Enough Is Enough: Degrowth, Capitalism, and Liberation Theology

by Matthew Bernico, Dean Dettloff

Capitalism's excessive patterns of production and consumption are fueling the biggest existential threat to climate change. The central assumption of our current economic system puts economic growth before all other values. But infinite growth on a finite planet is fundamentally impossible. We must embrace the idea of degrowth.


With a name like "degrowth," misunderstandings are easy to come by, like assuming degrowth is about austerity or population control; on the contrary, degrowth means rejecting economic growth as the measure for social progress, such that we might grow other parts of our social life and ourselves. The problem isn't too few resources or too many people; it's capitalism's system of growth. Enough Is Enough argues that the economic and theological directions offered by liberation theology give us a unique paradigm for Christians to question the hegemony of growth and orient themselves according to alternative values rooted in a relationship with creation that sees all creatures as siblings.


Degrowth encourages us to expand our imaginations beyond a fixation on growth for growth's sake, to discover ways of organizing our societies according to different values. It's time for us to say, "Enough is enough," and to accept that if we abandon our drive for growth, we will discover there is already enough to go around.

154 pages, Paperback

Published May 12, 2026

Reviews

[Lonnie Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this urgent, prophetic call to cast down the idols of GDP, growth, and capitalism Bernico and Dettloff provide a clear-eyed analysis of these (and other) mechanisms that have helped drive us into the climate crisis in which we currently find ourselves. They also paint a picture of what it might look like to pursue a version of degrowth infused and informed by liberation theology.

Such a world of degrowth need not be an age of global austerity, though surely many would have to consume less. No, they argue that a world radically realigned to remove capitalist growth from its center would allow us "to be free to pursue more fulfilling lives, drawn forward by community, care, and gratitude," and provide "a social space for us to explore ourselves and our world, supported by an expanded social sphere."

To achieve such a world feels impossible, but Enough Is Enough provides a theological and theoretical framework we can carry forward into our struggle.

I commend this to you all.