The Rich Young Man, Zacchaeus, and Academic Capital

Abstract

The text is a translation of a chapter from a book by American researcher Todd Whitmore – “The Imitation of Christ in Magwi” (2019). This book was written at the intersection of anthropology and theology. Whitmore spent ten years working in the displaced persons camps of Uganda’s Acholi people (where they were driven after a bloody conflict). As an anthropologist, he not only entered into their reality and aided his informants, but also lived a Christian life, simultaneously “creating a theoretical ethnography in the context of empire” and “following Jesus in the midst of war.”  In fragments translated, Whitmore makes another theoretical move – he turns Christian reflection on himself and transforms it into a critique of academic capital, the field of science and his own position in it, in the spirit of Pierre Bourdieu. The author begins by analyzing the Gospel stories of the rich young man and Zacchaeus, then shows how the modern academic system directs scholars to accumulate academic capital at the expense of practical deeds and helping those in need. According to the author, to follow Christ on the path he showed the rich young man, a professor would need to give up tenure and the salary that comes with it. If this is the only pattern of behavior, then the scholar with his cultural capital has no more chance of passing through the eye of a needle than the rich man. Finally, Whitmore describes the creation of the non-profit organization PeaceHarvest in Uganda as a personal attempt to take a different path and convert academic capital into practical help – an attempt that negatively impacted his academic career.

Abridged English translation by Artyom Kosmarsky from the book: © Whitmore T. (2019). Imitation of Christ in Prayer: anthropological theology. London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark.

Keywords: academic world, gospel, Jesus, non-profit organizations, field of science, ethnography

For citation: Whitmore, T. (2026). The rich young man, Zacchaeus, and academic capital. Abridged translation from English by A. Kosmarsky. Russia’s Directions. Vol. 4. No. 1. P. 70–87.

Additional Info

Submitted: December 10, 2025

Copyright: © Auhtors, 2026

Distribution: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)