Economist Hermann Daly has been called prophetic for his opposition “to the religion of the modern world” (Kunkel 2023, 19). This religion, according to Daly, deifies the growth of capital, quantified in the terms of GDP or GDP per capita. Daly refers to this deification as “growthmania,” emphasizing the zeal with which municipal legislators, urban planners, and business leaders seek “urban renewal” or economic development as if these were ends in themselves. Daly also highlights the irrationality beneath any idea that the economy could enjoy infinite expansion in view of ecological “limits to growth” (Meadows et al 1972).
This paper uses the term “growtheology” to refer to the system of beliefs and practices that animate this civil religion, which depicts economic growth as necessary or inherently good. It explores the extent to which growtheology clashes or finds common cause with religious traditions and theologies that predate industrial capitalism. Along with theologian and environmental ethicist John Cobb, Daly (1994, 37) has suggested that growtheology is not just irrational but is idolatrous for elevating an arbitrary conceptual tool to the level of ultimate concern. For Cobb and Daly, modern capitalist society has made a false god out of economic growth. In this way, they hint at the possibility of an adversarial relationship between growtheology and those religious communities that prioritize qualitative progress in terms of social justice or ecological sustainability over the quantitative accumulation of capital. Yet this potential opposition does not imply that religious communities will reject or critique economic growth; quite often, this civil religion coincides with or benefits from the religious traditions around it.
This paper turns to the city of Charlotte, North Carolina, to examine the theological roots of growtheology, as well as the opportunities for a Christian and generally religious resistance to the infinite pursuit of economic growth at the expense of people and planet. Charlotte is at the heart of the Bible Belt; it remains a southern city where public debate and rhetoric continue to be shaped by religious claims and communities. Yet as the largest banking center in the United States outside of New York City and one of the fastest-growing metropolitan areas in the country over the last two decades, the god of growth exercises significant persuasive power in this city as well. In July 2024, Charlotte’s city manager told a room of business leaders that “cities are either growing or dying” (Sands 2024). Hoping to garner support for the city’s first property tax increase in six years, Marcus Jones made the case for economic growth as the metric of community well-being and a prerequisite for addressing all other issues in the city. For Jones, any hope of addressing class or racial disparities in housing, education, or health relied on growing property values and the tax base generated by those property values. Charlotte thus stands at a crossroads: she can pursue infinite growth, or experience inevitable decline. The first part of this paper will treat Jones’ comments as a religious, growtheological claim, exploring the implicit cosmological and soteriological beliefs that make his claim so compelling and widespread in the public imagination.
For others in Charlotte, however, growth is a more ambiguous phenomenon. The month after Jones’ pitch to business leaders, faith-based community organizing initiative Queen City Family Tree partnered with Black-led theater collective Mixed Metaphors Productions to premiere an immersive performance, titled Kudzu: A Story of Belonging (Lewis 2024). Kudzu takes audiences through a home in the Enderly Park neighborhood, encountering or interacting with characters known only as “The Person Packing” or “The Flipper.” According to Kat Martin, co-founder of Mixed Metaphors, the history of the invasive arrowroot kudzu paints a more accurate picture of economic development than the superficial opposition Jones suggests between growth and death. Kudzu reflects the reality that growth involves the displacement of human or nonhuman entities, and that there is a resonance between urban gentrification and ecological devastation that remains underexplored. Building upon Greg Jarrell’s (2024) recent book on the role of White Churches and the Taking of Black Neighborhoods under the name of urban renewal in Charlotte, the second half of this paper explores how Queen City Family Tree, Mixed Metaphors, and a host of other past and present “degrowth” movements in Charlotte have performed prophetic or iconoclastic roles, critiquing the unequal benefits as well as the social and environmental costs of the city’s suburban and urban explosion.
The city of Charlotte also offers opportunities for this paper to consider the local and global dimensions of ecological ethics and degrowth hope. American Airlines is headquartered in Charlotte, and as the airline’s main hub, Charlotte-Douglas International Airport is the seventh-busiest worldwide in terms of arrivals and departures. The immense carbon footprint of the airline industry has international consequences, but the expansion of the airport also has local health and land use consequences for Charlotteans and their urban tree canopy. Bank of America and Truist Bank are headquartered in uptown Charlotte, next to Wells Fargo’s center of east coast operations and major Ally Bank, U. S. Bank, and J. P. Morgan Chase hubs, each of which fund and profit off the exploration and production of fossil fuels.
Most local environmental organizing employs a rhetoric of “environmental justice,” a term adopted from the United Church of Christ’s North Carolina-based “Toxic Wastes and Race” report, which dealt with disproportionate water, soil, or air pollution near communities of color and in low-income neighborhoods. Degrowth organizing in a Charlotte context blurs the lines between local and global environmental ethics as it takes on banks and corporate actors that are involved in the dissemination of carbon dioxide pollution with international implications. While this paper will focus on the religious foundations of the city manager’s growtheological position and the degrowth iconoclasm of Queen City Family Tree, Mixed Metaphors, and others, it will also attend to the way in which cities like Charlotte sit at the center of this much-debated axis within environmental ethics and organizing.
This paper examines the religious roots of growtheology, a term which refers to the system of beliefs behind a civil religion that deifies economic growth and urban development. It also explores the opportunities for a Christian and generally religious resistance to the infinite pursuit of economic growth at the expense of people and planet under the banner of “degrowth” organizing. To this end, it turns to the city of Charlotte, North Carolina, the banking capital of the Bible Belt, to critically examine the theological beliefs behind the city manager’s proclamation in July 2024 that “cities are either growing or dying” (Sands 2024). It turns to grassroots anti-gentrification and environmental justice organizations across the Queen City to show how “degrowth” social movements perform prophetic or iconoclastic functions, critiquing the unequal benefits as well as the social and environmental costs of the city’s suburban and urban explosion.