RE-IMAGINING ECONOMICS

I have expanded a 'Westminster Watch' column I wrote for this month's Third Way magazine (which is devoted to Christian social ethics, culture and society), in order to look at the economics, politics and theology of thinking and acting our way beyond the global credit and banking crunch. There's an excerpt below. The full article is: Seeking to build a just economy.

"Markets per se are not the issue [..] The greedy, one-sided and shortsighted assumptions and systems that markets are often embedded in are the problem. And those can be changed. Fatalism about this is not, despite its pretensions, realism. And reality is more intriguing, open and multivalent than many self-styled ‘realists’ allow. It’s always worth asking, “which kind of realism are you seeing as contradicting a radical (to-the-roots) Christian hope, and does its version of ‘reality’ include the transformation wrought by the Gospel?" Or is this something the church has simply filtered out in its attempts to appear ‘credible’ to those who dismiss its message?

"In political terms, the challenge, as theologian Jurgen Moltmann acutely pointed out some years ago in his book The Future of Creation, is that a qualitatively different social and economic order cannot be imagined purely on the basis of the one that now exists. It requires a stretching of our current capacities and therefore has to be critically envisioned, spiritually dared, and practically edged towards from a position of faithful agnosis. We see darkly, but we still press forward."

A CHANGE OF ECONOMIC HEART

The churches now have a major opportunity to re-think their economic strategy. But both they and the politicians face a language crisis in seeking to do this, quite aprt from institutional inertia. We've all been convinced for too long that "there is no alternative" to the current pattern of globalisation that has taken economic hold of our minds as much as our world. Not so, but it is a hard job to go against the money stream. Among other things today, I've updated Towards an economy worth believing in.

WHY AND HOW MONEY MATTERS

When Ekklesia pointed out yesterday lunchtime that the Church of England's finance managers had been involved in the very speculative short-selling the archbishops had just roundly condemned, we didn't immediately realise how big the story would go. (See the news overview here and the Google news trail here.) After all, the main focus is on the world credit crisis and its domestic impact, the 'global impacts local' angle. Unsurprisingly, the media picked up on the 'negative' angle: "church accused", "hypocrisy", etc. But while the tendency of Christians to preach virtue to others while not examining their own behaviour too carefully remains a problem in this and other areas, the real issue is that this presents a positive opportunity to look at the "global economy of the churches", the alternative values we can and should be enacting, and the contribution this could make to necessary larger arguments about the reform of regulative financial systems, the operation of markets, and so on.

This is a profoundly theological issue, because, as Jesus is recorded in the Gospels as having pointed out: "Where your treasure lies, there lies your heart also." Indeed, Rowan Williams was correct yesterday to pinpoint the issue of idolatry at the heart of the current system: the attribution of ultimate worth and value to things that are purely instrumental and should have no such claim to control our lives. Both the economic and spiritual issues are raised in the detailed paper I produced in 2005, Is God bankrupt? This was a response to an ecumenical report which tried to get the British and Irish churches to "cosy up to the market" in a way that was just as simplistic as some alleged earlier ecumenical attempts to dismiss markets completely. There's also a summary of issues and initiatives involving church and economy, called An Economy Worth Believing In.

A slightly enhanced variant of this piece is on my Ekklesia work blog here. Plus a post on Williams, Marx and 'Red Tories'.

LEND US A DIME, MATE

Somewhere in the attic of my life there is a postcard depicting Wall Street in the 1930s. A penniless worker is holding out his hand to a worried looking banker. The speech bubble reads: "Lend us a dime until the inevitable downfall of the capitalist economic system, eh guv?"

Of course the current banking and stock exchange panic is no laughing matter. It will cost jobs, livelihoods and much else besides. Plus it will be the most vulnerable who suffer most, as always. Fairness doesn't come into it when blind forces collide. Many of us have been saying for years that an increasingly boundary-less and virtual money economy dependent on gambling, avarice, manipulation, febrile 'market confidence' and a basic disconnect from the actual productive economy (let alone actual human needs) is unsustainable in the long run. But that doesn't make the current massive jolts funny.

The overall picture is not totally apocalyptic, but it is very, very serious. Neoliberalism has failed and global capitalism needs fundamental change. As do the people who have come to be gods and priests in it, and those who have turned it into a secular worship space: "Thou shalt have no other products and desires but Mine."

Years ago, some of us imagined the day when capitalism would collapse and the world would be taken over by left-wing paper sellers with no idea as to what to do next, other than to flog the next edition. Times have changed, state socialism is dead, markets rule. But the moral, spiritual and practical critique of the dominant global order remains vital for a viable future.

That is what Marx, who in some ways turned out to be the last of the great Hebrew prophets, was about. His dream was turned into a living nightmare by Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin. They, plus a fatal non-religious Messianism, ecological blindness, bureaucratic dehumanisation, the creation of militarised state machines, and a lack of understanding of the contradictions of human nature.

As a totalising theory of action, Marxism was found wanting and failed appallingly. As a cogent reminder that unfettered capitalism can be monumentally destructive, Marx and his plural critics remains vital. We need to re-imagine an economic future not based on greed and might, or the world will continue to devour itself.

