The Cult Of Capitalism

Published in

Free Thinker

38 min readDec 6, 2024

Feudalism & Religion

Aren’t you glad we no longer live under feudalism?

Not only was the economic exploitation severe (with peasants giving a third to half of what they produced to the lords), but those lords held legal power over the peasants lives, making any resistance illegal and abuses common. Then there was the church, which was in league with the lords, expected another 10% from the peasants, preached that the lower status of the workers was God’s will, and that it was sinful to expect more.

Back then whatever education was available came through the church, which taught every Sunday that the church was the only way to salvation, and the sole hope of heaven at the end of a feudal slaves life, while challenging this was heresy and could cost someone their life.

The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
God made them, high or lowly,
And ordered their estate.
(‘All things bright and beautiful’, Cecil Frances Alexander, 1848.)1

Aren’t you happy you don’t live in such a situation today? But has that much really changed?

Sure, you can join any number of churches, but most still claim that you have to attend and donate to them to get to heaven.

Sure, you can pick between different employers, but just like the lords of old they can dismiss you, and leave you homeless and hungry if you aren’t lucky enough to get help from elsewhere.

Sure, your rulers are no longer appointed by kings, but they still expect loyalty, and should they ever consider you a threat to their systems they still have the power to imprison you or worse.

Perhaps not much has changed after all.

Feudalism was an economic system where a small ownership class profited from the labour of the many who must work for them. Its proponents considered it a matter of nature, and a divinely approved way of organising society. Through religious doctrine and force, they maintained that peasants were destined to serve, nobles to rule, and clergy to pray — each in their supposedly God-given station. This naturalisation of economic exploitation helped maintain feudal power relations for centuries.

Today Capitalism is our economic system. Where those who own capital extract wealth from those who must labour to survive. Its proponents consider it a matter of nature, and a divinely ordained triumph of the ‘invisible hand’ of the free market. Through economic theory and state power, they maintain that workers are free to sell their labour, owners are free to profit, and the market is free to determine value — each in their supposedly natural station. This way of making exploitation seem natural helps keep Capitalism in power, much as religious doctrine once justified feudal hierarchies. Like feudalism in the Middle Ages there are churches and priests who today still preach that Capitalism is the only system that God approves of.

But it wasn’t always so. Capitalism wasn’t always treated as an inescapable and inevitable and even natural part of life. It’s early economists specialised in observing and describing it, not in promoting it. In fact many of them focused on how to temper some of the results of its inequalities. They never made existential claims about it being good or kind, or even a blessing. They strenuously avoided any cross-over with ideological or religious language or association at all.

The Corporate Takeover of Religion

Anti-Capitalist Christians

A Hundred years ago religion was generally hostile to Capitalism. Priests criticised wealth and interest (usury as they called it)2, and they elevated the values of selflessness, charity and service as ideals.3 This manifested itself at that time in the then popular Social Gospel movement that sought to alleviate suffering in practical ways.

When Capitalists began to feel they were unappreciated and sought to fight back (as covered in the previous article, ‘The Capitalists Strike Back’) they found not only resistance among academia and workers, but also among religion and preachers, and realised that if they were going to win the hearts and minds of people in the pews they would need to find a way to influence them too.

The corporate effort to reshape Christianity’s relationship with Capitalism was a calculated strategy to overcome what they saw as a significant cultural obstacle. But how could devout Christians be convinced to reconcile Capitalism with their Christian beliefs? This was the challenge the corporations faced.

Apostle To Millionaires

By the 1940s, financial interests had begun a sophisticated campaign to reshape American Christianity’s relationship with Capitalism. The effort was spearheaded by the Reverend James W. Fifield Jr., whose ‘Spiritual Mobilization’ movement emerged as a powerful force for merging Christian doctrine with free-market ideology. Fifield, sometimes called ‘the Apostle to Millionaires’, launched an explicit crusade to counter the Social Gospel movement with what he termed a new ‘Gospel of free enterprise.’

The movement’s success was no accident. As historian Kevin M. Kruse reveals in his groundbreaking work ‘One Nation Under God’ (2015), Spiritual Mobilization received substantial financial backing from America’s corporate elite. Fifield’s financial records tell a revealing story: by 1947, his organisation commanded a budget of $400,000 — equivalent to over fity million in today’s money — largely furnished by business donations. Major industrialists including Sun Oil Company’s J. Howard Pew, General Motors’ chairman Alfred P. Sloan, and executives from Chrysler and US Steel all opened their chequebooks to support this fusion of Christianity and Capitalism.

The corporate backing went beyond mere funding. Prominent businessmen, including Chrysler’s B.E. Hutchinson and Sun Oil’s Pew, took seats on Spiritual Mobilization’s advisory committee, helping to guide its message and mission. Their involvement helped reshape a religious movement into a sophisticated propaganda machine, recruiting thousands of ministers nationwide to preach the gospel of free enterprise from their pulpits. The movement’s central message was carefully crafted: it portrayed Roosevelt’s New Deal not merely as misguided economic policy, but as an assault on religious freedom itself.

This financially-funded reinterpretation of Christianity marked a crucial turning point in American religious and political history. By explicitly linking Christian values with unfettered Capitalism and portraying government intervention as godless Socialism, Spiritual Mobilization helped establish the theological foundation for modern conservative economics. The movement’s success in portraying free-market Capitalism as divinely ordained would reshape the American political landscape for decades to come.

The Power Of Positive Persuasion

Norman Vincent Peale rose to prominence as another crucial figure in this corporate-religious alliance, reaching millions through his 1952 bestseller ‘The Power of Positive Thinking’ and various media outlets. Where Fifield worked primarily with clergy, Peale’s books, radio programmes, and his magazine ‘Guideposts’ spoke directly to the American public. His Manhattan church, known as ‘The Cathedral of Capitalism’4, attracted wealthy businessmen, including a young Donald Trump, who appreciated his blend of Christianity and commerce.

Peale’s message received substantial backing from the same financial interests that supported Fifield. Major industrialists including J. Howard Pew, Alfred Sloan, and IBM founder Thomas Watson provided funding through his foundation and magazine. His ‘positive thinking’ philosophy effectively individualised success and failure, suggesting that poverty resulted from negative thinking rather than systemic economic conditions, a message that proved incredibly useful to businesses opposing New Deal reforms and labour unions.

