Faiths with a Heart and Heartless Religions: Devout Alternatives to the Merciless Rationalization of Charity

The Left usually dismisses charity as demeaning intervention into the lives of oppressed classes, an obfuscation through which exploitation is legitimated. Few arguments by Marx and Engels are as deeply ingrained in Marxism as their statements on charity. This can be traced back to Marxism’s common roots with liberalism. Marketization, religious reform, and liberal political economy undermined traditional conceptions of poverty and relief, which upheld interdependence between God, the rich, and the poor as sacrosanct. Marxism thus inherited an unshakable suspicion of heartfelt poverty alleviation, whereas today’s liberalism has moved beyond its classical vulgarity to invigorate charity with a new spirit. Exploring Lucien Goldmann’s take on Blaise Pascal and the ongoing reformulation of caritas within Christianity, this essay contends that a radically different conception of charity is possible and that charitable love is a battleground between conservative, liberal, and emancipatory understandings of reli...