….at its core, this is also a spiritual crisis. More and more people are coming to understand that underlying the economic crisis is a values crisis, and that any economic recovery must be accompanied by a moral recovery. We have been asking the wrong question: When will the financial crisis end? The right question is: How will it change us? This could be a moment to reexamine the ways we measure success, do business and live our lives; a time to renew spiritual values and practices such as simplicity, patience, modesty, family, friendship, rest and Sabbath.
Faith communities can help lead the way, challenging the idols of the market and reminding us who is God and who is not. “The Earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world, and they that dwell therein,” say both Christianity and Judaism; the Earth does not belong to the market. Human beings are stewards of God’s creation and should preside over the market — not the other way around. We must replace the market’s false promise of limitless growth and consumption with an acknowledgment of human finitude, with a little more humility and with some moral limits. And the market’s first commandment, “There is never enough,” must be replaced by the dictums of God’s economy — namely, there is enough, if we share it.
Many of our religious teachings, from our many traditions, offer useful correctives to the practices that brought us to this sad place. Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount instructs us not to be “anxious” about material things, a notion that runs directly counter to the frenzied pressure of modern consumer culture. Judaism teaches us to leave the edges of the fields for the poor to “glean” and to welcome those in need to our tables. And Islam prohibits the practice of usury. (Muslim-owned financial institutions that charge fees for service rather than interest have done amazingly well during this crisis; their practices offer some interesting models.)
We need nothing less than a pastoral strategy for the financial crisis; we must use these religious teachings to develop Christian, Jewish and Islamic responses to it. What should people of faith be thinking, saying and doing now? What is the responsibility of the churches, synagogues and mosques to their communities, to the nation and to the world?
Jim, this would be so much more powerful & effective if you had *something* in it about sin and the need for personal transformation. The con only works when the mark wants something for nothing worse than they want to think. The con artists deserve arrest & prosecution, but if you can take some of that systemic critique and remind people about the economic side of metanoia and putting on the mind of Christ, you can make the con artists much less powerful to start with.
It isn’t blaming the victim to say that, too — if you can only rail against powers & principalities, you’re missing out on a real opportunity that people are aching to hear. IMHO.
Jim Wallis’s transformation from sometime evangelical activist to ‘(pseudo) Abrahamic faith communities’ Obama booster continues. His guy is on power now. Is he happy with the deficit – & the unemployment figures?
Such ‘pick ‘n’ mix’ progressivist ‘spirituality’ is a distortion of history and economics.