The theological reframing of Christianity’s stance on Capitalism was methodical and far-reaching. Corporate-backed religious leaders developed ‘Christian libertarianism,’ which reinterpreted biblical teachings about wealth and poverty in ways that supported free-market ideology. Where Jesus had preached about the dangers of wealth and the virtue of sharing, new interpretations emphasised individual responsibility and portrayed material success as divine blessing. The rise of prosperity theology wasn’t accidental — it provided religious legitimacy to the pursuit of wealth and recast poverty as a sign of moral failure rather than systemic injustice.

Institutional partnerships formed the backbone of this transformation. Business interests methodically funded religious organisations, sponsored Christian publications, and supported conservative seminaries that would train the next generation of clergy in free-market principles. The National Association of Manufacturers’ 1952 campaign ‘How to Combat Socialism in America’s Churches’ exemplified this approach, providing detailed strategies for business leaders to influence religious institutions. These partnerships created a network of religious institutions dependent on business support and therefore receptive to the pro-Capitalist message.

Freedom Under The Market

Billy Graham established himself as perhaps the most influential figure in cementing the alliance between evangelical Christianity and corporate interests during the Cold War era. His crusades and media presence made him the most visible religious figure in America, and he used this platform to frame the ideological struggle with communism in stark spiritual terms. Graham didn’t merely present communism as an alternative economic system, he portrayed it as a satanic force threatening Christianity itself.

Graham’s influence was particularly powerful in linking business, religion, and Cold War politics into a coherent worldview. By promoting ‘freedom under God’ as the Christian alternative to communism, he provided crucial religious legitimacy to free-market ideology. His messaging transformed economic policy debates into spiritual warfare, where support for Capitalism became a matter of religious faith rather than rational debate. Through his work, evangelical Christianity became inextricably linked with free-market principles, creating a theological framework where criticism of Capitalism could be interpreted as an attack on religious freedom itself.

In Eisenhower We Trust

This combination of religious anti-communism with free market ideology manifested itself most dramatically during the Eisenhower administration, significantly reshaping America’s civil identity. The period saw Capitalism frequently portrayed as God’s chosen economic system, whilst Soviet Leninism — mischaracterised broadly as ‘communism’ — replaced the oligarchs as the primary antagonist in the working man’s story. Christian critics of Capitalism found themselves effectively silenced, risking being branded as Godless communist sympathisers.

This ideological shift was implemented through formal changes to American civil religion. The Eisenhower era saw the addition of ‘under God’ to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954 and the adoption of ‘In God We Trust’ as the national motto in 1956. The institution of the National Prayer Breakfast created regular opportunities for religious and business leaders to mingle with political power brokers, whilst a new form of civil religion emerged that bound together American patriotism, Christian faith, and free market Capitalism. These weren’t merely symbolic changes, they represented the successful culmination of corporate America’s campaign to reshape Christianity’s relationship with Capitalism, creating a powerful fusion of religious, patriotic, and economic orthodoxy that would dominate American cultural life for until the present.

Organizations like the Christian Freedom Foundation and Spiritual Mobilization served as crucial bridges between business interests and religious communities. Their publications reached tens of thousands of ministers, providing them with ready-made sermons that married free-market principles with Christian theology. These materials presented Capitalism not just as economically efficient but as morally righteous, while Socialism was portrayed as both practically and spiritually bankrupt. Through conferences, seminars, and educational materials, they created a generation of clergy who saw defending Capitalism as part of their religious duty. As one National Association of Manufacturers document from 1965 noted: ‘We have succeeded in making free enterprise a moral cause and Socialism a sin in the eyes of many religious Americans.’

The results of this campaign fundamentally altered American Christianity. The Social Gospel movement, which had emphasized collective responsibility and economic justice, was largely replaced by an individualistic theology that focused on personal salvation and individual responsibility. Churches that had once been bases for labour organising became strongholds of anti-union sentiment. The rise of the Religious Right in the 1970s, with its fusion of conservative Christianity and free-market ideology, represented the culmination of this transformation. What began as a corporate project to neutralise religious opposition to Capitalism ended up creating one of its most powerful allies.

Parallels Between Religion and Capitalism

Yet society was still becoming more secular, particularly among the educated classes, so Capitalist propaganda had to evolve beyond merely co-opting Christian institutions. Instead, it developed its own quasi-religious characteristics, filling the spiritual void left by declining traditional religious adherence. This evolution was perhaps inevitable, as Max Weber had noted in ‘The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism’, Capitalism had always possessed a ‘religious character’, emerging as it did from Calvinist and Puritan traditions.

Indeed, what started as an effort to align Christianity with Capitalism ultimately resulted in Capitalism itself adopting the structure and function of a religion. In an increasingly secular world, Capitalism didn’t simply partner with religion, it became one, complete with its own system of beliefs, rituals, and moral codes.

Religious Structural Similarities

Just as Christianity once permeated every aspect of medieval life, Capitalism has evolved beyond a mere economic system to become a quasi-religious structure that governs our modern existence. In our less religious world, Capitalism has not eliminated religious thinking but rather adopted and transformed it, creating its own system of beliefs, rituals, and hierarchies that mirror those of traditional faiths.

The structural parallels between medieval Christianity and modern Capitalism when it comes to their hierarchical organisation are remarkable. At the top sits a new form of divine royalty: billionaires, owners and wealthy celebrities, who are portrayed as possessing almost mythical qualities of exceptional talent or genius. Below them exists a priestly class of CEOs, major shareholders and economists who interpret the sacred texts of the market, whilst politicians and advisors function as a contemporary royal court, maintaining and legitimising the system through policy and rhetoric.

Below this ruling elite, society stratifies into distinct castes that mirror medieval social structures. The self-employed represent a kind of minor nobility or merchant class, nominally independent but still beholden to the system’s broader power structures. Managers serve as the modern equivalent of bailiffs and overseers, enforcing the will of the ownership class whilst themselves remaining subordinate to it. Professionals — doctors, lawyers, engineers — parallel the educated scribes and craftsmen of old, essential to the functioning of society yet firmly controlled by the institutional framework above them.