IS THERE REALLY LIFE OFFLINE?

Yes, I know. You've often wondered if I've asked myself that one. Actually I don't spend that much time on the web or in the blogsophere (it just seems like that!), but it is undoubtedly true that the internet has changed the way many of us think, write, work and interact in a massive way -- for good and ill. One discovers the fuller reality of that when it is taken away from you. So my recent (relative) quietness has been partly due to connection and server problems, which I hope will be rectified after trips around the West Midlands, Scotland, London and then Devon. Meanwhile, my work environment has mainly been... J. D. Wetherspoon's pubs. Yup, they have free wi-fi, not bad coffee, a good cheap veggie breakfast and a music free atmosphere. Even rolling news on the telly. If only they paid their staff better and went fair trade. But that is something I have been discussing with them. Can't avoid smiling at the irony, though. When I worked for a Church of England agency some years back, there was a nearby hostelry which called itself The Office. Now, temporarily, my office is a pub. Sort of. Cheers, y'all.

THE LOYALIST REBEL

It is many years since I took much of an interest in the internal affairs of the British Labour Party (which I'm not sure really exists anymore, anyway), but today it has been a hard issue to avoid - with a junior minister being sacked for saying she thinks a leadership contest should be allowed to focus the debate over Labour's future. (That was her position over Brown's original 'coronation' too, and who can now say she was wrong?)

But the main point for me is as much about process as content. To put it bluntly, does anyone in the government understand quite how shameful and grubby their treatment of Siobhain McDonagh looks - and, indeed, is? Ms McDonagh, who comes across as pleasant, thoughtful and principled, wrote what was in effect a private letter expressing her views to the chair of the Party. First, someone leaked this, and then she was immediately sacked - although she had to learn this fate from a journalist who had cornered her outside parliament, because the PM's office could not be bothered to tell her, or spitefully chose not to, before making it public. Talk about "the nasty party". Then a Labour spin doctor dismissed everyone who would like to see a more open conversation about the future and about Gordon Brown, who opinion polls suggest is heading for oblivion, as "a ragbag of malcontents". So that would be impeccable loyalist McDonagh, would it? Plus leading local government luminary Graham Stringer, and a former Home Secretary?

Disagree with them as the PM's allies may, this level of utter contempt sends out a clear message to the wider public about the degeneration of Labour as a moral force for change. As a token of 'mainstream' party politics in this country, it also dissuades many - me included - for wanting much to do with it. The whole system needs reshaping. Good on Siobhain McDonagh for having the courage (and good grace) of her convictions. She might be a Blairite, but above all she's decent and honest. What a refreshing change.

A DREAM WORTH HAVING

"The only dream worth having ... is to dream that you will live while you’re alive and die only when you’re dead ... To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or to complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget." - Arundhati Roy from her book, The Algebra of Infinite Justice. [Courtesy of www.sojo.net]

CHANGE BEGINS AT HOME

“Instead of being so eager just to reform others, let us also make a serious effort to bring about out own transformation.” - Dom Helder Camara

“We can move in the direction of justice, but if our personal relationships don’t become more human, we haven’t moved in the direction of the reign of God and, in the long run, we will discover that our point of arrival is just another form of tyranny.” - Arturo Paoli, liberation theologian

A WELCOME BREAK

"The sudden assertion of human criteria within a de-humanising framework of political manipulation can be like a flash of lightning illuminating a dark landscape" - Vaclav Havel , writer, philosopher, activist and ex-politician

"Respect for the people’s word need not mean approval for whatever they say. Any criticism becomes constructive when based on a fundamental attitude of respect and listening." - Clodovis Boff, Brazilian theologian

CLEAR-HEADED, HUMAN AND HOPEFUL

Among the books I have been reading for intellectual and spiritual refreshment over the summer is Theology for Pilgrims, by Nicholas Lash (Darton, Longman and Todd, 2008), which collects together more stimulating essays from the former Norris Hulse Professor of Theology at the University of Cambridge. This includes perhaps the best response so far to the philosophical and forensic confusions of Richard Dawkins' thinking about God and religion, and many other gems. I will do a full appraisal at some point, but I am glad that Robin Ward has flagged up the book in a short review published this week in the Church Times.

He declares: "These essays intrigue, illuminate, and convince with their watchful, waspish eye for imprecise thinking and tendentious assumptions. Whether you are a curial cardinal, an atheist evolutionary biologist, or a complacently establishment dean, make sure you verify your references: if you don’t, be sure Professor Lash will." This is true, but there's also a warmth, humanity and thirst for hope here, and in all Lash's writing, which elevates the soul as well as challenging the intellect.

One of Nicholas Lash's major themes is that we fall at first base if we try to think about the reality of God in terms of some kind of "object" within or attached to the universe, something which many polemicists seeking to "prove" or "disprove" God simply take for granted. The transcendent God who grounds all being and becoming cannot meaningfully be conceived of as a member of a category of things called "gods", he explains. I have unpacked this in my paper What difference does God make today?, and more briefly in The God elusion and in Three ways to make sense of one God - which is partly in debt to Lash's earlier thinking about the fabric of historic Trinitarian formulations.

