The Worship of Mammon: The Fetishism of Capital in the Theological Thoughts of Creflo Dollar

and Michael Novak

Jack Stephens

Religious Studies 696

Professor Hood
Dec., 2006
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“As a stake is driven firmly into a fissure between stones, so sin is wedged in between selling and
buying.”
-Sirach 27:2 1

Over the years the concept of “Prosperity Theology,” in where God shows his blessings to

His people by showering them with riches, has obviously attracted many followers, and seems to be

gaining more momentum by the day. The poster child of this movement, in all of his excessive and

over the top glory, is the Rev. Creflo Dollar of Creflo Dollar Ministries and who is the reverend of

the World Changers International World Dome church in southwest Atlanta. Dollar preaches all

over the United States about how God wants to shower all of his faithful with money (of course,

Dollar is quick to point out that he also means spiritual wealth) and one of his biggest selling points

is the fact that he flaunts his own wealth to prove God is blessing him. He unabashedly shows his

congregants, and anyone else for that matter, “his custom-tailored suits and alligator shoes, his

Rolls-Royces, his private airplanes” and has no problems demanding from his congregation 10% of

their income for tithes, and if they decide to give less they might as well not even bother and instead,

“Go buy a Happy Meal.” 2 The concept of Prosperity Theology arose out of the capitalist system

and indeed is the religious byproduct of the capitalist system. Without the unrestrained capitalist

system and its forms of perversion there would more than likely be no Prosperity Theology to be

preached upon. Prosperity Theology, as preached by Creflo Dollar, is the religious justification of

capitalism and of capitalism’s systems. While Creflo Dollar speaks on a more simplistic level,

stating that people who follow the Bible and follow God will soon become rich, or at least

financially comfortable, neo-conservative Catholic Theologian Michael Novak takes a more

nuanced approached to capitalism and the building of capital (wealth). Novak’s belief is that

because everyone is affected by original sin and is in nature sinful and imperfect, the capitalist

system is the most logical choice for human kind, in fact, he sees the capitalist system as practically
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ordained by God.3 For Novak, the capitalist market system is the best vehicle for making sure that

the common good of humanity is meet. Novak’s fetishistic trust in the “free” market I argue is just

as flawed as Dollar’s fetishistic trust in God’s love through the form of money and that both are

inherently wrong in their interpretation of the Bible on their views of money and capitalism. To

show how their relationship between the Bible and the free market is inherently incorrect I will be

using liberation theologian Franz J. Hinkelammert’s theological critique of capitalism and his use of

Marx’s theory of fetishism in order to critique the microeconomic fallacies of Dollar and the

macroeconomic fallacies of Novak and how their trust and Biblical justification in the free market

and the capitalist system undermines their Biblical message.

In order to understand the theological perversities of Dollar’s preachings on money and the

luxurious commodities people can acquire with money we must first look at Marx’s theory of the

fetish which first comes to us in the form of the commodity fetish since the commodity fetish is

“[t]he basis of the whole analysis of [Marx’s theory of] fetishism.” 4 Hinkelammert describes the

capitalistic world as “a world that is bewitched” and that the analysis of the commodity fetish is a

way to unveil this world of enchanted commodities.5 Marx states, quite rightly, that wealth in

societies that have a “capitalist mode of production...appears as an ‘immense collection of

commodities.’” 6 In order to begin his investigation of “political economy” Marx begins his

investigation with this mass of commodities.7 Marx states that “[a] commodity appears at first sight

an extremely obvious, trivial thing. But its analysis brings out that it is a very strange thing,

abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties.” 8 Its these subtleties and niceties that

end up taking “‘metaphysical’ and ‘theological’ guises” because capitalist industry obscures and

hides the fact that commodities are created by human labor.9 This is do to the fact of capitalist

production which separates the manufacturing process through the division of labor; which happens
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quite naturally under capitalism and nearly all forms of trade and commerce. Because people don’t

see commodities for what they are, that is, products of human labor (all though they do “sense” what

they are to a point, as Marx states10), instead they ascribe to them human like traits. Commodities

appear to come from nowhere and materialize themselves onto the market scene and act on their

own. It is the commodity that is talked about, not the producers of the commodity, by market

analysts. Hinkelammert states, “Commodities now set up social relationships among themselves.

For example, artificial nitrate battles natural nitrate [on the market] and defeats it. Oil fights with

coal, and wood with plastic. Coffee dances on world markets while iron and steel get married.” The

producer of the commodity becomes controlled and dominated by the commodity itself, not the other

way around. Depending on the fluctuations of the stock market during a day steel, silicone, and

plastics will either become more valuable or less, and thus creating cheaper commodities or more

expensive commodities, which in turn affects workers who will either keep their jobs or lose them

depending on costs and expenditures. In essence, the workers life depends on the commodity.

