Money Enough E-Book

Douglas A. Hicks

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Serie: J-B Practicing our Faith Series
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2010

Seitenzahl: 382

Beschreibung

Reflections for Christians for dealing with money in aconsumer-driven world In this much-needed book Douglas Hicks looks at how Christianfaith applies to the practices of economic life-spending, saving,giving especially as an alternative to a life of unbridledconsumerism. This book offers reflections for people of faith andanyone who wants to connect their Monday through Saturday liveswith their faith and live a more integrated way. It takes a look athow to realistically apply Christian principles in these especiallyperilous economic times. * Explores how Christians can rethink their practices of faith asconsumers, investors, and earners * Offers reflections on an important Christian concept in apractical, lively, and engaging style * Contains ideas for meeting the everyday pressures, questions,and anxieties of economic life as they connect with Christianfaith * A new volume in the Practices of Faith Series The book is filled with the author's level-headed, thoughtfulreflections on Christian practices of getting and spending.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

THE PRACTICES OF FAITH SERIES

Dedication

Foreword

Preface

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1 - SURVIVING

MAKING ENDS MEET

GLOBALIZING OUR VIEW

PRACTICING THE ECONOMICS OF “ENOUGH”

SPENDING OR SAVING?

INTERPRETING THE CRISIS

SIMPLIFYING WITHOUT EXITING

Chapter 2 - VALUING

CALCULATING OUR VALUES

ORDERING LIFE THEOCENTRICALLY

PRACTICING THEOCENTRISM

KEEPING MONEY IN ITS PROPER PLACE

UNDERSTANDING CAPABILITIES

PRACTICING VALUES

Chapter 3 - DISCERNING DESIRES

PURSUING HAPPINESS

THIRSTING GLOBALLY

SHAPING NEEDS

RUNNING TO STAND STILL

DEALING WITH STUFF

SHOPPING AS MORAL ACTIVITY

CONSUMING AND POLLUTING

PURSUING CAPABILITIES, NOT HAPPINESS

Chapter 4 - PROVIDING

FEEDING THE 6.5 BILLION

PROVIDING A HEALTHY HOME

PROVIDING FOR ONE ANOTHER

BREADWINNING

STEWARDING

OWNING

MAKING SENSE OF PROVIDING

Chapter 5 - LABORING

TOILING

PERFECTING EFFICIENCY

THINKING ON THE JOB (OR NOT)

SEARCHING FOR WORK

DISCERNING OUR CALLINGS

Chapter 6 - RECREATING

LOSING TIME

THINKING ECONOMICALLY

ESCAPING FROM EFFICIENCY

DIALING IT DOWN

BUILDING FENCES

MAKING SPACE FOR RECREATION

Chapter 7 - EXPANDING THE COMMUNITY

CROSSING BORDERS

IMAGINING OUR NEIGHBORS

CHALLENGING GLOBAL INEQUALITY

MARKET EXCHANGE AS BRIDGE BUILDING

MAKING GLOBAL NEIGHBORS

Chapter 8 - DOING JUSTICE

PRACTICING COMMUTATIVE JUSTICE

PRACTICING DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE

PRACTICING SOCIAL JUSTICE

KEEPING OUR HOUSE IN ORDER

Chapter 9 - SHARING

SHARING THE CREATION

SHARING OUR GOODS

SHARING AT HOME

SHARING WITH FUTURE GENERATIONS

FINDING ENOUGH TO SHARE

Notes

The Author

Index

Copyright © 2010 by Douglas A. Hicks. All rights reserved.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataHicks, Douglas A. Money enough : everyday practices for living faithfully in the global economy / Douglas Hicks. p. cm.—(The practices of faith series) Includes bibliographical references and index.

eISBN : 978-0-470-58422-4

1. Finance, Personal—Religious aspects. 2. Money—Religious aspects. 3. Quality of life. I. Title. HG179.H458 2010 332.024—dc22 2009041096

