A Protestant Rethinking of Economics for a Healthier World

• Author: Carol Frances Johnston
• Date: 01 March 2019
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/ajes.12268
• Published date: 01 March 2019

A Protestant Rethinking of Economics for a

Healthier World

By Carol FranCes Johnston*

abstraCt. Neoclassical economic theory delivered upon its promise. It

showed how the liberation of markets from government constraints

could bring about a rapid expansion in the production of consumer

goods. That was a major accomplishment. However, it came with a

price in terms of social fragmentation, economic inequality, and a

planetary ecosystem that is now overwhelmed by human activity.

Continuing to follow the course plotted by conventional economics is

a path to disaster. The world needs alternatives. Marxism has been

tried and found wanting in many respects, including its abysmal

environmental record. This article offers help from an unlikely source:

insights of Reformed Protestantism that can be traced back to John

Calvin in the 16th century. Although Calvin and Calvinism are better

known for a harsh view of human sinfulness, Calvin also contributed

to the development of liberal democracies by advocating representative

government, universal education, and greater participation by more

people. Reformed theology emphasizes the importance of widespread

participation in decisions, including economic decisions, at every

level of society, and provides a positive role for institutions, including

government, to protect the common good. It also points toward the

need to situate economic policy in the larger domains of social and

ecological health. Above all, it denies the validity of any economic

system that deifies economics as such, and provides criteria for judging

the effectiveness of economic systems as well as the evils of

externalizing social and environmental costs in the name of a false

efficiency.

American Jour nal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 78, No. 2 (March , 2019).

DOI: 10 .1111/ajes.122 68

© 2019 American Journa l of Economics and Sociology, Inc.

*Associate Professor Emerita of Theology and Culture at Christian Theological

Seminary in Indianapolis, IN. Author of The Wealth or Health of Nations: Transforming

Capitalism From Within (Wipf and Stock, 2010). Email: johnston@cts.edu

364 The American Journal of Economics and Sociology

Introduct ion

When Adam Smith looked at the economy of his day he saw mer-

cantilism as rife with unfair monopolies, inefficiencies, and unpro-

ductive practices that benefited a few and deprived the many. He set

out to rethink economics, or rather, to think about it systematically

for the first time. He sought ways to conceive of an economy that

offered more access and more control to many more people. It would

be constituted by more productive systems and would realize more

prosperity for everyone. The result, The Wealth of Nations, was the

first systematic economic theory, and the first to imagine ongoing

economic growth in the production of goods. Smith could not have

dreamed that his ideas would be so wildly successful: radically remak-

ing the world in less than two centuries and enabling people to amass

enormous material wealth. He also never dreamed of the destructive

side-effects that would come with capitalism: stark social inequalities,

massive social upheaval, the poisoning of soil, air, water, and all living

things, dangerous climate disruption, and massive species extinction,

to name just some of the problems.

For the past 50 years, more and more thoughtful citizens have been

sounding the alarm about the mounting costs of continuing to live in

accord with the dictates of capitalism, which has been rigidified into an

ideology and imposed on the world without regard for consequences.

Thoughtful people of all sorts also question neocapitalist economic

theory, which purports to be fully “scientific” and “value-free,” even

as it ignores developments in science that contradict its outdated

premises and imposes its narrow core values. Neocapitalist theory en-

shrines “individual utility”—whatever individuals with money desire—

at the center of a market system. The system is harnessed to provide

an ever-growing stream of products, regardless of the cost to genuine

well-being and the common good of all life on the planet.

With catastrophic climate change now underway, the situation be-

fore humankind is fraught with peril. While capitalism has succeeded

brilliantly in what it set out to do—to generate unlimited growth in

the production of goods for individual consumption—it is now clear

that this outcome is burying the planet in waste and moving rapidly

toward ecosystem collapse. Nothing less than a radical rethinking of

365Rethinking of Economics for a Healthier World

economics and radical change in the way the world does business will

save us. Even if the world quickly changes, the consequences of more

than two centuries of unbridled economic growth that disregards

nature’s laws cannot be stopped. The effects can be mitigated to some

extent, but some of the damage is irreversible.

There is good news in the midst of all this. The world is shifting

much faster than expected from fossil fuels to green energy. Many

of the elements needed to make the shift to a healthier, more just,

and fully sustainable world are underway. Some of the necessary sci-

entific, technological, cultural, social, and spiritual transitions have

begun. The environmental message has moved beyond sounding the

alarm. Many people have been working on solutions for decades,

and their ideas are being realized. At the same time, the wisdom

embodied in traditional cultures, long disregarded, is being recovered

and is available to contribute to regenerating the world. Everything

needed already exists—it is a matter of scaling up the solutions and

developing the political will to implement them. We may hope that

the change will resemble the kind seen in chaos physics: one system

may suddenly transform into a radically different one. If the requisite

pattern for a new system is developing all along, a transition can

emerge when conditions are right, effectively replacing the old pat-

tern. Philosopher Alfred North Whitehead ([1933] 1957: 278) thought

that “quick transitions” in civilizations are possible, when “thought has

run ahead of realization.” As we work toward that end, we can only

hope that our efforts will help to mitigate the suffering that is already

happening across the world. There are many people working on the

needed thought and practice, and all contributions that help to move

the world in the right direction—in the direction of health and regen-

eration—are needed.

In this essay, I propose to offer some wisdom from my own

Protestant Reformed tradition, and to develop some ways that wis-

dom can contribute to the broader project of rethinking economics.

This tradition is not better than others, nor does it offer the only way

forward. Rather, I agree with Pope Francis (2015: ¶14) in his encycli-

cal Laudato Si’: