I love this! Muhutma Ghandi said he liked Christ, but despised Christians. Go figure.

Please note that Jesus never said anything, to my knowledge, that could be used to oppose enterprise. Enterprise is the foundation of capitalism, but capitalism as an economic system is more about the movement of capital than actual work.

(Disclaimer: I am not an economist of any kind and the following text may be guided more by ideology than real knowledge... except for the way religious Muslims run their banks.)

The thing about capitalism is that, while it enables entrepreneurs to get a massive kick-start to a business whose expenses are high, and hopefully whose revenues are higher, it also can lead to unfair and unsustainable exploitation of people and places: witness the Gilded Age. That kind of general unhappiness, privatization of profit and socialization of cost is not inherent in enterprise.

Consider the background Jesus came from. His was a society in which people would offer their labor and expertise to make you some item or deliver to you some service; and the worker could expect to be compensated by you in some way, whether in money or trade goods or equivalent services, for his work. Skilled manufacturing trades (e.g., blacksmithing or carpentry) were run as apprenticeships, because of the relatively high costs of acquiring tools and work-space, but people did travel from place to place and set up new shops in their new homes.

It was considered a grave sin to receive work and not pay for it. It's violating an explicit biblical commandment, after all. But at the same time, it was considered a grave sin to take interest on loans. If they had banks that operated consistently with the law, they would have been prohibited from charging interest. What they could have done, though, is bought goods from a supplier and then sold them to the would-be buyer at a slightly higher price, to be paid in installments. For example, let us say a blacksmith wanders into Jerusalem without enough money to set up his own shop, but with a burning desire to do so. He could ask for help from, let's say, a dealer in finished tools, and the two of them would go to the bank and arrange the sale: the bank would buy the tools and the work-space at market price and deliver them to the blacksmith, who would then pay the bank the market price of the tools and space plus additional money required to cover the bank's operating costs incurred in processing the loan, and possibly a profit. But the blacksmith would be able to pay a monthly fee, taken out of revenues generated by his business, which would eventually add up to the amount he owed the bank. In essence, it's an interest-free cost-plus mortgage.

It's possible to run even a modern economy in that way, assuming that a bank is big enough to support the gigantic loans required to start many modern high-tech businesses. But if such a bank would charge fees based on an averaged-out per-capita-cost-of-loan basis, if enough people put their money in the bank and did everyday business with it, it might well be able to put out that kind of investment.

There is an inherent difference between contemporary capitalism and traditional business enterprise. The goal of traditional enterprise is to support yourself and your family, and to gain stature. The goal of contemporary capitalism is to accumulate financial wealth above all else. It's a corrupt system driven by greed, which puts a dollar value on everything, right down to human life. Jesus of course did not name capitalism as a sin, because capitalism did not exist back then as it does now. There are a number of things he did condemn, however, which are component to capitalism as a whole: hoarding of wealth or material possessions, indentured servitude, banking institutions, etc...

At the core of capitalism is a mentality that is completely and irredeemably incompatible with the teachings of the Bible. It cannot be justified or reconciled with the Bible in any way. The issue is not the letter of the law. The laws of the time were determined by the various tribal leaders throughout Mesopotamia long before AD1. They are irrelevant now, just as you wouldn't stone someone to death for wearing a garment of different threads. What is relevant, is that if you were the kind of person who cared only for the bottom line in amassing wealth, then Jesus would have deemed you unfit for the kingdom of God, no ifs, ands, or buts.

While most of what you said is accurate, I take issue with the idea that none of the laws back then apply now; at least two influential religions have laws on the books prohibiting unfair banking practices and unfair exploitation of workers. Are these laws observed strictly? Ah... well, not so much, sadly. Agriprocessors is one fairly horrible example.

More people need to hear about this.

So I'm a bit late to the party, here, but...

Much like poor Republicans, conservative Christians aren't entirely at fault for their political beliefs. The right has found the magical way to get Christians to vote for them: appeal to morality. You don't have to actually DO anything about it, mind you, but if you can make part of your platform out of a darling issue for conservative Christians, you get the vote. Abortion is one such issue, and this is why I chose to not to vote based on it, whether I believe it's right or not. They get tunnel vision, and focus exclusively on that issue, and...well, there you go. I had a dear friend vote for Bush II's re-election solely and exclusively because he was going to stem the tide of unborn blood. It's crazy.

They don't hold with Republican morality. I was raised in the church, and though I've drifted FAR to the left, lots of my extended family's still over there. They're not crazy, but neither are they capable of backing out and seeing the bigger picture, and how the right's got them by the short hairs. They can either betray their faith, as they see it, or continue to vote for their views while keeping their heads in the sand about the rest of the GOP's activities. I'll tell you right now not a one of them endorses explicit racism or corporate takeovers of the US political system - but neither will they admit that either of those are actually happening.

Well, single-issue voters also kinda fall into the whole "deluding themselves" category as I said above. I'm not calling them all bad people, but rather weak-minded and fallen in with the delusion that they are promoting a Godly policy.

Right. I can whole-heartedly agree with that. I just don't necessarily agree that it negates their moral stance that they've been snookered. That only negates their powers of reason.

They have no claim to their moral stance, whether they know it or not. It still makes them hypocrites. You can still be a hypocrite without knowing you are one, after all. If you want to truly be morally consistent, then you will be. Anything less is a failure on your part for trying.