THE PRACTICES OF FAITH SERIES

Dorothy C. Bass, Series Editor

Practicing Our Faith:A Way of Life for a Searching People Dorothy C. Bass, Editor

Receiving the Day: Christian Practicesfor Opening the Gift of Time Dorothy C. Bass

Money Enough: Everyday Practicesfor Living Faithfully in the Global Economy Douglas A. Hicks

Testimony: Talking Ourselves into Being Christian Thomas G. Long

In the Midst of Chaos:Caring for Children as Spiritual Practice Bonnie Miller-McLemore

Honoring the Body: Meditations on a Christian Practice Stephanie Paulsell

A Song to Sing, A Life to Live:Reflections on Music as Spiritual Practice Donald Saliers and Emily Saliers

Lord, Have Mercy:Praying for Justice with Conviction and Humility Claire E. Wolfteich

For my teachers

Editor’s Foreword

Not long ago, the global economy was shaken by the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. I did not realize what was happening until spectacular stories of failure and fraud on Wall Street began to appear on the front page of my daily newspaper, but soon everyone I knew was experiencing the impact in one way or another. As jobs disappeared, retirement savings shrank, and house values took a nosedive, Jesus’ admonition not to store up for ourselves treasures on earth seemed remarkably relevant, even if it was not especially comforting.

Today many people have relinquished careless assumptions about the economy and their place in it. In a volatile economy with a minimal safety net, massive unemployment, and widespread hunger, concern about earthly well-being is justified; after all, human flourishing is a concern Scripture places close to the heart of God, a generous creator who intends that everyone be safe and fed. At the same time, a new mood of thoughtfulness has taken hold. What is it that we truly need and desire? many are asking. Have we pursued lifestyles of abundance when what we really long for is abundant life? And how do our economic desires and pursuits affect others, especially those who suffer most in the global economy in both “good” times and “bad”?

These are not questions to be asked in a time of crisis and then put away until the next downturn. These are enduring questions, and how we answer them orders our way of living in the world. How we answer shapes our sense of who we are as human beings. How we answer—not just in words but also through our actions—shapes our relationships with God and with our neighbors near and far.

In this exciting and challenging book, Douglas A. Hicks speaks directly to such questions and concerns. As a scholar with training in both economics and theology, and also as a Christian minister, husband, father, and friend, he brings a unique mix of helpful and engaging insights to this study of everyday economic life. Those who seek a life-giving way of life in the midst of today’s complex economy will find him a wonderfully helpful teacher. He is honest about the difficulties entailed in pursuing a life-giving way of life in today’s economy, but he does not allow these difficulties to paralyze our search for a way of life that is abundant in the things that matter most—justice, mercy, right relations with others, and God’s love for each of us and for the world as a whole.

I am delighted to add Money Enough: Everyday Practices for Living Faithfully in the Global Economy to the Practices of Faith Series, which offers resources drawn from the deep wells of Christian belief and experience to those who long to live with integrity in the rapidly changing world of the twenty-first century. Like other books in the series, it is addressed both to committed Christians searching for ways to practice their faith more fully and to people of every faith who are concerned about human flourishing. Hicks’s title—like his book as a whole—reflects the combination of wide vision and down-to-earth detail that shapes the entire series. Here we set our daily concerns in the encompassing context of God’s love for the entire world, across time and around the globe. And here we ask how our everyday practices can be shaped in ways that reflect and respond to this great love.

As you explore these pages and consider how you may live more faithfully in the midst of global economic change, I encourage you to find companions with whom to discuss, pray about, and live your economic life. To assist you in this endeavor, a Guide for Learning, Conversation, and Growth based on this book is available at www.practicingourfaith.org.

Dorothy C. Bass

Editor, Practices of Faith Series

November, 2009

Preface

We long for a rest from the hustle and bustle of demanding work. We hunger for more time with family. We thirst for economic security. We await the day when we and our neighbors can afford health care. We hope for a world without pollution and poverty.

