mostly similar sentiment. If raised capitalist, those religious children won't question the obvious conflict. Their authorities tell them it's ok.
Their authorities may even modify the religion to fit the mold (ie Prosperity Gospel).
The religious authorities who suggest questioning existing systems receive pushback from followers and the system itself when they encourage critical thinking regarding the conflicts of capitalism and religion.
Examples include Martin Luther King Jr & the current Pope, both of whom were not well received with their criticisms of capitalism.
So again, it is just indoctrination with a sprinkling of ignorance.
I can't answer for America, but generally in democracies you get two and only two parties. Anyone taking a middle position cripples the side they're closest to.
Before Socialism was a thing, England had 'Liberals/Whigs' (what yanks would call libertarians, because they've somehow managed to repurpose the word liberal to mean the opposite of what it means) and 'Conservatives/Tories' (king and country and church and don't change things because you'll break them and hurt people).
And of course, like all political groups do, they hated each other.
The Church of England was once known as the Tory Party at Prayer. The Liberals were the radicals, the party of industry and progress and free markets and who cares who it hurts as long as it's the future.
With the rise of socialism/fascism/anarchism/progressivism, a truly radical program to rebuild society on utopian lines and use totalitarian terror to enable even more freedom and progress and human happiness, represented in England by the Labour Party, the 'conservatives' and 'liberals' were squeezed, and combined to oppose socialist thought, which hated them both and wanted to destroy everything they thought was worthwhile in the world.
So there came to pass an uneasy alliance in England between classical liberals and religious loonies, who'd naturally detest each other.
That's the modern Conservative party, who want to use radical social transformation and the power of the free market to go back to the glorious past, and are very much in favour of freedom of speech and thought as long as it's the sort of speech and thought that they approve of.
The Liberal Party effectively ceased to exist, because in its radicalism and desire for progress, it was more sympathetic to socialist thought, and so it got crushed.
Socialism has rather collapsed as an idea after an hundred years of practical experience with utopia, leaving Labour as the party of 'every problem can be solved by stealing more money and spending it on subsidies'. A position which is popular with those who benefit from subsidy, and unpopular with those who get their stuff stolen.
And of course, few of the people in either party actually believe in the causes they publicly espouse. They're not stupid. But public communications have to be simple-minded and rally tribal support.
Obviously this is a terrible system, but it's better than regular civil war, which is what you get in all other systems of government.
*Democracies using first-past-the-post without proportional representation
Sure, but that's the only system we know is stable even over the hundred years or so we've been doing the experiment.
I would be cautiously in favour of STV, but PR systems seem to get rid of the 'you can vote the bastards out' feature in favour of permanent government by the same people in various coalitions.
Being able to change the government without violence is, I think, the only real argument in favour of representative democracy, and it's an important feature, because it's what stops democracies having periodic civil wars, and focuses the parties on at least trying to appear to represent the median voter.
that was the most readable version of modern politics i have ever come across.
i learned a lot. thank you so much!
So kind! Thank you.
Forgive me, I am editing it in-place as more thoughts occur to me, so do make sure you still agree with it when I stop doing that, and edit your comment appropriately.
I can’t answer for America, but generally in democracies you get two and only two parties.
Your answer is both incredible specific to the UK and subtly incorrect. I don't quite have the time to write a full rebuttal, but the more egregious of errors is this one:
The Liberals were the radicals, the party of industry and progress and free markets and who cares who it hurts as long as it’s the future.
One of the core tenets of liberalism is the harm principle. Sure progress is important but so is not harming anyone. Your post seems to equate only socialism with bringing good to British society, when that quite simply is just not true, and refutable. The Labour Party in the UK quite successfully adopted a lot of the items on the liberal agenda, such as gender equality.
The FPTP system is quite poisonous to the political debate in the UK as the natural tendency that only one of two parties can dominate and thus removes all nuance and creates toxic tribalism.
Thank you for the correction! Where can I find the list of philosophical axioms espoused by the Whigs?
Because religious conservatism has pretty much always been focused on supporting systems of authority, and in the US the system of authority is capitalism.
People would probably be really surprised to see what 'heretical' sects of Christianity were talking about in the first few centuries compared to the version that was green lit by the Roman empire on the notion that political power was divinely intended.
Straight up comments attributed to Jesus decrying dynastic rule (seemingly referred to by Paul in 1 Cor 4), a parable about assassinating a powerful person, discouraging giving any money or rewards to prophets or priests, rejection of prayer and fasting and alms as either useful or necessary, and even discussions around Greek atomism and Lucretius's version of survival of the fittest.