Today, there is much talk of oil prices and their continued rise in the marketplace, there seems to be

little control over the price of oil by human beings, instead it is controlled by the supply and demand

of it, which are not concrete sciences but rather philosophical and economical guesses based on

either rational or irrational human behavior and the process of production.11 For Hinkelammert

“[t]he decision to continue to produce commodities is always at the same time the decision to accept

being determined by the sum of commodities.” He goes on to say that “[c]ommodities begin to

move although no one wanted or intended them to do so, and even though any movement on their

part comes from some movement of human beings. The effects are completely beyond all human

intention” and control.12 This whole effect of commodities on the lives of human beings are

“products of the human brain” which make commodities (commodities that Dollar tells his
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congregation to seek and which he seeks himself) “appear as autonomous figures endowed with a

life of their own, which enter into relations” with human beings on the market system and their

everyday lives. Marx calls “this...fetishism which attaches itself to the products of labour as soon as

they are produced as commodities, and therefore inseparable from the production of commodities”

the “fetishism of the world of commodities.” 13

In order to better understand and illustrate the commodity (and money and capital) fetish

Marx stated that, “we must take flight into the misty realm of religion.” 14 Because of their

alienation from the products they make, human beings invest into commodities their own hopes and

dreams, fears and longings. They don’t see a Nike shoe as a product made of rubber, phylon, and

polyurethane which is wholly overpriced compared to its production value and labor expenses, they

instead see a product which they must buy in order to obtain a certain “status” amongst their peers

or to make themselves feel better about who they are. In this way they “enchant...commodities with

hopes of gratification and justice” 15 that these commodities obviously can’t fulfill them with. This is

the fundamental flaw of Creflo Dollar’s preaching and theology. He tells his congregation that God

showers blessings onto His people through the forms of money and commodities. Dollar states he is

blessed by God because of his wealth in commodities. “I own two Rolls-Royces and didn’t pay a

dime for them,”( they were given to him through donors), “Why? Because while I’m pursuing the

Lord those cars are pursuing me.” 16 Because Dollar has yet to demystify the commodities around

him he sees commodities as blessings and as signs that he is doing the right thing. One could take

the opposite view of his mind set that instead of gifts from God they were the gifts of a very generous

congregation (his own) and a very generous group of his own workers through their own money.

This is the commodity fetishism in a nutshell. Instead of using religion as an analogy Dollar

actually really does see the commodities as having suprasensual qualities and having been
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enchanted with divine properties. And this is what leads Dollar away from the true God17 and

towards false gods, the gods of commodities. Max Weber wrote that despite being defeated by the

proclamation of the Christian religion by being declared the official religion of the Roman Empire

and the Christianization of the European world and of the Americas, the old polytheistic gods were

resurrected in the form of capitalism and of commodities. Eugene McCarraher states, “Observing

how ‘many old gods ascend from their graves’ to become the laws of nature of the market, [Weber]

called upon his fellow modern intellectuals that ‘we live as did the ancients when their world was

not yet disenchanted of its gods and demons’ [author’s italics] ‘only we...live in a different

sense.’” 18

Yet the big selling point for Dollar isn’t the commodities per se, but the item that gets people

those “luxurious” commodities: money. Dollar tells his congregants and viewers that they must

“‘speak debt-canceling Scriptures’ every day, in order to help make God’s promise real” in order for

them to get more money19 to buy the commodities they want and need and in order to live a

comfortable(and possibly a lavish) life. Which brings us to the next stage of Marx’s theory of

fetishism, and another fundamental (and idolatress) flaw, the money fetish. Hinkelammert sums up

Marx’s views on money by stating, “Money is a commodity. But it is not a commodity like the rest;

it is the commodity that stands out above all the rest.” 20 Money is not meant to be consumed like

other commodities such as sneakers that you wear and get old or cars you drive that must be

scrapped after their “life span” exceeds its limit. Instead money is the common denominator

between all commodities, with this “the process of [the] commodity [fetish] intensifies.” 21 For

Marx, it is at this stage of the money fetish, an intensification of the commodity fetish, that money is

“endowed with the attributes of a conscious subject,” 22 as Hinkelammert puts it. With commodities

there was no hierarchy with one commodity representing an equivalent for another, but with money
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there is now a hierarchy, money is the “king”in the polytheistic commodity world. Marx states that

through the actions of capitalists and consumers, money “ has been set apart to be the universal

equivalent” 23 in where one commodity is brought “into an opposing relation with some other

commodity.” 24 So now the human being, which is brought under the power of commodities of their

own making, having their lives ruled by commodities, are now ruled by a universal equivalent to

commodities that can transcend individual commodities and represent all commodities (i.e., $10 can

buy a CD, a few snow cones, a movie ticket, etc.). This causes Marx to label money as the “Mark

of the Beast” by quoting the Latin text of the Book of Revelations in the New Testament25 which

states: “These are united in yielding their power and authority to the beast...so that no one can buy

or sell who does not have the mark, that is, the name of the beast or the number of its name.” (Rev.

