Resisting Exploitation Through Creating Community
A Feature Review of
The Anti-Greed Gospel: Why the Love of Money Is the Root of Racism and How the Church Can Create a New Way Forward
Malcolm Foley
Paperback: Brazos Press, 2025
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Reviewed by Justin Lonas
In Sherman Edwards’ musical 1776, the playwright has Pennsylvania delegate John Dickinson declare his conservative opposition to American Independence with the line, “Don’t forget that most men with nothing would rather protect the possibility of becoming rich than face the reality of being poor, and that is why they will vote with us.” Dickinson may have lost his argument in the musical, but the American project has proven this line prophetic, time and again. Throwing off every constraint to the pursuit of wealth may just be our national religion, and the American church has too consistently tried to mesh this creed with the gospel of a Lord who declares that the kingdom of God belongs to the poor (Luke 4, 6, and elsewhere).
Pastor and historian Malcolm Foley reminds us just how much the mainstream American outlook on life stands not just on a desire for a flourishing life, but on greed—“when desire outstrips need” (17). This is in sharp contrast to the teachings of Jesus. In The Anti-Greed Gospel: Why the Love of Money Is the Root of Racism and How the Church Can Create a New Way Forward, Foley says that “the body of Christ is called to exemplify a different way of thinking and living” (163). Greed doesn’t go quietly, though. Perhaps more so than other sins, greed cuts to the heart as an attitude that flows from disordered worship. It is an idolatrous relationship with what Scripture calls “Mammon”—a rival god; a false second master that Jesus tells us we cannot serve if we are to follow Him; a voracious idol demanding sacrifice (2).
Rather than simply stating the theological facts of the matter, Foley locates his analysis of the ways Mammon infects our hearts and demands unholy sacrifices in the particularly American history of racialized capitalism—“an economy whose bottom gear is torture,” as historian Edward Baptist put it. He pulls no punches in demonstrating that the horrors of chattel enslavement and Jim Crow and lynching stem not merely from hatred, but from greed. He roots racism in how the desire to accumulate wealth facilitated creation of an exploitable class of people whose rights and ownership of their own labor have been stripped from them. He traces these threads through to the present day, showing how the logic of exploitation still animates much of American economic life.
In rehearsing a history that Americans should know better than most of us do, Foley offers straightforward summaries of how we got to now. His pace and style have the moral force of clear truth-telling and a sermonic punch. He enlivens harsh realities that often get subsumed into debates about whether economic inequality is the result of systemic injustice or personal choices with fresh, succinct meaning that cuts to the heart of American Christians’ individual and collective captivity to Mammon.
Throughout the book, Foley describes the two-fold way that Mammon works on our hearts as “talons” (the harm done to others in the name of greed) and “tendrils” (the vines of lies about personhood and economic necessities that bind even our imaginations to this false god). Through the example of Washington D.C. pastor Francis Grimké, he shows how both operate. As Grimké began to preach against lynching as the terror tactic of white business interests in the late 19th Century, he saw the talons clearly. As he began, after years, to despair and even to consider advocating violent resistance by black Americans, Foley shows us how the tendrils of Mammon work to crush hope and tempt those who would resist to the same narrow world of violence and power in which their oppressors are trapped.
He doesn’t leave us there, though, showing how seeing the problem clearly can lead to pathways of resistance and resilience. Through the example of journalist and activist Ida B. Wells, we see a flipping of the script, putting the burden of reversing exploitation back on the oppressor through economic protest (boycotts, etc.), relentless truth-telling, and building up parallel economic systems. Wells observed that “the appeal to the white man’s pocket has ever been more effectual than all the appeals ever made to his conscience” (84), taking resistance to racism to its root of greed.
But Foley’s book is perhaps most effective as he builds on the lessons of history to put these questions squarely to readers in the present. He connects the logic of lynching to the more subtle violence inherent in not caring for those in poverty and in pursuing our own personal prosperity without considering its effects on others. He asks us to reconsider whether generosity—giving of resources accumulated through our participation in a flawed economic system to meet the material needs of others—is sufficient. He calls Christians to the deeper, incarnational generosity of solidarity with those suffering in poverty and injustice rather than throwing our lot in with those at the top of the economic heap. He asks us to follow Christ’s example of sacrificial service that resists exploitation through creating a mutually supportive community.
This solidarity, Foley reminds us, goes beyond simply a posture of support or empathy (though it must begin there), and deeper than a superficial understanding of forgiveness and grace. The project of “racial reconciliation” falls down here, because it focuses on attitudes and spiritual language alone, rather than addressing root causes of the racial divide in American life. In rooting out greed and its talons and tendrils, we need to look first at our hearts, but also at the habits and practices of our economic life and the material affects our actions have on others. Whereas Americans are prone to think of righteousness as a matter of individual faithfulness, Foley calls us toward a Scriptural vision of community righteousness, which the Bible calls justice.
As I wrapped up reading this thin book (just 174 pages, notes and all) with remarkable depth, I was astonished at how much Foley packs in. He covers with pastoral punch and power much of the ground that I work to help churches understand in training them to do better work of poverty alleviation and community development. His work is both accessible and profound, a pointed argument that every American Christian needs to wrestle with. At points, I wanted more concrete details about the current state of things, statistics on how these tendrils and talons work out in our present economic life. Foley’s dual lenses of history and theology, however, get the point across for those who have ears to hear.
In his landmark book The Christian Imagination, theologian Willie James Jennings calls the greed that gave birth to the displacement and exploitation of racism, colonialism, and enslavement “a theological mistake so wide, so comprehensive that it has disappeared, having expanded to cover the horizon of modernity itself.” Foley names this well, connecting the dots between our theological shortcomings and their economic consequences. He builds from this a powerful call to remember the biblical obligation to love our neighbors through our economic lives. What he offers is not a policy solution (though the implications of his argument certainly point to some), but an exorcism of sorts—the message of Jesus is clear, and we need to repent of our idolatry and believe the gospel. The burning question, he says, is not whether American Christians know what to do, but whether we are willing to be a people who live out the gospel we say we believe (163).
Justin Lonas
Justin Lonas is a poet, writer, cook, hiker, and amateur theologian. He holds an M.Div. from Reformed Theological Seminary. He and his wife Rachel live in Chattanooga, Tennessee with their four daughters. By day, he serves churches and ministry organizations around the world through the Chalmers Center at Covenant College. His writing often explores nature, literature, and the church's ongoing struggle to live out the way of Jesus. Justin's website is jryanlonas.com.
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