Let's talk about faith and money - Jesus did

The Director of Church Action for Tax Justice talks about the difference our faith makes to how we use our own money and to the wider economy.

Earlier this year, Pope Francis said this: "Structures of sin today include repeated tax cuts for the richest people, often justified in the name of investment and development, and tax havens for private and corporate profits, plus the possibility of corruption by some of the largest companies in the world." I suspect he did this because he had been paying attention to where Jesus had put his emphasis in the gospels.

It is often said that Jesus talked more about money than any other subject. Whether or not that's true depends on precisely how you count it, but it's certainly the case that he did talk about money a lot. 40% of the parables are about money or possessions, one in every ten verses in the gospels are on this topic and Jesus spoke about money approximately four times as often as he spoke about prayer.

It makes sense then to look to that body of teaching as we think about the Covid crisis we currently face. For while this is obviously a health crisis, it is also a deeply economic one which is having profound financial consequences for many. Significant numbers are losing their jobs or seeing their income diminish. They are understandably worried not just about their health but also about their financial security. This is especially the case for those who are poorer. The pandemic has both exacerbated existing inequalities and highlighted new ones and recent analysis by the IMF suggests the economic consequences will be much deeper and last much longer for those who are poorest. The same economic shock is not experienced by everyone.

In light of all this, what does our Christian faith say to us about the use of money and the wider economy? To explore these issues, we at the Ecumenical Council for Corporate Responsibility are running a series of online events to explore the ways in which our faith, finance and the wider economy interact. Called 'Restoring Hope', we want to offer a vision of hope that can help us in these difficult times.

The main event is an evening conversation with Dr Rowan Williams (former Archbishop of Canterbury) and Dr Ruth Valerio (Global Advocacy and Influencing Director, Tearfund). In addition, we are running sessions which include a bible study exploring income and wealth, an exploration of ethical pensions and a discussion of how the £40 billion available in our churches each year could make a real difference.

£40 billion? Well, the average UK church has at least 40 adults; the average UK income is approximately £25k. There are 40,000 churches in the UK. If you multiply all that together you get £40 billion. Our vision is one in which we take seriously the idea that all of our money is God's money, and that we have a moral responsibility to use all of it wisely. It is for that reason that we talk about the £40 billion restoration fund.

With regard to the 30% or so that is taken in taxes, we can use our voices to campaign for more effective use of our taxes; with regard to the 70% that is left, we can think more carefully about how we spend it - which includes what shops we buy in, which bank we use, where our savings are invested etc. We don't have the 100% to spend at will, but we do have some influence over all of it, and that influence should be guided by our Christian ethics.

One strand of our work is about encouraging Christians and churches to take a pledge. That pledge is not about giving away a tenth of our income to charity; it is about using 100% of our money with a Christian mindset. It is about asking questions of who we bank with, where our pensions are located, on which products do we spend our money, who provides our energy, our car, our clothes etc. It's also about campaigning for tax justice - which is another strand of our work via Church Action for Tax Justice - to ensure that the tax policies we implement are those that have poverty, inequality and environmental sustainability at their heart.

A recent international report argued that we need to change our global economic system in light of Covid to focus less on growth and more on equality and the climate. One of the reasons they gave is that humans are not inherently selfish, focussed only on maximising their own income, but rather we are social beings for whom the well-being of others, community and social cohesion matter. In reading this, it struck me that the authors of the report were, perhaps belatedly, coming round to an insight that theologians identified in the pages of scripture, indeed in the very nature of the trinitarian God, a few thousand years ago. As people created in the image of God, we are in essence persons-in-community, not individualised selfish beings. It is this kind of application of Christian thinking to our money and contemporary economics that we will be discussing at our events.

Dr Justin Thacker is Director of Church Action for Tax Justice, a programme of the Ecumenical Council for Corporate Responsibility (ECCR).

LINKS

CATJ - www.catj.org.uk

ECCR - www.eccr.org.uk