17:13, 13:17, NRSV). Analyzing Marx’s use of this Christian image Hinkelammert goes on to say

that “[t]he other reference to Christianity in the text links the commodity world, and specifically

money, with the apocalyptic tradition of the beast, the Antichrist—that is, the antihuman.” 26 In

Grundrisse (written a decade before Capital Volume I) Marx wrote that when money was first

minted it was stored in the temples of antiquity, with this Marx took the analogy that money was

“the god among commodities” and “the real community” of capitalist society.27

Patrick D. Miller puts it this way, “In the case of Jesus’ radical instruction...there seems to

be no tension, only the assumption that property and wealth are another god, an alternative master in

whom one is always at risk of putting one’s trust and finding a place of ultimate refuge.” 28 Dollar

puts not only himself, but his congregants, at risk when he preaches about the gods of wealth and

projects divine qualities onto money and onto commodities. We see that when he speaks of not only

spiritual but “financial increase.” All one has to do is tithe to the church,29 read their Bible, and be

good Christians and they will become prosperous and rich. With this thinking being indoctrinated
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into oneself regularly one could not be held at fault for thinking that those whom are poor are not

blessed by God while those who are rich are blessed by God. Quickly one begins to mix up the

polytheistic world of commodities and the Anti-Christ of money with the realities of the true God.

Money are blessings which give one precious commodities. Precious commodities are received

because one is blessed by God. Money is now one’s god, the false god. In fact, Dollar and his

ministry are seemingly mixing up the world of the fetish with God everyday. Kelefa Sanneh stated

in a piece in the New Yorker that during his stay at the World Changers campus things started:

to get mixed up: the shareholders are the customers are the employees, and the
corporate commitment to excellence comes to seem indistinguishable from the
religious commitment to righteousness. It is a vision in which everyone will go on
becoming more righteous and more excellent and more prosperous, forever and
ever.30

The First Commandment states, “I am Yhwh your God, who brought you out of the land of

Egypt...you shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make yourself an idol...You shall not

bow down to them or worship them...” (Ex. 20:2-5, NRSV). For the world of the people of Yis’rael

(Israel), to worship other gods did not just mean to worship a bunch of divine beings up in the sky or

on a mountain, but to put ones trust in certain gods because they gave people certain things, or

commodities. If one put trust in other gods they did so to receive money, property, commodities, etc.

One of those gods, in the ancient Near East, was Ba’al, a Canaanite god who’s name in Aramaic

was Mammon (which has also been translated as “Wealth”). The word Mammon has been seen by

some etymologists as coming from the word ’~mana which means “that in which one trusts.” 31 This

etymological root can help us better understand Jesus’ parable on serving two masters better, and

put into context Dollar’s (such an apt name if I do say so myself) heresy. “‘No slave can serve two

masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise

the other. You cannot serve God and Wealth.” Jesus then goes on to condemn the religious
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establishment “who were lovers of money” by saying, “‘You are those who justify yourself in the

sight of others; but God knows your hearts, for what is prized by human beings is an abomination in

the sight of God.’” (Luke 16:13-15, NRSV) This quote from Jesus, the man Dollar states he serves

and speaks to on a regular basis, gets to the heart of the matter. Dollar misguidedly preaches a

heretical message to his people based on his fetishistic view of commodities and money. Because his

vision is so simplistic and narrow minded, instead of preaching about the true God, the Father, Son,

and Holy Spirit, which Christians state is their true god, he preaches a fetishistic gospel based on the

perversities of the capitalist system. One no longer puts her or his trust in God but now one puts her

or his trust in money, from which one has access to multiple gods, the gods of the commodities

(money in the Hindu sense can almost be seen like a perversion of the god Ganesh, whom gives

many Hindus access to the gods they want to pray too).

