A Rare Siting On Conservative Blogs

One of Marx's fears of the Bourgeois economy of his day was that the values practiced there would permeate all of life. The result would that all connections between people would revolve around self-interest. We should note that there are only two parties who have received permission to care solely about themselves in today's Free Market Capitalism. Those two parties are the business owners and the customers. Labor must either sacrifice for the good of the other two or be scapegoated when self-interest hurts business.

American Conservative Christianity has, for the most part, wholeheartedly embraced Free Market Capitalism as being a child of its theology. Yes, sometimes American Conservative Christianity will acknowledge and criticize "Crony Capitalism." But it has rarely, if ever, critically examined the regular workings and basic structure of our economic system. Instead, it has all but bragged while enjoying the fruits of our system.

But a disturbance in the conservative force has arisen and it comes from Bethany Jenkins in one of her most recent blogposts on the Gospel Coalition blog. In a post titled, Do You Know Where Your Food Comes From?,  Jenkins tells us that the cost of discipleship demands that we include Gospel ethics when buying our food. BTW, this blogpost review will not be that long in hopes that those who read this will pay more attention to the Jenkins' blogpost. It is simply one of the best blogposts on the Gospel Coalition's blog.

The costs of discipleship in determining where we get our food is a slap in the face of the cherished belief that consumers should act out of self-interest alone. Instead, according to Jenkins, Christian discipleship is saying that our self-interest must be reigned in and directed by other concerns. These concerns include: the human rights of all those involved in the production of our food, the proper respect for and treatment of animals, and concern for the environmental impact that the production of our food has.

Now these concerns are not new for those on the Left for they have written about and acted on these issues before. But what is new, at least to me, is to see these concerns being seriously discussed by any of my fellow American religious Conservative Christians. And to read such a conservative telling us that our food purchases must be made with others in mind provides hope for the future.

Again, instead of reading my review of this blogpost, your time would be better served by reading Jenkins' article (another link to the same article).