From their success, sprung the notion that in America a better life awaited. The capitalist system is built upon the notion that the friction of workers competing against one another benefits the consumer and thus the economy. The classic definition of capitalism is that for one to win, another must lose. One wonders, however, if the concepts of brotherly love and Christian acts of charity don't fall by the wayside of an economic system so red of tooth and claw. After all, religion recognizes that there are principles beyond the acquisition of wealth, which endow our lives with meaning.
Religion is predicated upon the concepts of unconditional love and forgiveness.
To embrace these concepts, one must purge his or her ego and remove himself or herself from vain, materialistic concerns. Capitalism, on the other hand, is a triumph of individual ego. It is based upon a bourgeois value system that makes the accumulation of objects a substitute for God's country. Rauschenbusch feared that capitalism's emphasis upon material acquisition and personal vanity was supplanting the worship of God as the center of man's life. American industrialists have massaged this incongruity by preaching a distinction between their public and private lives.