Norman O. Brown’s 1959 book Life Against Death “is perhaps the most searching

psychoanalytical critique of capitalism ever written,” states McCarraher.32 With capitalism, Brown

writes, the “power over this world has passed from God to God’s ape, the Devil.” With money

Brown sees “the essence of the secular,33 and therefore of the demonic.” Writing on Brown

McCarraher states, “The ‘money complex,’” which Dollar falls under and what Marx “considered

the animating spirit of commodity fetishism—is, in Brown’s words, ‘the heir to and substitute for the

religious complex, an attempt to find God in things.’ Capitalism, we might add, was a new form of

enchantment.” 34 As I have stated above for commodities, Dollar appears to be putting divine

characteristics of enchainment into money, he’s trying to find God in commodities and money

instead of trying to find God in the presence of human beings, which is a subject that Gustavo

Gutiérrez talks at length about.35 He’s putting money above all else, even commodities. This is

Dollar’s downfall and his largest weakness. While he may be preaching a theology that many want
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to hear (especially the rich) he is preaching a false theology that only can exist under the pretenses of

the commodity and money fetish. Yet these fetishes wouldn’t be as intense unless it had to do with

the capitalistic market economy. Pablo Richard and Raul Vidales write that:

With the advance of the capitalist system money is transformed into capital...In the
transformation of money into capital it becomes obvious that commodity
relationships in their very operation have the power of decision not only over the
proportions of material goods to be produced but even over the life or death of the
producer.36

With this we now enter the capital fetish and into the thoughts of the neo-conservative

Catholic theologian, and neo-classical proponent of capitalism, Michael Novak, whom also uses

religion and the Bible to justify capitalism and the building of capital (wealth). Like Dollar, Novak

subscribes to a Prosperity Theology, yet a different branch of Prosperity Theology. Instead of

focusing too much on the accumulation of commodities through money and being a cheerleader,

Novak uses his theology as a jumping off point for the justification of the system of capitalism and

to justify laissez-fair free market capitalistic policies.

In Capital, Vol. III Marx states, “We have already shown in connection with the most simple

categories of the capitalist mode of production and commodity production in general” the mystifying

character of money and commodities and the fetishes that arise out of them. “In the capitalist mode

of production, however, where capital is the dominant category and forms specific relation of

production, this bewitched and distorted world develops much further.” 37 With an ever deepening

capitalist system commodity and money relationships widen their scope to include means of

production as well the working classes of society. “As money becomes capital,” Hinkelammert

says, “it becomes obvious how commodity relationships in their very workings are in a position to

decide not merely how much of what material goods shall be produced but even whether producers

will live or not.” 38 Now everyone is affected by commodities and money through the accumulation
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of capital (surplus value). Those who work for corporations and manufacturers no longer control

their own lives. Their livelihood is now based on the conditions of where they work and are

determined by the way commodities interact with each other in the free market. Depending how

commodities such as oil and high grade steel battle with each other, etc., this will affect the worker

at her or his job. If one is an employee for American Airlines and the prices of oil skyrocket one will

loose her or his job due to increased costs at American Airlines (for fueling the airliners) and if

another is working at an Exxon-Mobil oil rig than that one will be able to keep her or his job, and

maybe even make a little more money. Both of those workers jobs depend on how capital is built up

and how commodities battle and interact with each other. “Unfitted by nature to make anything

independently, the manufacturing worker develops his productive activity only as an appendage” of

the corporation. “As the chosen people bore in their features the sign that they were the property of

Jehovah,” says Marx, “so the division of labour brands the manufacturing worker the property of

capital.” 39 Now, due to circumstances beyond a workers control, he or she must give their

allegiances to the corporation and must submit to the interaction of commodities and capital. Miller

states that the First Commandment not only applies to “other gods” but also “to multiple claims on

your obedience.” 40 But this wouldn’t be the fault of the worker, the worker must work in order to

live, if the worker chooses not to submit to commodities he or she will die. The fault doesn’t lie at

the feet of the worker and the exploited but rather at the feet of the capitalist and those who justify

capitalist oppression, such as Michael Novak. The prophet Jeremiah states that:

Like fowlers they set a trap; they catch human beings. Like a cage full of birds,
their houses are full of treachery; therefore they have become rich, they have grown
fat and sleek. They know no limits in deeds of wickedness; they do not judge with
justice the cause of the orphan, to make it prosper, and they do not defend the right of
the needy. (Italics mine, Jer. 5:25-29, NRSV)

For Novak the corporation is “the best secular analogue to the church.” 41 “Viewed in the
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long run of history, the business corporation is a fascinating institution. It is a social institution”

and “[i]ts legal existence is transgenerational.” and it “is a necessary (but not sufficient) condition

for the success of democracy” because the Founding Fathers “saw quite clearly that democracy

would be safer if built upon the commercial and industrial classes.” Novak also writes that “[i]ts

members come to it voluntarily. They do not give it all the commitment and all the energies of

life.” 42 Finally, “the business corporation is, in its essence, a moral institution of a distinctive type”

which imposes its “moral obligations that are inherent in its own ends, structure, and modes of

operation.” 43 Hinkelammert argues that in order for capital and corporations “to live, the worker

must be kept alive. Capital gets its life from the worker and therefore has to keep the worker alive

in order to stay alive itself.” 44 Yet it seems that corporations (guided by capital), that is, capital,

only care about the bare necessities in order for their worker to live. “In manufacture,” Marx says,

