There are a number of stories starting to appear that are all basically attempts to think theologically about what is happening in the world’s financial markets. There appears to be consensus that the Church calls us to live more simply and less extravagantly.
Some of the stories are continued reflections on the speech given by the Archbishop of Canterbury earlier this week, and on remarks by the Archbishop of York calling “short-sellers” thieves. While the reaction to Archbishop Williams’ remarks was mixed in the financial community, there has been strong support for his words in evangelical circles according to a post on the blog Christian Today.
[Evangelical] leaders spoke out after the Archbishop of Canterbury criticised the greed and lack of regulation that have led to the current global financial crisis, whilst the Archbishop of York asked why action for the poorest is deemed too expensive when hundreds of billions of dollars have been found to bail out troubled banks.
…Dr R David Muir, Executive Director of Public Policy at the Evangelical Alliance said: “We live to consume and now our greed is consuming us; we are reaping the consequences of always wanting more. Our way of life is based on the assumption that there is always more money available, more money to buy more things.”
…”Rather than supporting the institutionalisation of greed with vast public expenditure why can’t we resist the urge for always wanting more and live within our means?”
But Simon Barrow wonders if there’s anything the Church, in it’s present mode of accommodation with secular society, has to say to the world.
Under Christendom, the accommodation of institutional religion with governing authority, the churches have largely bought into (literally) the economic status quo. That needs to change. In the past 100 years we have seen that neither unfettered free markets nor a state-controlled command economy can ‘work’. But what does it mean for an economy to work?
If we are all, as the New Testament suggests, to envision ourselves as members of a household established on principles of grace, justice, sharing and participation (the word oikonomia links household management with modern economics and with the oikumene, the whole inhabited earth seen as God’s gift), then we need to cultivate practices and structures that point towards that – and which declare to the “there is no alternative” ideologues of right and left that there is an economic alternative – one which grows out of real people, real needs, human scale, and the adaptation of structures and mechanisms from those perspectives.
Bodies like the New Economics Foundation (NEF) have long been seeking to encourage, theorise and develop fresh perspectives on the basis of the many alternatives that already exist, from local trading schemes and co-ops right through to taxation on speculation, environmental credit, and major changes in global financial institutions and regulations.
What do you think? Is the Church, as presently constituted, too close to the seat of power to be able to speak prophetically in this moment? Is this even a time that calls for a word of prophecy? Will the calls by Archbishops and society chairs be “outside” enough to be recognized as coming from God?