Manual workers, much like their medieval peasant counterparts, form the backbone of productive labour upon which the entire structure rests, whilst menial workers occupy a position similar to that of servants in feudal households, essential yet rendered nearly invisible by the system. At the very bottom, the disabled, homeless, and otherwise disenfranchised exist as modern-day outcasts, much like the lepers and beggars of medieval times, their very existence used as a cautionary tale to keep others compliant through fear of falling into what the system frames as a moral failing rather than a structural inevitability.

Religious Principles

Central to Capitalism’s religious character is its promise of salvation through wealth accumulation, not dissimilar to Christianity’s promise of heavenly rewards. This doctrine operates on multiple levels: it offers the tantalising possibility that anyone might achieve material paradise through hard work and dedication (much like spiritual salvation), whilst simultaneously fostering a desperate longing for acceptance through conformity to consumer culture. The system maintains its power through this dual promise of individual spirituality and collective belonging.

The economic priesthood of modern Capitalism manifests through its class of professional economists and financial experts who, like medieval theologians, claim exclusive authority to interpret market signals and economic doctrine. These modern-day monastics produce complex theoretical justifications for the existing order, whilst corporate headquarters, shopping centres and theme parks serve as contemporary cathedrals, spaces of worship where the faithful perform the rituals of consumption.

Capitalism has reproduced religion’s moral divide between the saved and damned through its distinction between the ‘deserving rich’ and ‘undeserving poor’. Those who fail to achieve wealth are often demonised as morally deficient, lazy, or rebellious against the natural order, modern heretics who threaten the system’s legitimacy. Meanwhile, wage labour and taxation function as a form of secular tithing, whilst ubiquitous surveillance — from CCTV to consumer and employee tracking — creates an almost omniscient system of observation reminiscent of divine oversight.

Capitalism, like traditional faiths, demands acceptance of certain unquestionable articles of faith that often defy reasonable investigation. Chief among these is belief in ‘the invisible hand’, a mystical force akin to divine providence that supposedly guides markets toward the best outcomes. This parallels religious faith in an unseen deity ordering the universe, requiring believers to trust in forces they cannot directly observe or verify.

The system presents itself as both natural and inevitable, a cosmic order rather than a human construction. Just as medieval Christianity positioned its hierarchies as divinely ordained, Capitalism portrays its mechanisms of exploitation as immutable laws of nature. This naturalisation of the system serves to discourage questioning of its fundamental premises or imagining alternatives, much as medieval heresy was positioned as a rebellion against natural order.

The promise of salvation through material success forms another core tenet. Like religious promises of heavenly rewards for the faithful, Capitalism offers the prospect of wealth and status to those who follow its prescripts faithfully enough. This creates a powerful mechanism of control: those who fail to achieve success are seen not as victims of a systemic failure but as personally deficient in their faith and devotion to market principles.

Capitalism demands belief in several profound contradictions. It requires faith in a ‘free market’ that is actually heavily controlled by powerful interests. It insists that abstract currency represents real value, it is a form of transubstantiation5where symbolic money becomes more ‘real’ than the tangible goods and services it supposedly represents. It preaches that financial decisions exist in a moral vacuum, while simultaneously making profound moral judgments about worth and deservingness.

This belief system demands we reshape ourselves in its image, becoming ‘homo economicus’6, rational profit-maximising agents stripped of human complexity and community bonds. This evolution is unnatural and harmful to human wellbeing, yet resistance to it is seen as crazy. Those who question these doctrines or fail to conform are labelled as irrational, mentally ill, or in need of medication, as modern versions of heretics in need of correction or cure. The parallels to religious persecution are striking: just as medieval church authorities might diagnose spiritual ailments in those who questioned doctrine, modern Capitalism frames resistance to its principles as mental illness requiring treatment.

In this way, Capitalism successfully co-opted not just Christianity’s institutions and language, but the deep human need that religion traditionally served — the desire to find meaning and to serve something greater than ourselves. Where Christianity once provided community, purpose, and a moral framework that challenged material greed, moneyed interests systematically reshaped it into a belief system that sanctified their power.

For the religious, this allowed them to maintain their Christian identity and some principles while redirecting their primary devotion towards consumer behaviour and market participation. For the secular, it offered an alternative faith complete with its own rituals, moral codes, and promises of salvation through wealth and consumption. The transformation was so complete that by the late 20th century, many found it difficult to imagine any system of meaning — religious or not — that existed outside Capitalist values.

In the next article we’ll look briefly into the tensions between Capitalism and Christianity’s original teachings and early practice, which stood in stark contrast to Capitalist values. From Jesus’s teachings about wealth and community to the early church’s communal living — Christianity has a long history of challenging the very market principles it would later be enlisted to defend. Understanding this history helps us recognise how remarkable — and how deliberate — Capitalism’s co-option of Christianity truly was.

Christianity Vs Capitalism

The Cult Of Capitalism — Part 2

It is hard to imagine any major religious figure more anti-Capitalist than Jesus, that homeless beggar who would fall afoul of vagrancy laws in many Capitalist states today. His explicit teachings on wealth and poverty stand in direct opposition to Capitalist accumulation and the today’s prosperity gospel.

Camels and Needles

Jesus’s statement that ‘You cannot serve both God and Mammon’7 is absolute in its rejection of idolising wealth. Yet modern Capitalism attempts to reconcile these irreconcilable positions, often through elaborate theological gymnastics. No example better illustrates this than when Jesus stated, ‘Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.’8

Some have proposed that the original Greek word we have translated ‘camel’ (kamelos) was actually ‘rope’ (kamilos) in the original language. The idea is that a rope may have been very difficult to thread into a rug knitting needle, but not impossible. It is an interesting theory, but it didn’t actually appear until around the 12th century — when the Catholic church started having a problem with this passage and they changed their Greek manuscripts to reflect the word ‘rope’ instead of the original word.9 As far as the idea of the needle being very large goes, Luke’s account leaves no room for this interpretation as he uses the Greek word ‘belonh’10 which means a small surgeons needle. As Luke was a physician it is unlikely he used this specific word accidentally.