“the social productive power of the collective worker, hence of capital, is enriched through the

impoverishment of the worker in individual productive power.” 45 Corporations are vehicles meant

to build up capital and it needs workers to consume to build up that capital. They are not seemingly

guided by the welfare of human beings or of its workers but instead guided by one single force, to

accumulate capital, to build wealth. This capital fetish, the wanting (needing) to build up capital is

something that the prophet Amos criticizes when he chides the leaders and the rich of Yis’srael by

stating:

Hear this, you that trample the needy and bring ruin to the poor of the land saying:
“When will the new moon be over so that we may sell grain; and the sabbath, so
that we may offer wheat for sale? We will make the ephah small and the shekel
great...buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, and selling the
sweepings of the wheat.” Yhwh has sworn by the pride of Jacob: Surely I will never
forget any of their deeds. (Italics mine, Amos 8:4-7, NRSV)

Novak’s capital fetish blinds him to the fact of this reality. In fact, it blinds him so much
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that he actually equates the corporation for the Body of Christ, the church, by stating it is “the best

secular analogue to the church.” Instead of pledging his allegiance to God he is pledging his

allegiance to an entity who’s sole purpose is to build up capital (money), which leads to a further

intensification of idolatry by further delving into the commodity and money fetish and by putting

one’s faith in money and by imbuing money and commodities with divine like qualities; this then

leads to the ultimate heresy in claiming that a corporation is in essence a church, the Body of Christ.

Which for those accepting those principles, makes sense, since they project divine characteristics

onto commodities and money.

Novak also states that a corporations members come to it voluntarily. Yet Novak does not

expound who its members are. Are the members the boardroom members, the janitors, cubicle

workers, shareholders, sweatshop workers? Also, the idea of choice within a capitalists system,46 as

we have seen above, depends on one’s position in that system. But even if one is an owner of capital

in the system he or she does not direct how capital should be used since it is commodities, made by

human beings, that seem to direct the flow of capital (as we have seen above). Marx states that for

the owner of capital one only hears:

Accumulate, accumulate! That is Moses and the prophets!...If, in the eyes of

classical economics, the proletarian is merely a machine for the production of
surplus-value [the building of capital], the capitalist too is merely a machine for the
transformation of this surplus value into surplus capital.47

We can also see how instead of being a beacon for freedom, as Novak states the corporation

is, we now see that many Americans (and Europeans) are working longer hours for lesser pay (since

inflation is rising faster than wages).48 Novak’s main theological flaw is putting his trust in an

institution of capitalism which its only goal is the consumption of human life in order to accumulate

capital, the Anti-Christ, as Marx states. This then puts Novak on the opposite side of the theological
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divide between those whom fight for God and His people and on the side of those whom fight

against God and for capital (all be it both sides claim to fight for God).

This trust in the corporation for Novak is only possible because of his trust in the capitalist

free market which he views as the best vehicle for the common good of humanity. “I believe in sin,”

stated Novak in a Washington Post column in March of 1976, “I am for capitalism, modified and

made intelligent...It allows human beings to do pretty much what they will...Capitalism is a system

built on belief in human selfishness; given checks and balances, it is near always a smashing,

scandalous success.” 49 What Novak is doing here is framing his argument for capitalism in a

theological way which will “protect” him from the criticism of fellow Christians (mainly liberation

theologians) by relying on old Mediaeval beliefs on the concept of sin. Yet through out much of the

Tanakh (the Hebrew bible, known as the Old Testament to most) and the New Testament we see

many of the prophets, evangelists, and Jesus, framing the concept of sin in economical terms of those

exploiting the masses (Ex. 3:7-10; Neh. 5:1-5; Ps. 10:1-3; Is. 10:1-3b; Sir. 34:18-22; Matt. 6:19-21;

Lk. 1:46-55; Jam. 5:1-6, etc.). To uplift the masses Novak sees the capitalist system, the free

market, as the perfect means to do this. Speaking of the time period of Adam Smith Novak states,

