Capitalism: A Love Story
Michael Moore movies are a genre unto themselves: part documentary, part street theatre, with a little bit of satire and rhetoric thrown into the mix. However reviewers might describe his work, they certainly won't make use of adjectives such as 'subtle', 'balanced', and 'fair'. He is a modern day street-preacher, utilising a mix of clever visual images and emotive personal interviews. The editing suite is Moore's soapbox.
Capitalism: A Love Story - shown on Channel 4 on 23 May, and released on DVD last Monday - begins with the juxtaposition of an old film on the decline of the Roman Empire with images of contemporary corporate America and CCTV footage of modern bank robbers. The tale he goes on to tell is familiar - rising inequality, foreclosed homes, the collapse of industry, and the pervasive influence of corporations on politicians.
 One interesting sub-plot is Moore's account of how capitalism gained legitimacy through the claim that it is based on biblical values. Black and white footage of a television presenter claiming that capitalism is compatible with God's laws and the teachings of the Bible is placed alongside a US senator speaking of Wall Street as a 'holy place'. Going in search of Christian support for these assertions, Moore approaches two Catholic priests from his hometown. They are unequivocal in response, referring to capitalism as a 'sin', a 'radical evil' that God will in some way 'eliminate'.
Moore's contrasting of the US senator with the Catholic priests reveals the enduring tendency for Christians to baptise or, conversely, demonise contemporary social structures. At different points during the last one hundred years, the Christian faith has been used to give legitimacy to a remarkable range of political structures, from totalitarian regimes to liberal democracy, from varieties of Marxism to capitalism.
This tendency has often resulted in a church unable to offer either protest or solidarity when most needed. This is because if the church allies itself with a particular structure, it no longer possesses the distance needed in order to critique it. Likewise, if one considers a system to be entirely evil, one is unable to see or imagine any redemptive possibilities that might emerge from it. Both positions constitute blanket judgments that avoid the much-needed hard work of careful theological and biblical critique. Both, therefore, betray a lack of the discipline that should characterise cultural engagement by Christian disciples.
Mark Sampson
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