You’d think from such a simple straightforward teaching that no-one would be in any doubt as to the view of Jesus toward the rich and their unheavenly ways, but it wasn’t long after the creation of Capitalism that priests with wealthy congregants found imaginative ways to reconcile their followers riches with their Christian faith. One of the ways they did this was through inventing an apocryphal tale in which, ‘In Jerusalem there is a gate called “the eye of the needle” through which a camel could not pass until it stooped down to make it through the entrance.’ In other versions of the story the ‘needle’ was a narrow pass through the mountains.11 Of course these are just fabrications, invented almost two thousand years after the Bible account, but that did not stop some eager to find a religious justification for their riches from accepting it as true.

But one need only look at what prompted Jesus’ famous remark about the camel and the needle to see that his teachings don’t support such an interpretation. A few verses earlier a rich young man approaches Jesus asking what he must do to gain eternal life and Jesus tells him to keep the commandments, to which the man replies he has done so since his youth. Then comes the crucial moment: Jesus looks at him and says ‘If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.’ When the young man hears this, he goes away grieving, ‘for he had great wealth’.12

It’s immediately after this interaction that Jesus turns to his disciples and delivers his famous pronouncement about the camel and the needle. Some try to soften this by pointing to Jesus’ subsequent statement that ‘with God all things are possible’13, but the context makes clear what this ‘possibility’ requires — the voluntary relinquishment of wealth, something the rich young man found himself unable to do.

Good News To The Poor

Jesus’s message about poverty and wealth was radical and definitive, beginning with his declaration of purpose in Luke, where he quotes Isaiah: ‘The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.’14 This wasn’t mere rhetoric — he consistently centred on the poor in his teaching, most famously in the Beatitudes where he declares, ‘Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied.’15 Likewise he does not spare the rich from condemnation, ‘But woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort.’16

His instructions to the wealthy in the Sermon on the Mount were equally direct and challenging, as he commands them to, ‘Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.’17 Even in social matters, Jesus instructs his followers to ‘invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind’ to their banquets rather than the wealthy who could repay them, because ‘you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.’18 Most powerfully, Jesus identifies himself directly with the poor and suffering, stating ‘whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me’19 — making it clear that refusing aid to a beggar is equivalent to refusing Jesus himself. These teachings present a comprehensive critique of wealth accumulation and a radical call for economic redistribution that clashes with modern interpretations that attempt to reconcile Christianity with Capitalism.

Old Testament, Old Sins

The Old Testament prophets are equally damning in their critique of economic exploitation. In the book of the same name, Amos chastises the children of Israel for not caring for the poor and oppressed:

‘For three sins of Israel, even for four, I will not relent. [1] They sell the innocent for silver, and [2] the needy for a pair of sandals. [3] They trample on the heads of the poor as on the dust of the ground and [4] deny justice to the oppressed.’ (Amos 2:6)

Amos’s condemnation of those who ‘sell the innocent for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals’ could be directly applied to modern wage slavery and exploitative labour practices. His accusation that they ‘trample on the heads of the poor as on the dust of the ground and deny justice to the oppressed’ resonates powerfully with modern billionaires using their wealth to pervert justice and influence political systems.

These biblical critiques of wealth and exploitation are so fundamental to both Old and New Testament teachings that the modern alignment of Christianity with Capitalism represents a profound perversion of the religion’s core message. Modern prosperity gospel preachers and wealthy Christians who attempt to justify their accumulation of wealth while others suffer essentially practice a different religion entirely from the one preached by Jesus, one that worships Mammon while paying lip service to God.20

Early Christians Communists

Yet, the radical economic message of early Christianity persisted well beyond Jesus’s death, as evidenced by the powerful anti-wealth rhetoric of early church figures. None is more striking than the words of James, Jesus’s brother, who warning to the rich oppressors reads like a anti-Capitalist prophecy.

‘Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming on you. Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the innocent one, who was not opposing you.’ (James 5:1–6)

His condemnation is absolute and prophetic — the rich are warned not merely of spiritual consequences, but of material retribution for their exploitation. The imagery is visceral: corroded wealth eating flesh like fire, hoarded riches rotting away, and most pointedly, the wages of workers ‘crying out’ against their oppressors.

The earliest Christians took these teachings literally, establishing communal living arrangements as described in Acts 2:44–45: ‘All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need.’ This wasn’t merely symbolic, as Acts 4:32–35 elaborates: ‘All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had… There were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need.’21

Even C.S. Lewis, writing in the mid-20th century from a relatively conservative Christian perspective, acknowledged the radical economic implications of early Christian practice:

‘The New Testament, without going into details, gives us a pretty clear hint of what a fully Christian society would be like … a Christian society would be what we now call Leftist … If there were such a society in existence and you or I visited it, I think we should come away with a curious impression. We should feel that its economic life was very socialistic and, in that sense, ‘advanced,’ but that its family life and its code of manners were rather old fashioned. … That is just what one would expect if Christianity is the total plan for the human machine. We have all departed from that total plan in different ways, and each of us wants to make out those bits and pieces and leave the rest. That is why we do not get much further; and that is why people who are fighting for quite opposite things can both say they are fighting for Christianity.’ (Mere Christianity (1952), Book 3, Chapter 3: ‘Social Morality’.)

These anti-wealth teachings remained potent within Christianity for a few hundred years after its inception as shown by early church father’s views on wealth, property and poverty. St Basil the Great’s (329–379 AD) teachings demonstrate how early church fathers viewed private property and wealth accumulation as entirely incompatible with Christian values:

‘When some one strips a man of his clothes we call him a thief. And one who might clothe the naked and does not — should not he be given the same name? The bread in your hoard belongs to the hungry; the cloak in your wardrobe belongs to the naked; the shoes you let rot belong to the barefoot; the money in your vaults belongs to the destitute. All you might help and do not — to all these you are doing wrong’ (Homily Against the Rich, 368 AD)

Of course if enough people followed this teaching then there would be no Capitalism. His assertion that ‘The bread in your hoard belongs to the hungry’ directly challenges modern concepts of private property rights. Indeed, Proudhon wasn’t the first to call property theft, comrade Basil was doing this sixteen hundred years ago, as also evidenced in his sermon during the 368 CE famine in Caesarea