“If you face a world of 800 million people, most of them poor...and you can produce new wealth,

then you must produce new wealth. If you can do it, you must, give the widespread poverty in the

world.” 50 One shouldn’t focus on the poor whom are poor due to the free market’s constant

obsession with amassing more capital since that is the “[w]rong question. I mean, supposing

somebody figured out the causes of poverty. So now that you know how to make poverty who

wants it? I mean it is absolutely the wrong question. It is just an insane question.” 51 Novak seems

to be blinded by his fetish for capital to see the contradictory terms in his statement in a world where

the pursuit for capital inevitably leaves many people in poverty due to the aftereffects of pursuing
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capital in the free market. This is where we can clearly see Novak’s apostasy in relation to his belief

in God. To question the free market is to question the divine will of God (even though Novak has

admitted that the free market is “capitalistic hell” 52). Novak sees the commodities and money

(capital) built up in the capitalist system as divine objects of God, which is the same mistake that

Dollar makes, and because of this, Novak sees the free market as being set up by God for common

good purposes despite the fact that Novak states it is an imperfect system.53 Using terms from

Hinkelammert, Novak, instead of having a faith in the Christian God of the Bible, has:

faith in money, which is the Holy Spirit immanent in the commodity world...faith in
the preestablished order of the relationships of production—faith that they will
continue eternally...[and] faith that the agents of production are, and will continue to
be personifications of capital.54

With this Novak has fallen into sin, which is what the author of 1 st Tim. talks about when he

states that “the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some

have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains.” (1 Tim. 6:9-10,

NRSV). Not only is Novak wrong in the theological realm but his thinking in the secular realm is

also off. Here, we see a circular justification for the oppression and grinding poverty of millions of

people around the world due to free market and neoliberal policies. Since there are poor people in

this world society must “produce more wealth” and because of the building up of capital this will

adversely affect the poor, thus causing them to slip further into poverty,55 which in turn, according to

Novak, will require us to make more capital.

Novak always goes back to Adam Smith in his analysis of free market capitalism. He

always states that free markets are the best system because they lead to democracy and free

societies.56 Yet his outlook either ignores (on purpose) or fails to realize that while “economies

become more and more modernized, the direct association between production and use gets
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increasingly obscured for exchange.” 57 In early 19 th and late 18 th century America’s economies were

more local and means of production more spread out which lead to a more “democratic” market

since there was yet any national and transnational corporations and large businesses. If you were in

a town you got your meat from a butcher who knew you, clothes from a tailor who knew you, and

grain from a merchant who more than likely knew you. Yet when the distance between service and

profit increased, and commodity and monetary relations became less personalized and more

impersonal, the market became more and more “obsessed” with the accumulation of capital and less

for the benefits of human beings.58 We can see with the advancement of capitalism through

neoliberal globalization the effects it has on those of the lower classes; such as an increase of

suicides in India by local farmers59 due to an increase in large scale industry farming. “For

thousands of years, land in” areas such as India and Guatemala were “used for subsistence farming.

As capitalism expands into the third world, however, land is seen as too commercially viable to

remain outside the cycle of exchange.” 60 Capital has now reached a point where it is now

consuming land in order to continue its massive growth, and with that growth it is consuming those

who used to farm the land. Now these farmers have become “dependent on the money economy”

instead of themselves for subsistence.61 Novak, instead of condemning this action based on his faith

actually applauds these policies and he justifies them religiously. The prophet Isaiah states, “It is

you who have devoured the vineyard; the spoil of the poor is in your houses. What do you mean by

crushing my people, by grinding the face of the poor? Says the Lord God of hosts” (Is. 3:14b-15,

NRSV). And yet Novak seems to be ignoring this piece of scripture, and others, for the benefit of

the capitalist. If Marx says that “[j]ust as man is governed, in religion, by the products of his own

brain, so, in capitalist production, he is governed by the products of his own hand” 62 than we can

also state the reverse for Novak: Just as in capitalist production human beings are enslaved by
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products of their own hands, they project this slavery onto a religious world, in which they are

dominated by products emanating from their own brains. This gets to the heart of the matter of

Novak’s true heresy and mistake. Novak’s religious thought is controlled by his capital fetish, in

order to justify the accumulation of capital he twists the texts of the Bible to satisfy his own fetish

instead of looking critically at the world around him and himself, to see if he is staying true to his

professed Christian God. Also, criticizing Novak’s belief that the free market creates a common

good, Thomas R. Rourke points out that how is the common good being meet when “Nike

corporation...paid an average female worker in Indonesia approximately $.82 per day in 1991" and

charged consumers more than 100 times that much for the shoe produced and “paid Michael Jordan

$20,000,000.” Which was a figure higher than all of the workers who produced shoes in Indonesia

combined.63 This oversight by Novak can only be explained by his being guided by the capital fetish

instead of being guided by the Holy Spirit (a being he believes in and professes to be guided by).