Those of us who are people of faith believe, or want to believe, that our faith has something important to say about economic life. Jesus spoke of the sparrows and told us not to worry about our food and clothing. He said that worrying could not add an hour to a life—wisdom confirmed today by medical experts, who say that the stress of modern consumer culture tends to shorten our lives. Jesus taught us to pray that our debts would be forgiven and that we would forgive the debts of our neighbor. Meanwhile, we know that credit-card and educational indebtedness is devastating millions of Americans, and national debt plagues not only the United States but many of the countries of the developing or “two-thirds” world. Jesus spoke of economic issues more often than any other “worldly” topic.

Many biblical texts offer counsel for working and spending—and recreating and sharing. Yet, although we might not want to admit this thought, it is easy to discount biblical wisdom as too quaint, archaic, or simplistic. After all, we are living in fast-paced, complicated times. Jesus told his disciples to take only the sandals and tunics they were wearing, and to expect the hospitality of strangers. He talked far more about giving stuff away than about earning income or investing it. Are these texts to be taken literally—and if so, what would it mean to wear tunics and sandals in Columbus, Ohio, or Hartford, Connecticut? It would be easy to write off Jesus’ specific economic practices as nice but not hard-edged enough for modern commercial life.

The challenge, in a nutshell, is that the Christian economic ethic that we find in the Bible is focused primarily on an economy based on person-to-person relationships. Although ancient Jews and Christians were situated in imperial economies, carpenters knew their clients, and buyers and sellers interacted in markets that were located in neighborhoods or village centers. Alms were meant to support local people in need, although communities sometimes took offerings for needy people and groups far away. Even in those cases, though, there was some personal connection across the miles.

In today’s global economy, we do not usually have personal relationships with people who shape our economic lives. Some might know the local baker, but most people buy bread from the grocery store. We are still less likely to know who made our clothes, or even where they were made. Even if the tag is marked with a particular country’s name, odds are good that the garment was made in a variety of steps around the world. The scale of the global financial system means that our investments and financial transactions are rarely personal. In fact, given the functionality and ubiquity of ATMs and online banking, it is possible to do our banking without ever interacting with a human being at all. We need to update an economic ethic designed for personal relations in order to frame our decisions and actions in an impersonal, global market.

What are people trying to live out faith commitments to do? At present, there appear to be two leading options. On one hand, we can “baptize” current economic practices, perhaps through prosperity theology or the gospel of self-help. On the other hand, we can reject the world and retreat into the so-called simple life, with a wholesale rejection of television, restaurants, and the like. The first option is too easy a way out. The second is nearly impossible. And, even to the extent that it is doable, it is an individualistic opt-out approach to what is a society-wide problem.

A colleague put the dilemma this way: “We need a middle way; I am not able to make my own clothes, as in the opt-out approach, even if I had the time. On the other hand, I can do more than still driving my SUV but being a little nicer at Starbucks.”1

We can do better than either of these choices. The Christian story offers a saner and truer way of living than unbridled consumerism. It calls us not to renounce the market but to humanize it. In our everyday practices—how we work and rest, want and need, spend and save, serve and engage public life—our faith provides us rich resources for thinking and acting. Our everyday economic activities can become practices within a well-lived Christian life.

Some see the solution in fleeing from the material world into the natural world. We must surely acknowledge the beauty and wonder of God’s creation, but we mustn’t think that the answer to our economic anxiety is to renounce material practices altogether. Rather, we need to understand all of life, from the bread we break in communion to the bread we buy, bake, or eat at home, as part of the same embodied life we are called to live in this good creation. Our life requires bread, even if we require much more than that. Our economic goods and economic relationships should be, and can be, an inextricable part of a faithful, joyful life. Economics can be about how we manage our personal and collective practices within God’s household, which is all of creation.