‘You are like one occupying a place in a theatre, who should prohibit others from entering, treating that as his own which was designed for the common use of all. Such are the rich. Because they preoccupy common goods, they take these goods as their own. If each one would take that which is sufficient for his needs, leaving what is superfluous to those in distress, no one would be rich, no one poor.… The rich man is a thief.’ (Ibid)

When he declares ‘The rich man is a thief’, he’s not speaking metaphorically. He’s making a precise theological argument that the very act of accumulating excess wealth while others lack necessities constitutes theft from the common inheritance of humanity. Basil’s comparison of the wealthy to someone claiming private ownership of theatre seats meant for public use is particularly relevant to Capitalism’s enclosure and privatisation of common resources. His argument that ‘If each one would take that which is sufficient for his needs, leaving what is superfluous to those in distress, no one would be rich, no one poor’ presents a direct theological argument for what we might today call resource redistribution.

Christian Socialism

Some Christian communities have maintained these early anti-wealth and communal teachings throughout the centuries, often aligning themselves with leftist causes. The Mennonites, emerging from the radical wing of the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century, have consistently practiced mutual aid and communal living, rejecting private property accumulation and military service.

The Quakers (Society of Friends) played a crucial role in the abolitionist movement, with figures like John Woolman calling slavery fundamentally incompatible with Christian teachings. Their commitment to equality and social justice extended beyond abolition, and they were early advocates for prison reform, women’s rights, and peace activism.

The Catholic Worker Movement, founded by Dorothy Day in 1933, represents another strand of this tradition, combining direct aid to the poor with radical critique of Capitalism. Their houses of hospitality practice voluntary poverty and mutual aid while engaging in anti-war activism and workers’ rights campaigns. These traditions demonstrate how Christian anti-Capitalism has persisted despite the mainstream church’s general accommodation with wealth and power.

Although Marxism and Leninism were avowedly anti-Christian, there has been a very long tradition of Christian Socialists over the last five hundred years up to the present day. Even the author of America’s Pledge of Allegiance, minister Francis Bellamy, was a Christian Socialist, while his cousin Edward Bellamy wrote the famous Socialist utopia, ‘Looking Backward’ (1888), which was also influenced by Christian Socialist ideals.

Some of these Socialist Christians, like Day, were also Anarchists, such as Leo Tolstoy, who outlined his beliefs in ‘The Kingdom of God Is Within You,’ (1894) which influenced both Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. Poet William Blake, famous for the Christian Socialist anthem, ‘Jerusalem’ (1804), combined religious mysticism with radical politics and anti-authoritarianism. Ishikawa Sanshirō blended Christian Anarchism with Eastern philosophy in Japan, while Simone Weil combined mystical Christianity with radical politics. Ammon Hennacy was particularly notable for his complete rejection of state authority and practice of Christian pacifist Anarchism.

Modern Theologians

Modern theologians and social theorists have been no less critical about Capitalism’s relationship with Christianity. Max Weber, the influential German sociologist writing in the early 1900s, was among the first to analyse how Capitalism functioned as a quasi-religion. In ‘The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism’ (1905), he identified Capitalism’s ‘religious character,’ arguing that it emerged from Protestant Christianity but then developed its own spiritual dynamics that ultimately undermined Christian values. This opened the door for deeper analysis of how market systems function as faith systems.

Building on this tradition, contemporary religious historian Eugene McCarraher’s ‘The Enchantments of Mammon: How Capitalism Became the Religion of Modernity’ (2019) develops this analysis further. His concept of ‘the enchantments of Mammon’ reveals how Capitalism didn’t simply secularise society as is commonly believed, but rather redirected religious devotion toward market worship. He argues that Capitalism didn’t eliminate religious thinking but rather transformed it, promising transcendence through consumption and accumulation rather than through spiritual practice.

This inherent tension between Christianity’s teachings and Capitalism’s demands led many influential economists to explicitly reject Christian economic ethics. Figures like Mises, Hayek, and Friedman, along with atheist promoters of Capitalism such as Ayn Rand and Murray Rothbard, condemned Christianity’s teachings about wealth and poverty as incompatible with their economic vision. Ironically, these men — though themselves non-believers — have become the subject of quasi-religious veneration by their followers, who treat their economic theories as gospel and their words as prophecy.

Yet this transformation reveals a crucial distinction: while a religion may be either beneficial or harmful to human wellbeing, a cult is characterised by specific harmful traits: personality worship, demands for absolute obedience, and promises to solve all problems, even those it creates itself. In the next part of this series, we will explore how Capitalism evolved from merely adopting religious concepts to becoming a full-fledged cult, with its new prophets abandoning supernatural religion entirely as well as concepts of reason which came with the enlightenment, while making even more fantastic claims about miraculous market outcomes and heavenly rewards through their idealistic version of Capitalism.

Disclaimer: I am not religious, but I respect values that align with building a good and kind world, and that world cannot be built by the cult of Capitalism.

For those with an interesting in learning more on this subject here are some websites that may be of interest:

For a very different Christian vision see Heathcoate William’s ‘Jesus The Anarchist’:

https://peacefulrevolutionary.substack.com/p/the-anarchist-jesus

The Capitalist Apostasy

The Cult Of Capitalism — Part 3

The Early Apostles Of Capitalism

As we’ve explored in our previous articles22, by the middle of the 20th century Capitalism had developed a sophisticated network of paid advocates across academia, government, and religious institutions, creating what amounted to the largest peacetime propaganda exercise in history. Yet for the tycoons and their supporters, these institutional successes weren’t enough. They also wanted to create something more powerful: a secular cult with its own paid prophets to preach to the secular world too.

The intellectual foundations of this movement can be traced back to Frederick Bastiat (1801–1850), a wealthy French merchant’s son who saw his family’s wine trade affected by protectionist policies. This experience shaped his passionate defence of free trade and property rights, culminating in his influential work ‘The Law’ (1850), which presented one of the first comprehensive moral defences of classical economic liberalism. His ideas would later influence Carl Menger’s work on natural rights and spontaneous market order.