Ultimately people such as Novak, who justify free market systems by using the Bible, and

Dollar, who justify wealth building by using the Bible and who states God shows his blessings

through money, are blinded by their fetishes for capital, money, and commodities. It’s these fetishes

which guide their theological perspectives, instead of the Bible guiding their theological

perspectives. Because of this, no matter how much they justify their views, they will always be lead

down the wrong path by their fetishes, and that path will lead them to idolatry by worshiping

commodities, money, and the capitalist system. Instead of God being their concrete reality (which

they proclaim God is), their concrete “reality” will be what they see (yet they will see it in a

perverted sense), and what they see is commodities and money, which is one thing the Bible is very

clear on and one thread of the Bible that connects the New Testament and the Tanakh. That thread

is the condemnation of money and commodities which distract people from God, and since they are
 Stephens 18

distracted from God they are ultimately distracted from each other and the common good of their

fellow human beings.

“They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit. They shall
not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat; for like the days of a tree shall the
days of my people be, and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands.”
-Isaiah 65:21-22
 Stephens 19

Notes

1. All quotes from the Catholic/Orthodox/Protestant Bible are taken from the New Revised Standard
Version (NRSV) translation. The Bible in use is Michael D. Coogan ed., The New Oxford
Annotated Bible Third Edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).

2. Kelefa Sanneh, “Pray and Grow Rich.” New Yorker 80, no. 30 (Oct. 11, 2004): 48-57,
http://0-web.ebscohost.com.opac.sfsu.edu/ehost/detail?vid=5&hid=6&sid=ccbc98f3-5524-4684-9d
58-475fec862823%40SRCSM2 (accessed Oct. 5, 2006).

3. Michael Novak, Three in One: Essays on Democratic Capitalism, 1976-2000 (Lanham, Md:
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2001), 4.

4. Franz J. Hinkelammert, The Ideological Weapons of Death: A Theological Critique of

Capitalism, trans. by Phillip Berryman (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1986), 5.

5. Hinkelammert, The Ideological Weapons of Death, 5.

6. Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume I, trans. by Ben Fowkes (London:
Pelican Books, 1976. Reprint, New York: Penguin Classics, 1990), 125.

7. Mike Wayne, “Fetishism and Ideology: A Reply to Dimoulis and Milios,” Historical
Materialism 13, no. 3 (2005): 201.

8. Marx, Capital,163.

9. Eugene McCarraher, “The Enchantments of Mammon: Notes Toward a Theological History of

Capitalism,” Modern Theology 21, no. 3 (July 2005): 437.

10. The commodity, for Marx, “is a sensuous [thing] which...at the same time [is] suprasensible or
social...the impression made by a thing on the optic nerve is perceived not as a subjective excitation
of that nerve but as the objective form of a thing outside the eye. In the act of seeing...is a physical
relation between physical things...As against this, the commodity-form, and the value-relation of the
products of labour within nature of the commodity and the material [dinglich] relations arising out
of this.” (Marx, Capital, 163)

11. Hinkelammert, The Ideological Weapons of Death, 6.

12. Ibid., 7.

13. Marx, Capital, 165.

14. Ibid.

15. McCarraher, “The Enchantments of Mammon,” 438.

 Stephens 20

16. Quoted in Sanneh, “Pray and Grow Rich.”

17. By “true” God I don’t mean to state that the Christian God is the only true God and all other
gods are false gods and that all other religions are demonic, false, and evil, etc. By “true God” I
mean the true God in the sense that Dollar sees, or thinks he sees, it. The god of the Christian
religion, which Dollar holds to be his god. I will argue that Dollar no longer worships the god he
sees as true but now worships a plethora of false gods in the forms of commodities and the ultimate
false god, the anti-Christ, in the form of money, which is the unifier of commodities on the free
market.

18. McCarraher, “The Enchantments of Mammon,” 435.

19. Sanneh, “Pray and Grow Rich.”

20. Hinkelammert, The Ideological Weapons of Death, 16.

21. Pablo Richard and Raul Vidales, “Introduction,” ibid., xvii.

22. Hinkelammert, The Ideological Weapons of Death, 19.

23. Marx, Capital, 181.

24. Ibid., 180.

25. The text he quotes is: “Illi unum consilium habent et virutem et potestatem suam bestiae
tradunt...Et ne quis possit emere aut vendere, nisi qui habet charactereum aut nomen bestiae,
aut numerum nominis eius.” (Marx, Capital, 181).

26. Hinkelammert, The Ideological Weapons of Death, 19.

27. McCarraher, “The Enchantments of Mammon,” 437.

28. Patrick D. Miller, The God You Have: Politics, Religion, and the First Commandment
(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2004), 31.

