A prophetic word against neoliberalism

A time-honored and beloved Canadian custom—along with griping about the weather while taking secret pride in it—is pronouncing armchair judgments on the United States. We might be smug or defensive, envious or baffled, but we sure know you’re there. Seen from this side of the 49th parallel, the fanatic idolatry of freedom witnessed in certain elements of American culture is both fascinating and appalling, as are the gaps in logic, to wit: no degree of freedom from interference or regulation seems to free Americans—particularly the right-wing Americans holding the country hostage—from fear.

Into this reality steps cultural critic Rodney Clapp, a former Century columnist and current editor at Cascade Books. Raising his voice unequivocally, urgently, furiously, and hopefully, Clapp is here to take on the long, tentacled arms of the monster hiding in the shadows of this fear: neoliberalism.

Aimed, in the author’s words, at “pastors and thoughtful laypersons who haven’t had the leisure to examine and articulate for themselves just what neoliberalism is and just why it should be resisted,” the book is a concise, well-structured, erudite, and accessible raising of the alarm. Neoliberalism is not only running our lives, Clapp contends, it does so while pretending it isn’t there. Clapp is having none of it, and in his relentless pursuit of exposing its presence he proposes an apocalyptic framework “as the throbbing heart of Christian faith and hope.”