“What if there was a good empire? How can we build a ‘church of the new capital?’” This is the question Lucia Hulsether, 2024–25 Senior Fellow in Race and Ethnicity in America at Brown University and author of Capitalist Humanitarianism, was asked when attending the Society of Consumer Affairs Professionals in Business 2017 convention. She critiqued these questions in a conversation with Assistant Professor of Religion William Underwood titled, “Capitalist Humanitarianism: Loss, Repair, and Living on in the Ruins of Neoliberalism” in front of a crowded Hallock Auditorium on Wednesday.

In the introduction to the conversation, Hulsether talked about her experience at SOCAP17 and the organization’s belief in the concept of “kinder, gentler capitalism,” and using a  religious framework as an alternative to a capitalistic one. However, Hulsether argued that such frameworks are one and the same, as capitalism has inherited colonial values inherent to Christianity, and went as far to say that capitalism has replaced Christianity as the dominant religion.

Reflecting on her time in Panajachel, Guatemala, she projected images of “conscious entrepreneurs” stationed in rugged-looking tents on top of the bare dirt and advertising their ethically sourced commodities. Criticizing the rampant denigration of Global South communities, she said that these claims to ethics are nothing more than a “negotiation” with the inherently destructive nature of capitalism. “How can we make the consumer feel good about being complicit?” is the central question she pins on these entrepreneurs and the SOCAP17 participants.

Hulsether pointed to multiple instances of social justice discourse being reappropriated to reinforce capitalism’s dominance. Exploitation and expropriated labor are seen as sites of liberation for historically oppressed communities including women. Moreso, she recalls instances where women “SheEOs” can incite a history of misogyny and feminist rhetoric to immunize themselves from criticism about the destruction their company’s operations inflict onto communities across the world.

Hulsether spoke to her own experience growing up in the Presbyterian Church and how that informed her own positionality. To her, it is easy to criticize right-wing Christian sects such as Evangelicals and their politics. However, within leftist spaces, she observes a “replication of a Christian colonial logic dressed up as secularism,” even outside explicitly religious spaces.

As Underwood put it, “There’s a passage early in the book where she says that the way she thinks about studying religion is less like studying specific tradition in the way that we often think of religious studies, but trying to use the conceptual tools that religiously gives us as ‘a jetpack for ideology critique’ [which is] the quote that she uses.”

“That’s something that I try to do in my work,” Underwood said. “I think this book is a model for the way that I like to think about religion as a lens for understanding other social phenomena as a way to adopt a critical perspective on history. I look up to this book for the way it does that, and so I’m hoping that bringing her also models for students like how to think about religion from a critical vantage.”

Likewise, Hulsether’s experience with religion empowers her to show the possible alternatives of conceiving personhood and our communities to our current destructive paradigm. She criticizes “solidarity loans,” which use language which promotes incorporating marginalized communities in the Global South into the free market and contributing to our banks. Antithetical to the mission that such language of solidarity historically emanated from, she insists that we imagine better alternatives to solutions like these.

Our community is full of people who have traumatic experiences with particular manifestations of religion. “Full stop,” Dr. Hulsether clarifies, her call is not one to “re-engage with that trauma.” But she does caution against allowing particular traumatic experiences to alienate oneself from a critical conversation that engages with historical and contemporary manifestations of religion.

She continues that “folks can’t come to their potential comrades with ossified preconceptions [about religions that stem from personal experiences],” because doing so precludes building an imagination about how our current unjust paradigm can change.

Furthermore, doing so becomes yet another instance of the self-fulfilling capitalist logic that Hulsether defined and interrogated throughout her book and during her talk. Her work is a call to collaborate with others and develop a multi-faceted framework that keeps criticizing the fundamental problems with our present-day society, and builds positive alternatives. Without a change to the ever-present logics that preclude us from connecting with each other honestly, there is no chance for us to end our complicity in this violent and destructive system.