What is Neo-Calvinism? It is a religious belief that stigmatizes the poor. It is the very root of modern capitalism and right-wing economic thinking. It is an ideology evolved from Calvinism itself, which by adopting the misguided concept of "predetermination", first threw the door open for the neo-Calvinist belief that poverty came from spiritual deficiency.
Calvinism developed two different, and partially contradicting, ideas of poverty, which both stigmatized the poor: One is the doctrine of predestination in Calvin’s writings; the other is the ethos of work and individual responsibility. Predestination states that God’s “unconditional election” creates every human being as either damned or saved prior to birth. The condemnation of the poor did not necessarily follow from this, and it was not explicit in Calvin’s writings. Calvinists, however, were searching for signs of damnation or salvation. As Borkenau shows, the principle of understanding a morally rigorous worldly life and economic success as signs of election marks the last step in the emergence of a Calvinist moral in 17th century England, Holland and United States (Borkenau 1980 [1934]:154-161).
And from this, we come to the sorry state of modern America:
About half of the people in American have the wrong idea and attitude about the cause and the nature of poverty, and, because of what they've been led to believe by the religious and political leaders they follow, they tend to generalize and blame the victims.
That attitude is, of course, partly the result of a human tendency to judge others as inferior. However, it is mostly the result of carefully crafted political propaganda cloaked as religious truths. It was not created by accident, or by coincidence. It was created and spread deliberately.
Why? Because some people who gain great wealth become greedy and selfish, and they want everyone to believe in a lie --- that the rich are blessed by God and the poor deserve to be poor because they "lack faith" and are just "lazy and not self-reliant."
That's what many wealthy people themselves want to believe, and it's what they want everyone else to believe. And its what the most influential American political figure of the last half of the 20th Century,Ronald Reagan, led many Americans to believe. But it's not true. In fact, as you will see, that idea and attitude is not only the opposite of the intent of Jesus of Nazareth, but in violation of the intent of the Founders of the United States of America.
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