And that's all in only one work/tradition.
But it's one that was buried in a jar for millennia after canonical Christianity was endorsed by the emperor, which followed with deciding what texts to allow and what to ban on eventual penalty of death.
The thing most people in the US believe today is the version that passed the filter of the Roman empire's oversight and involvement, from killing the initial leader to endorsing the eventual version that's probably at odds with the original teachings in places.
It shouldn't be a surprise that it goes hand in hand with boot licking and anti-critical thinking.
I would say that most "MAGA" or whatever equivalent regressive movement exists anywhere is not at all conservative (MAGA supporters attempted a coupe, which is radical, the opposite of conservative), that's just branding. In much the same way as the people's democratic republic of Korea is not democratic, "liberals" in the USA political landscape are usually leftists (typically with a lot of illiberal positions) etc.
It isn't that these people support capitalism (they are often ignorant of what capitalism even entails, the same way they think communism means anything they disagree with) it's that they vaguely support existing power and class structures, though again, from what I've seen they can rarely coherently describe what they support and what they oppose, outside of a few tailor designed talking points like abortion or transgenderism.
They dont want to be inconvenienced by their religion.
Behind the bastards did a 2 part podcast on this
[Behind the Bastards] Part One: How The Rich Ate Christianity 🅴 #behindTheBastards https://podcastaddict.com/behind-the-bastards/episode/137287957 via @PodcastAddict
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.
A few reasons: first, they are a central part of the power hierarchy since the middle age ; second communists and revolutionaries are anti-clerics, like they murdered religious people as much as nobles or capitalists.
So either they're bourgeoisie/artistocracy/nobility, or they're traumatised by the fanatical atheism.
Still, in many countries there weren't so many problems, so they made the Christian-Democrats. They are usually center-left or center-right parties, supporting economic help to the poors but very conservative for cultural freedom.
Some believers, even high in the Catholic hierarchy, are also very much leftists. They are more common in Africa or south America as far as I can tell.
Because most religious conservatives don't think beyond "what is acceptable to my group" and do that. Or appear to do that. And not rocking the boat is highly valued in those communities, so people who want to abuse others financially find ripe ground for it.
Might be the prosperity gospel
Basically… because of slavery.
If you take a look at an indigenous population and decide that both:
…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.
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).
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.
Could they be more credulous and hence more susceptible to the lies corporations tell us?
@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.
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.
Because most religious conservatives don't think beyond "what is acceptable to my group" and do that. Or appear to do that. And not rocking the boat is highly valued in those communities, so people who want to abuse others financially find ripe ground for it.
When people say they don't support capitalism then what is the system you see as a more viable alternative?
Edit: Imagine being downvoted for asking a question
Plenty of people who are critical of capitalism aren't necessarily advocating for an entirely different system. Rather, they're advocating for dealing with the problems of capitalism head-on, rather than pretending that they don't exist and allowing them to become worse.
Socialism is defined by the elimination of the purely capitalist class, wherin workers own the means of production.
That doesn't necessarily mean that capital isn't assigned for investment based upon market demand or that "EvEryoNe gEts pAId tHE SAmE" like others claim. Socialism in a modern economy can (and likely would be) market based, it just means that shareholders would be entirely made up of employees of a company (obviously this would lead to better conditions for workers, lower wages for executives and no dividend payments to people who aren't working). Taking a more academic definition of capitalism, it's entirely possible to be both socialist and capitalist. Few people are arguing against capitalism in entirety.
Socialism.
Check out how the Anarchists structured their society in Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War. George Orwell fought alongside them and wrote a book about it called Homage To Catalonia, where he describes how utopian it was while it existed. It also deeply soured him on communism, because he saw how the communists betrayed the anarchists during the war and how authoritarian they were compared to the left libertarian anarchists, which likely influenced him when writing Animal Farm.
The war was one of the defining events of his political outlook and a significant part of what led him to write in 1946, "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it."
Actual conservative here.
Not all progress is good. Its best made in measured doses.
Life is good. Sure there are problems, but they can be solved without completely changing the system. Better laws and regulations, going after those abusing the system, that sort if thing.
Also the only alternative presented is communism. And historcally, whats been advertised as communism has lead to a 100 million deaths, the oppression of everyone else involved, and generally bad shit. (No, Im not arguing about what is true communism)
off-topic. nowhere in your reply have you spoken about christianity.
What do you mean by "the only alternative presented is communism"?
Can you give examples of that, I'm interested to hear your thoughts.