Carl Menger (1840–1921) built upon Bastiat’s ideas while founding the Austrian School of Economics. His evolutionary approach to social theory and economics emphasised how economic institutions emerge naturally rather than through central planning. His work on subjective value theory — the idea that the worth of goods comes from individual valuation rather than inherent properties — profoundly influenced his student Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk.

Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk (1851–1914) developed Menger’s theories into a comprehensive critique of Marxist economics, particularly focusing on capital theory. As Austrian Minister of Finance, he uniquely combined theoretical work with practical policy experience. His seminar at the University of Vienna proved crucial in developing Ludwig von Mises’ economic thinking.

Ludwig von Mises (1881–1973) expanded upon Böhm-Bawerk’s theories while adding his own critique of Socialist economic calculation. His argument that rational economic planning was impossible under Socialism became a cornerstone of free-market advocacy. Among his students at his private Vienna seminar was Friedrich Hayek, who would further develop these ideas.

Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992) took Mises’ theories about economic calculation and developed them into a broader critique of collective planning through his ‘knowledge problem’ — the idea that central planners can never have enough information to coordinate an economy effectively. His refinement of the spontaneous order concept and anti-collectivist philosophy provided intellectual foundations for neoliberal policies in the 1980s.

The Capitalist Apostolic Line Of Authority

This succession of free-market economic theories evolved from Bastiat’s practical observations about trade through increasingly sophisticated theoretical frameworks, ultimately influencing global economic policy through Hayek’s work with Thatcher and the neoliberal movement.

In the New World, corporate funding would prove crucial in selecting and promoting those willing to preach this gospel of Capitalism. Soon joining these Capitalist prophets were men like Milton Friedman and even non-economists like Ayn Rand. Their work would inspire a new generation of disciples who would follow in their expensive leather footsteps, including Henry Hazlitt, Murray Rothbard, Alan Greenspan, and Thomas Sowell. Each of these figures would receive substantial backing from corporate interests, think tanks, and wealthy patrons, ensuring their ideas reached far beyond academia into the broader public consciousness.

A New Creation Story For Money

These economic prophets relied on a relatively new theory about the creation of money — the Genesis story of their economic theology. Though there was no ancient evidence for their account, it became central to justifying their views on the nature of markets and money.

In ‘The Wealth of Nations’ (1776), Adam Smith laid the groundwork for what would become the standard neoclassical account. He speculated that money emerged naturally from the inefficiencies of barter. Smith’s account emphasised the division of labour as creating the necessity for exchange, with money emerging as a practical solution to trade difficulties.

Carl Menger developed this theory further in his 1892 work ‘On the Origin of Money’, presenting money’s emergence as an entirely spontaneous process arising from rational individual choices. He explicitly rejected state-centric theories of money’s origins, thus laying the ground work for later right-wing ‘Libertarian’ claims. According to Menger, the initial inefficiency of direct barter (the ‘double coincidence of wants’ problem) led individuals to accept more widely tradeable goods as exchange intermediaries. Through this process, certain commodities (particularly precious metals) emerged naturally as money due to their inherent characteristics of durability, divisibility, and scarcity.

While Smith saw money primarily as a practical tool facilitating the division of labour, Menger presented it as the inevitable outcome of rational individual choices in a market setting. His more rigorous theoretical treatment became an article of faith for what was initially called the Austrian School of Economics and later evolved into the Chicago School. This creation myth, despite lacking historical evidence, provided the theological foundation for their free-market beliefs, and influenced neoclassical monetary theory more broadly.

Economists Vs Reality

However, this orthodox narrative faced a significant challenge with David Graeber’s 2011 work ‘Debt: The First 5,000 Years’. Drawing on anthropological evidence, Graeber inverted the conventional story entirely. Rather than money emerging from barter, he argued that credit and debt relationships preceded both. Early human societies, he demonstrated, operated through complex systems of social obligations and credit arrangements, with formal currency emerging much later, often imposed by state violence for tax collection.23

Graeber’s anthropological critique carries profound implications for economic theory. By showing that credit and social obligations preceded market exchange, it challenges fundamental assumptions about human nature and economic behaviour in classical and neoclassical economics. Where Menger saw money as emerging spontaneously from individual rational choices, Graeber revealed its deeply social and political character.

This alternative history suggests that economic relations are not natural developments but social and political constructions, often embedded in power relationships. Markets and money, rather than being spontaneous orders, emerge through complex social processes often involving state power and violence. This understanding provides theoretical ammunition for critiquing modern debt systems and market fundamentalism, suggesting that our current economic arrangements are neither inevitable nor natural, but rather the product of specific historical and political choices.

The contrast between these narratives reflects a deeper tension in economic thought between individualistic and social understandings of human behaviour. While the Mengerian account sees economic institutions emerging from individual rational choices, the anthropological view emphasises the fundamentally social nature of human economic relations, with significant implications for how we understand both markets and money in contemporary society.

The influence of Menger’s individualistic approach cannot be underestimated, particularly through his intellectual successors Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek, who would transform these ideas into a comprehensive ideology of market fundamentalism. Mises, especially, would take Menger’s theories about the spontaneous emergence of money and economic institutions and develop them into a quasi-religious defence of unfettered Capitalism.

Ludwig von Mises & Friederich Hayek

’The issue is always the same: the government or the market. There is no third solution.’ (‘Human Action’, 1949)

Ludwig von Mises emerged as one of the most influential economists of the 20th century, though his path was shaped by the turbulent history of his era. Born into a wealthy Jewish family in what is now Ukraine, he established himself as a prominent economist in Vienna24 before the rise of Nazism forced him to flee first to Geneva and then to the United States. At New York University, where he spent the final decades of his career, he refined and promoted his theories of classical liberalism and free-market economics, influencing generations of economists and political thinkers through works like ‘Human Action’ and his critique of Socialist economic planning.

The alignment between Mises’s economic theories and his funding sources raises interesting questions about the development and promotion of free-market ideology. His position at New York University was not a traditional academic appointment but rather was funded by business interests who supported his anti-Socialist, pro-market stance. His work received substantial backing from corporate sources through organisations like the Foundation for Economic Education and the William Volker Fund. This corporate support helped establish and promote the American Austrian School of Economics, while providing Mises with speaking engagements and platforms to advance his ideas about laissez-faire Capitalism and opposition to government intervention — views that aligned perfectly with the interests of his corporate backers. This symbiotic relationship between his economic theories and his funding sources highlights how corporate interests helped shape and promote free-market economic thought in post-war America.

