Preaching capitalism

...And Michael Novak, AEI's resident theologian, was ill and could not attend, as planned, to respond to the papers...

...Pointing to the 10.1 percent unemployment rate and other signs of economic distress, Kelly said, "It is sociologically unlikely that an increasingly educated populace would accept these conditions as somehow inevitably ordered by the natural law of economics...

...They're located in places where real people live, and it makes the churches and even their national leaders necessarily less enthusiastic than neoconservatives about the long-run efficiency of market disciplines...

...Novak, Dunn said, is trying to respond to the "crisis of legitimacy" in capitalist countries...

...Scully was ' amiable and responded to a few points raised in the papers...

...Sawatzky, from a theological viewpoint, charged that while Novak uses Reinhold Neibuhr's concept of sin, he ignores his concept of "systemic evil...

...At one level, the session was a disappointment...

...But the four papers presented offered some important insight into the phenomenon of the new theology of capitalism-its meaning, goals, tactics, flaws, and future...

...Scully was pretty much a pinchhitter more concerned with not getting beaned by a pitch meant for another batter than with scoring any runs...

...Dunn and Rodney Sawatsky both criticized Novak and AEI for their treatment of systems and social forces...

...Another Fordham sociologist, James Kelly, offered a description of the "unwritten psychological logic" used by neoconservatives in the field of religion...

...The panel organizer said he thought he had invited two critics and two more friendly experts to speak, but found himself with four critics...

...Novak's concern is that religion is no longer providing this for corporate capitalism...

...I predict that This World's criticism of religious economics will not call up from any of the laity much ideological debate about the degree of socialism to be found in church teaching...

...The sponsors were three academic organizations with overlapping membership and pretty imposing titles of their own: the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, the Association for the Sociology of Religion, and the Religious Research Association...

...He offered a summary of the views of Will Herberg, who argued in Protestant, Catholic, Jew, that as immigrants become assimilated into American life, the third generation looks for a way to reestablish its identity...

...And, he said, "Maybe they want to cut off in advance any temptations against American civil religion and lessen any possible impact the bishops' statement about the morality of possessing nuclear armaments might have on some laity...

...AEI & the churches PREACHING CAPITALISM FREE ENTERPRISE GETS RELIGION "THE Sociology of Religion and the American Enterterprise Institute...

...Religion fills that need, Fitzpatrick said: "Religion became not a source for prophetic witness, but the basis...

...Fitzpatrick also said "The conflict between the prophetic witness which feels morally obligated to call into question economic and political and military activities in the spirit of the gospels.., and those who seek to defend what they perceive as the Christian way of life is basically a conflict of cultures...

...JIMCASTELLI (Jim Castelli writes a syndicated column on religion and public affairs and is Washington correspondent for Our Sunday Visitor...

...I don't think church teaching will change much either...

...Kelly speculated that neoconservatives hope "to innoculate North American theologians and religious leaders to criticism from Latin American theologians who are so adept at finding connections between their countries' underdevelopment and our economic and military power...

...The real ideology of the churches is their localism...

...Kelly ended his talk with a prediction and an explanation...

...In these terms...

...for a specific identity as Americans...

...Continued from page 613) issue of This World, Kelly said neoconservatives "know it is at least plausible to deflect religious economic thought back to an earlier explicit preference for capitalism...

...By this tactic capitalism is ennobled by the claim that its principles alone can protect the few shreds of religious meaning remaining in a demystified world...

...Joseph Fitzpatrick, S.J., a sociologist from Fordham University, tried to explain why AEI and groups like the Institute on Religion and Democracy have linked religion and economics...

...While neoconservative thought has originated from Washington and Manhattan, Catholics and their churches have been located in places like Youngstown, Ohio, or Newark, New Jersey...

...That was the imposing title of a two-hour panel at a conference on "Religion and Power" held in Providence, Rhode Island, on October 24...

...They can hope to reattach some deeply human significance to capitalism by linking its survival to religiously important values like freedom of conscience, religious toleration, and democratic values...

...The structure of corporate decision-making is reduced to the level of autocratic individuals and Latin American poverty is reduced to people having the wrong set of values...

...Dunn, from a sociological viewpoint, charged Novak with ignoring "social structures, classes, and history" and lacking "a sociological imagination...

...According to him, the AEI-IRD initiative is not so much a matter of the economic system as "an attempt to possess, to hold on to the whole meaning of my life, in which my religious and moral perspective and ideals have become interpenetrated with the whole experience of the American way of life...

...but (a) he doesn't work for AEI and (b) he couldn't answer questions about Novak's personal conversions...

...The decision by conference planners to schedule a session on the theological ventures of the business-oriented Washington think tank was a significant recognition of the efforts AEI and other neoconservative and right-wing groups have been making to influence the discussion of religion and public policy in America...

...Marvin Dunn, a sociologist from Lewis and Clark College, focused on Novak's work, particularly The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism...

...This results, Dunn said, "in reducing structural factors to individual problems...

...the alternative to capitalism is not merely economic stagnation but unknown and fearful forms of religious absolutism and political tyranny actively inhospitable to the Judaeo-Christian tradition...

...In analyzing the first (Continued on page 616...

...He sent as a substitute Michael Scully, editor of This World, a journal on religion and economics published by AEI and the New York-based Institute for Educational Affairs...

...His writings "represent an attempt to reconstruct a plausibility structure- an ideology which hopes to legitimate the dominant economic and political structures...