29. Members must tithe 10% of what they make and in order to become a member they have to meet
numerous requirements, among which is to give the church their social security number (Sanneh,
“Pray and Grow Rich).

30. Sanneh, “Pray and Grow Rich.”

31. Miller, The God You Have, 25.

32. McCarraher, “The Enchantments of Mammon,” 442.

33. By stating “the essence of the secular, and therefore of the demonic,” he does not mean that the
secular is demonic in the classical evangelical sense, in fact, far from it. Brown, in writing his book
 Stephens 21

connects “the standard psychoanalysis of money to an exploration of religious concerns.” Brown

concludes that after surveying historical and anthropological literature, “money actually derived its
power from ‘the magical, mystical, religious...the domain of the sacred.’” and that the secular “‘is
only a metamorphosis of the sacred’—an observation made in the course of criticizing the ‘illusion
that modern money is secular.’” (McCarraher, “The Enchantments of Mammon,” 442-443).

34. McCarraher, “The Enchantments of Mammon,” 443.

35. See Gustavo Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation: 15 th Anniversary Edition, trans. by Caridad
Inda and John Eagleson (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1988), 106-120, specifically 106-
107.

36. Pablo Richard and Raul Vidales, “Introduction,” The Ideological Weapons of Death, xviii.

37. Quoted in Hinkelammert, The Ideological Weapons of Death, 27.

38. Ibid., 28.

39. Marx, Capital, 482.

40. Miller, The God You Have, 21.

41. McCarraher, “The Enchantments of Mammon,” 460, n. 42.

42. Michael Novak, Three in One, 233.

43. Ibid., 241.

44. Hinkelammert, The Ideological Weapons of Death, 30.

45. Marx, Capital, 483.

46. For more on choice and the setting up of the capitalist system and how people merely are only
making choices based on what the free market dictates to them see Ellen Meiksins Wood, The
Origin of Capitalism: A Longer View (London: Verso, 2002).

47. Marx, Capital, 742.

48. On wages and working hours see Jeffrey E. Hill, et. al., “Finding an Extra Day a Week: The
Positive Influence of Perceived Job Flexibility on Work and Family Life Balance,” Family
Relations 50, no. 1 (Jan. 2001): 49-54; Lynne Lamberg, “Impact of Long Working Hours
Explored,” Journal of the American Medical Association 292, no. 1 (July 2004): 25-26; Jeremy
Reynolds, “When Too Much Is Not Enough: Actual and Preferred Work Hours in the United States
and Abroad,” Sociological Forum 19, no. 1 (March 2004): 89-120; Amy S. Wharton and Mary
Blair-Loy, “Long Work Hours and Family Life: A Cross-National Study of Employees’ Concerns,”
Journal of Family Issues 27, no. 3 (March 2006) 415-436.
 Stephens 22

49. Novak, Three in One, 4.

50. Ibid., 57.

51. Ibid.

52. Ibid., 4.

53. Ibid., 56.

54. Hinkelammert, The Ideological Weapons of Death, 44.

55. For more on the adverse effects of neoliberal policies on the lower classes around the world see
Edmund Amann and Werner Baer, “Neoliberalism and its Consequences in Brazil,” Journal of
Latin American Studies 34, no. 4 (Nov. 2002): 945-959; Werner Baer and William Maloney,
“Neoliberalism and Income Distribution in Latin America,” World Development 25, no. 3 (March
1997): 311-327; Rubiana Chamarbagwala, “Economic Liberalization and Wage Inequality in
India,” World Development 34, no. 12 (Dec. 2006): 1997-2015; and Warwick E. Murray,
“Neoliberal Globalisation, ‘Exotic’ Agro-exports, and Local Chance in the Pacific Islands: A Study
of the Fijian Kava Sector,” Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography 21, no. 3 (Nov. 2000): 355-
373.

56. On the fallacy of capitalism leading to democracy in the 21 st century see Bruce Bueno de
Mesquita and George Downs, “Development and Democracy,” Foreign Affairs 84, no. 5 (Sept/Oct
2005): 77-86.

57. Thomas R. Rourke, “Michael Novak and Yves R. Simon on the Common Good and
Capitalism,” Review of Politics, no. 2 (Spring 1996): 249.

58. Rourke, “Michael Novak and Yves R. Simon,” 249.

59. Somini Sengupta, “On India’s Despairing Farms, a Plague of Suicide,” New York Times, 19
Sept., 2006, A1.

60. Rourke, “Michael Novak and Yves R. Simon,” 249.

61. Ibid., 250.

62. Marx, Capital, 772.

63. Rourke, “Michael Novak and Yves R. Simon,” 250.

 Stephens 23

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 Stephens 25

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