This book offers reflections for people of faith and other thoughtful readers who want to shape everyday lives, Monday through Saturday, that connect to the things they declare and pray for in worship on Sunday. Even to put the problem in terms of Sunday-versus-Monday, however, overlooks the pressures that many of us face to work on Sundays, too. Or, after laboring long hours throughout the week, it often seems that the most worshipful thing we can do on Sunday is to sleep in, relax, or go for a walk in God’s creation. This book takes up the task of weaving work and worship, God and Mammon, Sunday and Monday into an integrated Christian life.

“Money enough” is shorthand for a vision of everyday economic practices in which money is a necessary but not a sufficient part. The Gospel promises abundant life, but the money part of abundance has more to do with achieving adequate economic conditions than with getting rich. Abundance entails an overall quality of life, and thus so much more than material goods. Each chapter of the book takes up a different economic practice, including laboring, providing, doing justice, and so on. In all, there are nine such topics that together touch on the very mundane but also very perplexing aspects of our economic life. Considering these topics will also allow us to fit our individual and local practices into the wider challenges of a global economy. The introductory chapter begins with “surviving” in this economy—but we do not lose sight of hope for an economy in which we and our neighbors, near and far, have money enough not merely to survive but to flourish.

Douglas A. Hicks

Richmond, Virginia

November, 2009

Acknowledgments

I dedicate this book to my teachers and could not have written it without them. Indeed, I became a college professor because of the ways they have lived out their own vocations. These teachers—from school, church, and higher education—have modeled not only excellence but also integrity. From their respective vantage points they have helped me grapple with fundamental questions of economics, ethics, and faith. They have communicated their commitments by teaching them and by putting them into practice.

The book includes stories of three of these—the economist Charles Ratliff Jr., the religious ethicist Thomas E. McCollough Jr., and the philosopher-economist Amartya Sen. But many others deserve mention as well. Teachers at Park Tudor School, including Joanne and Tom Black, William L. Browning Sr., and David A. Kivela, taught me to think critically and appreciatively about the world. I will long remember James D. Miller, a youthful youth minister, leading a group of privileged high schoolers to Mexico in order to work with people suffering abject poverty. William G. Enright, as senior pastor at Second Presbyterian Church in Indianapolis, encouraged people of means to nurture their philanthropy; he continues this good work at the Lake Institute on Faith and Giving.

In addition to Charles Ratliff, his colleagues in Davidson College’s Economics Department—Clark G. Ross, Peter N. Hess, David W. Martin, and Dennis R. Appleyard—helped me learn that theirs is a discipline with a moral purpose: improving the human condition. They have been valuable teachers. Professors in the Religion Department at Davidson helped me discover the fundamental ways that faith intersects with the practices of economics and society. In particular, I have learned much from R. David Kaylor and Trent Foley. The late Lois A. “Sandy” Kemp led my college semester in Spain program and also taught me to appreciate the cultures of Latin America. She enjoyed being called tacaña—“stingy” is the colloquial translation, but I prefer to think of her as financially prudent.

Mary McClintock Fulkerson, Teresa Berger, and the late Frederick Herzog guided me at Duke Divinity School to understand the integration of faith and social practices, including work for a more just economic order. At Harvard, Ronald F. Thiemann, Diana L. Eck, Harvey Cox, the late John Rawls, Stephen A. Marglin, J. Bryan Hehir, and Cornel West—as well as David Hollenbach at Boston College—challenged me to understand the myriad connections of religion and society.

I am also grateful to generous colleagues who agreed to read this manuscript: Alexander Evans, Juliette Jeanfreau, Rebecca Todd Peters, Mark Valeri, Jonathan Wight, and Thad Williamson. The research skills of librarian Lucretia McCulley are unparalleled. I also thank others who provided me assistance on specific issues or topics: Samuel L. Adams, Robert D. Austin, David D. Burhans, R. Charles Grant, Sandra J. Peart, Terry L. Price, and Marianne Vermeer. Their insights made this a more readable and integrated book (though any errors or inconsistencies that remain are my own).