Friedrich Hayek

Among those who would benefit from similar corporate backing was Mises’ most influential student, Friedrich Hayek, who would take his mentor’s ideas to an even broader audience. Like Mises, Hayek would find his career shaped by both the tumultuous politics of Europe and the generous support of business interests.

Friedrich Hayek’s journey from Vienna to global influence traces the rise of neoliberal economics in the 20th century. Beginning his career in post-WWI Austria, where he served in the military and earned doctorates in law and political science, Hayek’s economic thinking was shaped by his mentor Ludwig von Mises and the turbulent interwar period. After moving to the London School of Economics and later the University of Chicago, he became one of the most influential economists of his era. His ideas would later shape the policies of leaders like Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, fundamentally altering the economic landscape of the 1980s.

The promotion and funding of Hayek’s work reveals how corporate interests helped shape modern economic thought. His position at the University of Chicago was supported by private wealth, while organisations like the William Volker Fund and corporate-backed think tanks actively promoted his ideas. The Mont Pelerin Society, which he helped establish, served as a corporate-funded network for spreading free-market ideology. His theories about spontaneous market order and opposition to government intervention aligned perfectly with corporate interests seeking deregulation and reduced state oversight. This alignment was particularly evident in how institutions like the Bank of England and Federal Reserve promoted his work, while corporate-funded think tanks like the Institute of Economic Affairs helped transform his academic theories into practical political policies under Thatcher. The extensive corporate backing for promoting ‘The Road to Serfdom’ helped establish his ideas as mainstream economic thought, despite their radical departure from post-war consensus about the role of government in managing the economy.

The Road To Nowhere

But Hayek understood that a creation story of money’s origins alone wasn’t enough to build a new economic faith. What was needed was a complete gospel — one that not only explained the past but offered a path to economic salvation while warning of the damnation that would befall those who strayed from market principles. This gospel would take form in his most influential work, ‘The Road to Serfdom.’

Published in 1944, ‘The Road to Serfdom’ stands as perhaps the most influential piece of anti-Socialist literature of the 20th century. The text presents itself as a warning about the dangers of economic planning, but in many ways it functions more as an economic gospel, a foundational text that would later be treated as almost sacred writ by advocates of free-market fundamentalism.

The core of Hayek’s argument is deceptively simple: any move toward economic planning inevitably leads to totalitarianism. He constructs an elaborate domino theory where even modest steps toward democratic Socialism or welfare programmes inexorably set nations upon the ‘road to serfdom’. This argument rests upon a series of sweeping assertions: that Socialism requires centralised control which necessarily destroys individual freedom, that markets preserve freedom through decentralised decision-making, and perhaps most crucially, that democratic Socialism is fundamentally impossible, doomed to devolve into authoritarianism.

However, Hayek’s argument relies heavily on what might be termed the first comprehensive ‘straw man’ version of Socialism. By focusing exclusively on state-centric forms of Socialist planning whilst ignoring the rich tradition of Anarchist and non-state Socialist thought, Hayek creates a convenient but fundamentally inaccurate target. Like a scarecrow fashioned of straw, this version of Socialism proves remarkably easy to set ablaze, but the smoke obscures more than it illuminates.

The flaws in Hayek’s argument become apparent when confronted with historical evidence. The Nordic social democracies never descended into totalitarianism; indeed, the greatest expansion of democratic rights coincided with the rise of welfare states. Conversely, it was often unregulated Capitalism that created conditions conducive to fascism.

Theoretical critiques of Hayek’s work reveal deeper problems. There is false dichotomy at the heart of the book: Hayek presents only two options: complete laissez-faire or total state control. This ignores the reality of successful mixed economies and democratic planning. Hayek was so focused on state power that he ignored how private concentrations of power can be equally tyrannical. While participatory planning demonstrates how democratic planning doesn’t require centralised control of all decisions — it can be participatory and decentralised. Most importantly, Hayek’s ‘freedom’ is the freedom of property owners to exploit others. He ignores how markets restrict freedom for the majority.

The practical contradictions in Hayek’s position proved equally telling. His support for Pinochet’s dictatorship in Chile revealed a troubling willingness to sacrifice democratic freedom for market freedom.25 His ideal system requires strong state enforcement of property rights, creating a paradox for his anti-state rhetoric. Modern corporations, like Walmart and Amazon, extensively use internal planning, demonstrating that planning itself isn’t the issue Hayek claimed. The real road to serfdom has been the one Hayek advocated — unrestricted corporate power, weakened democracy, and increased inequality.

In the end, ‘The Road to Serfdom’ fails as a serious economic analysis. It reveals more about the political anxieties of its time and the intellectual foundations of neoliberalism than it does about the actual relationship between economic planning and freedom. Its enduring influence speaks not to the strength of its arguments, but to its usefulness as a theoretical justification for opposition to social democratic policies and collective economic action.

The disciples of Mises and Hayek went on to write their own influential works, each functioning as epistles of market fundamentalism. Henry Hazlitt’s ‘Economics in One Lesson’ (1946) offered a simplified version of Austrian economic theory for mass consumption. Ayn Rand’s ‘Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal’ (1966) transformed these economic arguments into a moral philosophy celebrating selfishness. Milton Friedman’s ‘Free to Choose’ (1980), complete with a PBS television series, brought market fundamentalism into American living rooms. Murray Rothbard’s ‘Man, Economy, and State’ (1962) pushed these ideas to their logical extreme in advocating complete so-called anarcho-Capitalism. Thomas Sowell’s ‘Basic Economics’ (1994) repackaged these ideas for a new generation, presenting contested economic theories as simple common sense.

