Dear Associates of CCMJ,
As many will now be studying Justin Welby’s fine pastoral Lenten palliative study ‘ Dethroning Mammon’ to help us cope with a dying system, it may be appropriate, and certainly pertinent, to be reminded of two far more prophetic studies by CCMJ Associates……….
1. The study ‘Decoding Mammon – money as a dangerous and subversive instrument’, 2012 by Peter Dominy, which probes the long history of Christian thought on money in relation to the biblical search for inclusve justice, and
2. These wise words by Michael Hudson, [ with their incidental reference to Moltmann’s searing words – ‘the neglect of economics is a wound in the side of the church’ ]……
“The word “religion” comes from the same root, liga, as “ligament,” referring to its socially binding power. The word “law” also derives from this binding power, in an epoch when the law itself was sanctified in order to bind society to its moral standards.
At their best, the essence of religion and the law has been to serve as society’s means of cultural coherence, providing the values that hold society together. To protect society’s integrity and means of self-support for its members, every religion in history perceived that the system of usury – classically, rural usury, not mercantile credit arrangements, which were functionally speaking of another, pre-mutation character – was antithetical to the workings of society. Precisely because religion serves as society’s integrating force, it has been transformed as society itself has changed. This has weakened religion in its old, self-defensive forms dating from an epoch when communities had to prevent great inequalities from developing at the expense of the weak. The objective above all was not to disenfranchise the weak, for this would have disenfranchised the army and led to military defeat in short order at the hands of outsiders.
But as society came to be conquered from within by its financial interests, these newcomers emptied out what formally had been its core, its sanctified laws, above all those designed to keep the disruptive forces of usury in check. Much of the poetry and stories and “wisdom literature” of religion were personifications of these disruptive forces and of society’s proper response to them. The new religion, the “religion of the future” in the epoch of financial arrogance, kept many of the wrappings, and threw away the legal and economic content.”
[God is embarrassed by possession!]
Responses welcome