It is also fitting to recognize the communities of faith to which I have belonged. I have profound respect for the leaders and parishioners of these congregations for the ways in which they have grappled with issues of faith and economic life: Second Presbyterian Church in Indianapolis; Davidson College Presbyterian Church in Davidson, North Carolina; St. John’s Presbyterian Church and Northgate Presbyterian Church in Durham, North Carolina; Clarendon Hill Presbyterian Church in Somerville, Massachusetts; and Bon Air Presbyterian Church in Richmond, Virginia.

I want to thank Dorothy C. Bass for her invitation to write this book as part of the Practices of Faith Series. She has the gift of making insightful criticisms with genuine grace. I am honored to be a colleague with the authors in this series and with participants in a number of initiatives of the Valparaiso Project on the Education and Formation of People in Faith and the Lilly Endowment, Inc. I also wish to thank Sheryl Fullerton at Jossey-Bass for believing in this project and supporting my writing. I also acknowledge Sheryl’s fine publishing colleagues who helped move this book from manuscript to reality, including Joanne Clapp Fullagar, Alison Knowles, Hilary Powers, and Carrie Wright.

The ideas in this book draw upon and, I hope, bring together work I have done in various academic and church settings. I have presented some of these ideas at Vanderbilt University, through the sponsorship of its Religion and Economy faculty research group, and at the Maryville Symposium on Faith and the Liberal Arts at Maryville College. I appreciate the generous hospitality of the faculty and staff at both institutions. This book includes some material from the latter presentation, which is published in the Maryville Symposium Proceedings(Maryville, TN: Maryville College, 2007). I have also adapted for this book some of the material from two previously published chapters and an essay: “Making a Good Living,” in Susan R. Briehl, ed., On Our Way(Nashville, TN: Upper Room Books, 2010); “Global Inequality,” in Christian Reflection: A Series in Faith and Ethics24 (Waco, TX: Center of Christian Ethics, Baylor University: summer 2007); and “Global Poverty and Bono’s Celebrity Activism: An Analysis of Moral Imagination and Motivation,” in Douglas A. Hicks and Mark Valeri, eds., Global Neighbors: Christian Faith and Moral Obligation in Today’s Economy(Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2008).

I thank the students in a course on Christianity and the market economy, which I offered at Harvard Divinity School in 2003, and at Union Theological Seminary and Presbyterian School of Christian Education in 2007, for engaging these questions in a sustained way over a semester. And I acknowledge my wonderful colleagues at the Jepson School of Leadership Studies at the University of Richmond.

My wife, Catherine L. Bagwell, read the entire manuscript, chapter by chapter. She commented with particular interest upon the sections related to sharing within the household. I reflect in the book about the personal nature of the challenges of living with integrity in the global economy. Catherine is a true companion in this shared enterprise, especially as we seek, however imperfectly, to convey our values to our children, Noah and Ada. More than once, I have recalled the title of fellow series author Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore’s book, In the Midst of Chaos: Caring for Children as Spiritual Practice.

I hope that, out of the hustle and bustle of my own efforts to integrate work, family, church, and community, this book offers readers some insights for responding in their own way to the particular economic challenges that they face.

Chapter 1

SURVIVING

Give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that I need.

—PROVERBS 30:8b

Where did our money go? In less than eighteen months, the 60 percent of Americans who have money in the stock market saw the value of their holdings cut in half, as the Dow Jones Industrial Average dove from a high of over 14,000 to a low below 7,000. People with 401(k) retirement accounts watched their nest eggs shrivel. To make matters worse, Bernard Madoff made off with close to $65 billion through his global Ponzi scheme. That investment opportunity was really a house of cards, and the cards were human beings and charitable organizations whose entire fortunes toppled over.