By Elliott Nace | Staff Writer
The Institute for Faith and Learning hosted a book launch party on Tuesday afternoon celebrating the release of Dr. Malcolm Foley’s newly-available book, “The Anti-Greed Gospel.”
Foley, a historian and special adviser to President Linda Livingstone for equity and campus engagement, informed “The Anti-Greed Gospel” through his doctoral research on Black reactions to lynching in the early 20th century, and in turn presents an alternate account of historical incentives behind racism and racial disparity.
“It became clear to me that our conversations about race are not fundamentally conversations about hate or ignorance or identity,” Foley said. “What they really are are conversations about greed. Race shows up as a justifying and mystifying narrative.”
Foley’s outlook on greed as the source of racial bigotry, strives toward greater reform as opposed to just inclusivity.
“That’s not the future that I’m looking for,” Foley said. “I want a future where everyone has the resources that they need to be able to flourish because the evil at root here is exploitation.”
Foley noted that the issue of race spins out of economic opportunities as a form of extreme justification, where fiscal want comes to validate and commend acts of violence as a necessary function of the state.
“When the Portuguese come to Africa and witness chattel slavery, they don’t get involved in it because they’re racist; they get involved in it because they have markets that they want to expand,” Foley said. “I frame it in the book as what I call a demonic cycle of self-interest … We create narratives in order to tell ourselves that [violence is] not what we’re doing to each other, and that’s specifically the role that race plays.”
Dr. Elisabeth Rain Kincaid, director of the Institute for Faith and Learning, said Foley’s book highlights the lingering sour effect of race relations as spurred on by greed since an economy driven by constant growth will impact every corner of modern culture.
“Often, we do not realize how much our own desires and expectations of ‘what is owed us’ or ‘what we deserve’ are being formed by the culture around us –– making it easier for us to justify satisfying our own greed and prioritizing our own desires at the expense of others,” Kincaid said in an email.
Dr. Jonathan Tran, associate professor of theology in Great Texts, commented on Foley’s appeal to the gospel and how his role as a pastor at Mosaic Waco shapes his approach toward the deeper roots of modern racial disparity.
“What Malcolm’s doing –– and this is the pastor theologian in him –– is using the lens of the gospel to examine anti-black racism and just saying, ‘Once you use the gospel as the lens through which you see things, you see things more clearly,’” Tran said.
Foley cites the New Testament belief of rejecting greed as an indication of racism being a localized conflict between virtue and vice.
“The most anti-racist scripture is Matthew 6:24, when Jesus says you cannot serve two masters,” Foley said. “Our history of race and racism is a proxy battle of a cosmic war between God and mammon for our souls, so the purpose of this book is to not only make people aware of that war, but also to figure out how to be on the right side of it.”
The overarching message of “The Anti-Greed Gospel” is one of hope and healing through an adherence to the gospel and rejection of ever-present sin. Within the context of Black History Month, the book identifies a more inconvenient yet foundational root of racism while presenting Christian teaching as a lasting solution.
“The celebration today is, in some sense, the examination of Black History Month through the lens of the gospel to examine the basis of anti-Black racism as one of greed and the things that Jesus talked about,” Tran said. But it’s also to shine a light on the various good things that Christianity can contribute to — namely what forms of solidarity the church has always been a part of.”