However, there were always voices crying out in the wilderness, challenging these market prophecies. Early critics included John Maynard Keynes, whose ‘General Theory’ (1936) systematically dismantled many of their core assumptions, and John Kenneth Galbraith, whose ‘The Affluent Society’ (1958) exposed the myths of consumer Capitalism. Later critics emerged with even more fundamental challenges: Noam Chomsky revealed the anti-democratic implications of neoliberal doctrine, while Elinor Ostrom’s Nobel Prize-winning work refuting the theory of The Tragedy Of The Commons, demonstrated how communities can manage resources without either state control or private markets. Economist Joan Robinson exposed the circular logic in neoclassical theory, showing how its claims about wages and prices relied on assuming what they claimed to prove26, while Ha-Joon Chang revealed how developed nations achieved their wealth through methods they now forbid others from using.27

False Prophets

The parallels between these market prophets and the false prophets the Bible warns of provide a lens through which to examine the role of Capitalism’s most prominent advocates, particularly Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek. As paid intellectuals of the Mont Pelerin Society28 and various industrial interests, their position bears an uncanny resemblance to the false prophets denounced in Biblical texts. The warning from Timothy seems especially prescient:

‘For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.’ (2nd Timothy 4:3–4, See Jeremiah 23:16–17.)

One could hardly find a better description of how wealthy industrialists and financial interests gathered sympathetic economists around them, funding think tanks and academic positions to produce justifications for unfettered Capitalism, promising that the free market would solve all social ills if only it were left completely unrestrained. Perhaps most damning is the parallel with this epistle of Peter in which he warns, ‘In their greed these teachers will exploit you with fabricated stories.’29 Just as modern economists who, while receiving substantial funding from interested parties, claim the mantle of scientific objectivity and market efficiency for their pronouncements.

Philosopher Walter Benjamin’s observation that ‘Capitalism is a purely cultic religion, perhaps the most extreme that ever existed’ provides a crucial framework for understanding these parallels. The market fundamentalism preached by these economic prophets does indeed function as a kind of religion, complete with its own dogmas, rituals, and demands for sacrifice. Like the religious cults it resembles, it demands endless devotion and sacrifice, particularly from the poor and working classes, while offering little hope of real redemption.

The sanctity of the market, the invisible hand, the efficiency of price signals become articles of faith, defended with religious zeal rather than empirical evidence. If anything is truly holy, it is human wellbeing and truth itself. By this measure, economic theories that disregard human suffering or depart from observable reality in favour of elegant but false models are profoundly unholy, regardless of how mathematically sophisticated their presentations might be.

This religious lens reveals something profound about the nature of modern economic discourse: many of its most influential theories function less as scientific descriptions of reality and more as a kind of secular theology, complete with its own priesthood of economists, sacred texts of economic theory, and rituals of market worship. The parallels with biblical warnings about false prophets suggest that perhaps we should approach these economic prophets with the same scepticism that scripture advocates for religious ones.

Just as religious cults isolate their followers from contradicting information and alternative viewpoints, Capitalism’s prophets created an intellectual edifice that claims to explain all economic phenomena while dismissing or demonizing any contradicting evidence or alternative systems. Their success in this endeavour has been remarkable — billions now accept as natural and inevitable an economic system that is both historically recent and demonstrably harmful to human wellbeing and planetary survival.

The process of deprogramming people from this cult may ultimately come not through reason or argument, but through Capitalism’s own contradictions and catastrophic failures. As climate change accelerates, inequality reaches breaking points, and economic crises become more frequent and severe, the gap between market fundamentalist prophecies and lived reality grows ever wider. Perhaps what centuries of theoretical criticism couldn’t achieve, the material conditions of Capitalism’s collapse will — forcing humanity to finally imagine and create economic systems that serve human needs rather than abstract market principles. The question isn’t whether this cult will fall, but how much damage it will do before its followers finally lose faith.

Capitalism Series

Part of my series on Capitalism:

Footnotes

This verse was omitted from the 1906 edition of The English Hymnal, by its editor, Percy Dearmer, a Christian Socialist editor who took offence to it.

2. The practice of lending money with added interest rates which is condemned by the Bible.

3. This will be detailed in the next article, ‘Christianity Vs Capitalism’.

4. Marble Collegiate Church in Manhattan.

5. The Catholic doctrine that during the Eucharist, the bread and wine literally transform into the body and blood of Christ.

6. Latin for ‘economic human’.

7. Matthew 6:24.

8. Matthew 19:24; Mark 10:25; Luke 18:25. This is one of the very few passages rendered exactly the same in several gospels — they render it exactly the same, without variation.

9. See Sinaiticus, Vaticanus & Washington Freer — 4th century, Ephraemi, Bezae Cantabrigiensis & Dublinensis — 5th century & Regius — 8th century.

10. Luke 18:25.

11. Popularised a couple hundred years ago in books such as the ‘Companion Bible,’ by E.W. Bullinger, or ‘the Manners and Customs of the Bible’ by James Freeman.

12. Matthew 19:16–22.

13. Matthew 19:26.

14. Luke 4:18, Isaiah 61:1.

15. Luke 6:20–21.

16. Luke 6:24.

17. Matthew 5:42.

18. Luke 14:13–14.

19. Matthew 25:40.

20. ‘These people honour me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.’ says Jesus in Matthew 15:8, quoting Isaiah 29:13. Whereas Jesus taught ‘Where your treasure is, there will be your heart also.’ in Matthew 6:21.

21. This practice was taken so seriously that in Acts 5:1–11, Ananias and Sapphira were struck dead by God for withholding some of their property’s sale proceeds from the common fund.

22. See The Capitalist Empire Strikes Back and other articles in the series.

23. Drawing on evidence from Mesopotamian clay tablets, showing complex credit systems predating coinage by thousands of years.

24. Hayek’s early career was supported by Ludwig von Mises’ private seminar, funded by the Vienna Chamber of Commerce.

25. Hayek visited Chile in 1981, praising Pinochet’s economic policies while downplaying human rights abuses.

26. ‘Economic Philosophy’ (1962), Chapter 3 ‘The Neo-Classical Theory’.

27. In ‘Kicking Away the Ladder’ (2002), Chang documented how developed nations used protectionist policies they now prohibit.

28. Founded in 1947 with funding from Swiss banks and American business interests. Notable early members included Milton Friedman, George Stigler, and Karl Popper.

29. 2nd Peter 2:3. Also see Micah 3:11 & Titus 1:11.