Tag: Economics

Most clergy are not trained in economics. And the last thing the country needs is well-intentioned moralistic advice from poorly-informed people. (See Sentamu, John.) Yet as the financial crisis in the United States deepens, it seems peculiar that neither the Christian left nor the Christian right has had much to say about the ideas and behaviors that brought about our financial panic. Greed isn’t great. But is that the best we have to offer?

Economics has given us a lot of better words, from self-interest to incentive to profit. They do not mean the same thing as greed, but they have displaced it, obscured it — and certainly demoted it from being a deadly sin.

Over the weekend we heard from Christianity Today about the phenomenon of people on Wall Street turning to God because of market volatility. Today we have a piece from Reuters that spotlights Trinity Church Wall Street, the Episcopal church so close to Ground Zero, among others. Observations included more people coming to services, more of them wearing business suits to lunchtime services, and among regular worshippers, “more strained faces” according to a nearby synagogue.

Anxiously scanning the Business section of The New York Times on Sunday, I came across … “For those who need a little bit of levity on a tense day, we present some mood music.” If you clicked on the video box below, a song began to play, its lyrics flashing on the screen in various colors: REM’s “It’s the End of the World as We Know It.”

Congregations in San Diego country are dealing with the consequences of the current economy for their members and for their own ministries.

In a Religion News Service article appearing on Crosswalk, Kirsten Campbell discusses the double bind that can hit churches in hard economic times: For faith-based