Greed is the root cause of racism, Malcolm Foley told the “Compassion and Justice” conference Feb. 21.
Foley serves as special advisor to Baylor University President Linda Livingstone and as co-pastor of Mosaic Church in Waco, Texas. He is the author of the book The Anti-Greed Gospel.
“Race as we know it does not exist because random prideful people thought they were better than other people because of their skin,” Foley told the gathering in Austin, Texas. “Race as we know it is not a child with pride but a child of men. When the Portuguese come to Africa, … they don’t decide to get involved because they’re racist. When they come to the Portuguese coast in 1441, they don’t do so because Africans are black. They do so because they have markets they want to respect.
“The Portuguese and others have to adjust the narrative to justify their exploitation to themselves and the pope.”
“The transatlantic trade of European nations going to Africa, trading for gold, spices and slaves, taking those slaves to the Americas to grow cotton, sugar and other crops — and they’re taking those crops back to Europe and so on and so forth — it’s incredibly lucrative. And the Portuguese and others have to adjust the narrative to justify their exploitation to themselves and the pope. So these categories of whiteness and blackness enter into the lexicon. It’s s because they’re black that we can enslave them. It’s because they’re black we can take their land, take their labor. Their blackness is a sign of their savagery, of their heathenness.”
Mammon was their God, Foley said. “As so, the most significant anti-racist Scripture in the Bible is Matthew 6:24 — ‘You cannot serve both God and mammon.’”
“Mammon,” he had explained earlier, is the Aramaic word for money.
Foley claimed mammon is “the strongest principality in American life.” And he said greed is the original sin recorded in Genesis, when Adam and Eve sought to grasp something that was not theirs.
America’s love of money fueled a hatred for Black people, Foley said. “There were justifying narratives that people would spout during the period, but they were smoke screens for a deep and abiding hatred. And by ‘hatred’ what I mean is a refusal to see other human beings as human beings to be loved, supported and cared for.”
Racism and racists do three things, he explained: “They lie, they kill and they steal.”
“The history of race in this country and in the world is saturated with these particular evils. Race and actual racism are enemies of truth, enemies of life and enemies of material equality and flourishing.”
“Race and actual racism are enemies of truth, enemies of life and enemies of material equality and flourishing.”
Lynching in American history “began because of greed, but continued because of greed and it ended because of greed.” It faded not because of a moral revolution, he said, but “because it became bad for business in the early 20th century.”
However, throughout history, greed rides side-by-side with capitalism, Foley warned.
“The particular mode of capitalism that constructed the economy in this country was forged in blood, the blood of the indigenous whose land was stolen and the blood of those whose labor was stolen.”
Capitalism fosters a “demonic cycle of self-interest that has been marching along for centuries throughout our institutions, in our families and our corporations and our churches, in our world. And this cycle explains why racism is so brutal and so resilient — because it’s not about hate in the sense of feeling. It’s about material interest, material desires on our part.”
The antidote, he said, is to build communities of deep economic solidarity, create communities of creative anti-violence and build communities of prophetic truth-telling.
Jesus lived out a model of generosity, not greed, Foley said, asserting that when in Philippians chapter 2 the Apostle Paul instructs believers to “have this same mind in you that was in Christ Jesus,” he is not preaching against pride but against greed.
Following Jesus in this way produces true philanthropy — meaning of a love of humanity — as Jesus taught.
And for any Christian who says they want to make money so they can help more people, Foley has a word: “When the money is in the bank, you may think you’re the kind of person who, when you get more, you’ll give more. That’s a very high explanation of yourself. You’re going to get it and keep it. … The principle of Christian charity is not the more we have, the more we give. But rather the less we need, the more we give.”