Toward a Theology of Shalom Capitalism

What comes to mind when you hear the word capitalism? Some of us instinctively reach for negative words — inequality, injustice, war, poverty, destruction. Others think of opportunity, meritocracy, security, entrepreneurship. The fact that we carry such different perceptions is precisely why we need a robust theology of capitalism.

What Capitalism Is

At its core, capitalism begins with a business. A business builds a product or service, assembles a network of suppliers, employees, and partners to produce it, and then finds customers who will pay for it. Revenue from those customers covers costs, and if the business is run well, money is left over — profit. That profit returns to the business and to its shareholders, the people who provided the original capital. The expectation of a return on that capital is what gives the system its name.

So is this system intrinsically good or evil? That's a fair question — and the honest answer is that we have seen it used for both.

Exploitative capitalism occurs when business owners squeeze employees and suppliers, refuse to pay living wages, and push their cost reductions to the point of something resembling slavery — all in the service of increasing profits.

Destructive capitalism occurs when the product itself is harmful, or when the production process contaminates rivers, poisons communities, and degrades the environment — yet the business rolls on because it remains profitable for shareholders.

Distorted capitalism — what we might call derivative capitalism — is perhaps the most widespread form today. In traditional capitalism, shareholders invest in a business because they care about its long-term viability, and they make money through dividends. But much of modern investing involves buying stock at a low price and selling it at a high price, with profit coming from price differentials rather than business performance. Most of us who have retirement funds participate in this system. But it creates powerful incentives for short-term thinking that can devastate businesses, communities, and the natural world over time.

Given all this, you might ask: if capitalism causes so much harm, why not simply condemn it and walk away? The answer depends on whether you believe capitalism is a weapon or a tool.

Conscious Capitalism as a Starting Point

A growing movement of thinkers and practitioners — often called conscious capitalists — argue that capitalism is a tool, and that the way you use it matters enormously. They offer three core principles.

First: redefine the purpose of business. Traditional capitalism says the purpose of a business is to maximize shareholder value. Conscious capitalism says no — a business exists within a web of relationships: employees, suppliers, customers, communities, governments, ecosystems. The purpose of business is to maximize stakeholder value, to enrich the community rather than just the shareholders. When you set that as your north star, you begin making different decisions.

Second: think in a longer time horizon. Conscious capitalists care not about growth as such, but about sustainable growth. Short-term thinking destroys long-term value. You can maximize returns by squeezing your employees or contaminating the river beside your factory — but over time, people stop wanting to work with you, regulatory costs rise, and the community you depend on is hollowed out. Retention is cheaper than rehiring. Healthy ecosystems support healthy businesses.

This concept — what systems thinkers call self-balancing feedback loops — is deeply embedded in reality. Imagine a farm that increases yields through pesticide use, enabling expansion and more pesticide use. This self-reinforcing loop feels like victory. But over time the pests become resistant, yields fall, and the farm contracts. The world self-balances whether we participate in that balancing willingly or not.

The writers of the Hebrew Bible understood this thousands of years ago. The Torah commanded that the land rest every seven years — not as a religious formality, but because long-term food security depended on it. Debt forgiveness every seven years recognized that societies with too many people trapped in poverty become unstable. The Jubilee every fifty years gave the next generation born into poverty a fresh start, because without it, you lose the viability of the community itself.

And Isaiah's declaration that "every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain made low" isn't just poetry — it's a description of a self-balancing reality built into the fabric of creation.

Third: help the vulnerable thrive — not through charity alone, but through building capacity. A business can only grow up to the invisible barriers in its context. Two-thirds of Guatemalan children drop out before finishing high school, so businesses can't hire people with the skills they need. If you want to grow your business, you have to invest in lifting the barriers that hold people back.

A Theology of Wealth We Need to Revisit

Imagine a poor family in Guatemala with nothing to eat. They pray, and someone comes to the door with a bag of tortillas. They are grateful. Now imagine instead that they received a bag of tortilla flour — more work, but enough for weeks. Or a corn harvest — enough for months. Or a plot of land — enough for years.

In theory, how God provides shouldn't change the depth of our gratitude. But in practice, the less vulnerable we become, the less grateful we become — and proportionately, the less generous. This has had a profound distorting effect on our theology of wealth.

We tend to demonize wealth and idealize poverty, telling ourselves that dependence on God is more spiritual than self-sufficiency. This theology runs deep in Mennonite and evangelical communities worldwide. But it is not the whole biblical story.

If you build your theology of wealth only from certain sayings of Jesus — don't store up treasures on earth, consider the lilies, the Rich Young Ruler walking away — you might conclude that the Kingdom of God belongs to the poor. But if you expand your lens to include the early church wrestling with those teachings, the complexity of the Law and the Prophets, the honest wrestling of Job and Ecclesiastes, and the New Testament as a continuation of the prophetic spirit rather than its replacement — you find something more textured.

You find that the Kingdom of God is not located at either end of the wealth spectrum. What God is looking at is something else. And that something else is what I will call the way of Shalom.

The Way of Shalom

Shalom has a dimension of harmony — inner peace with myself, which flows from peace with God, which extends to right relationship with others. But harmony alone is not enough. Shalom also requires well-being: being healthy, having enough, being whole. And much of that well-being comes not from God acting alone, but from God providing for me through others — and providing for others through me. When harmony and well-being are present together, there is a completeness that surrounds a person and a community. That completeness is Shalom.

The less vulnerable you are, the more Shalom you have. When we define Shalom only as inner harmony, we can look at a family in poverty and say, "But look how happy they are." That is not Shalom. You cannot have Shalom without well-being. You cannot have well-being if you are vulnerable.

We have a biblical mandate to build Shalom — which means we have a biblical mandate not merely to give charity, but to build wealth for those who do not have it.

Shalom Capitalism: Distributing Ownership

So how do we actually build wealth for vulnerable people? I believe the answer is capitalism — but not just any capitalism. Not even conscious capitalism alone. What we need is Shalom capitalism, deeply rooted in a theology of stewardship, and organized around a transformative principle: the distribution of ownership.

Twenty-five years ago, a group of leaders in Guatemala came together around the ashes of a failed state bank and built the Guatemalan Rural Development Bank. Nobody thought much of it at the time. The founding partners were cooperatives, nonprofits, women's groups, and Indigenous organizations. They pooled modest resources and embedded rules in the bylaws ensuring that ownership had to remain proportional to those original stakeholders.

Today, that bank is the second largest in Guatemala. Fifteen thousand people earn income from its dividends. Nonprofits whose entire operating budgets come from those dividends are funding education, healthcare, and organizing work across the country.

The solution to a broken capitalist system is not less capitalism. It is more capitalists. It is converting stakeholders into shareholders — aligning the incentives of communities, not just of wealthy investors, over the long run.

Choosing Our Response

As we reckon with capitalism's power and its brokenness, we face a choice about how to engage. Some of us gravitate toward isolation. Some choose separation. Some integrate fully. And some want to dominate — tear it down.

But Jesus understood that Shalom thrives at the intersection of the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of this world. The way of Shalom is like a seed that can only flourish when it is planted in the soil of a broken world. Inspiration ripples change through a broken system more effectively than isolation, separation, integration, or domination.

We need more inspiring leaders. We need more Shalom entrepreneurs who will build businesses that expand ownership into communities, nonprofits, and organizations lifting the invisible barriers that hold vulnerable people back.

"The Spirit has anointed me to bring good news to the oppressed, to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and release to the prisoners — and to make Jubilee come true." — Isaiah 61:1-2 / Luke 4:18-19

May it be so.