Theology for Pilgrims "exposes the crisis in our thinking about God which is at the root of our misunderstandings and mistakes about science and politics, ethics and economics, life and death" says the blurb on the back. It does just that. And it has some great stuff on Diderot, Foucault and Joseph Conrad.

CHANGING THE AGENDA

Here 's my piece on OpenDemocracy's 'Our Kingdom' ("a conversation on the future of the United Kingdom") website: Changing the agenda on faith schools. It seeks to show why Accord is not simply "more of the same", as some of our pre-emptive critics are suggesting, but a new direction in the debate and in the practical possibilities. There's also an article from me on Guardian Comment-is-Free, more on the immediate need for change ("Granting privileges and exemptions to any one group builds barriers rather than bridges in the education system").

MOVING TOWARDS ACCORD

During the summer break, I was involved with others in developing the launch of a new coalition, Accord, which is seeking to help change the character of the public debate around faith schools -- to focus on the case for community-wide rather than selective schooling, and to move away from overheated rhetoric towards attention to specific policy proposals on admissions, employment, curriculum, inspections and assemblies.

It all began to hit the media on Friday, after the Jewish Chronicle decided not to honour the embargo. There have been some interesting responses, and some extraordinary. The official Accord launch press conference is in London today. Unfortunately, I can't be there to speak in person as I am still recovering from a fever and viral infection. Among those contributing will be Adam Hart-Davis, the scientist, author, photographer, historian and broadcaster, and Alison Ryan from the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL), which has a very good position paper on the issue.

You might not think that arguing for non-discrimination is controversial, but it is. I am being published on Guardian CIF (where a debate has been set up), OpenDemocracy, Liberal Conspiracy and Wardman Wire (covering the main political bases). On Ekklesia I have written A Christian case for Accord. There are also statements from clergy and others, plus some documentation. After the initial flurry, I will largely cover this on my work blog on Ekklesia, when that gets going again later tomorrow.

LIFE PAINTING LIFE

"Love is the prime force in the creation of art; and love is not a work." - Stanley Spencer

Faith In The Frame is a new 10 part series for ITV1, and sees Melvyn Bragg chair lively 30 minute discussions on the themes and relevance of ten of the world’s most fascinating religious pictures. The works chosen are, rightly, far from easy or comforting. In programme one, tonight, the panel discussed The Resurrection, Cookham by Stanley Spencer: This is a highly individual vision of 'heaven on earth', painted between 1924-27, and set in Spencer’s local Cookham churchyard where he had played when young, ostensibly the perfect English idyll. The panelists were Howard Jacobson, novelist; Tim Marlow, art writer and broadcaster; and Richard Harries, former Anglican bishop of Oxford. [Picture courtesy ofwww.artcyclopedia.com]

AN OVERDUE VERDICT

I was very pleased to hear that Barry George has finally been cleared of the awful Jill Dando street murder eight years ago. Right from the outset a number of us had argued that the original 'guilty' verdict, resting on discredited forensic claims, was a travesty of the evidence presented. It required us to believe that a severely disturbed man who found it difficult to think straight in the simplest of circumstances could have carried out a 'hit' requiring great sophistication and split second timing. The police have said they are "disappointed" at the exoneration. Why, for goodness' sake? Would they prefer an innocent man to be locked up? It is tragic for Ms Dando's relatives that her killer is still at large, but they have not been served well by celebrity allies like Nick Ross who constantly objected to a re-trial, even though the case for it was overwhelming. When 'closure' means a miscarriage of justice it does no-one any good.

BEYOND PAX ANGLICANA

Peacemaking after Christendom, Simon Barrow, Ekklesia, 13.07.08

[excerpt] After Christendom there is both fresh hope and fresh challenge for Christian peacemaking. The core question is: “how is peace written into the fabric our lives and our Christian commitment?”, not “OK, I’m a Christian. Now, what sort shall I decide to be, a pacifist or a just warrior?”

If 'just war' means “just another war”, the defence of “Christian Empire” or the overwhelming conformity of the church to an ethic promulgated by the modern delegates of Caesar, then it is the wrong path.

If, however, it is a way of moving away from violence ... a kind of Christian equivalent to the lex talionis (the Jewish law for limiting retribution), then it has a role to play. Not as an end in itself, but as part of a journey whose destiny is the shalom, the just-peace, that is ... shaped by Jesus and the great Hebrew prophets.

The point is this: the Body of Christ is a broken body offered unconditional life by God, not life grabbed at the expense of entrapping others in death. To be baptised into this body is to share a life in Christ that is brought about by grace not guns. More here.

MORE THAN HALF FULL

"Only when the well has dried up, do we realise the value of water." -- Benjamin Franklin

TO HAVE OR TO BE (WITH)

"[I]n our highly competitive and greedy world [..] we often live as if our happiness depended on having. But I don't know anyone who is really happy because of what he or she has. True joy, happiness and inner peace come from the giving of ourselves to others. A happy life is a life for others." -- Henri Nouwen

CHURCH AS SPECTACLE

Times religion correspondent Ruth Gledhill has been maintaining an admirably informative 'live blog' from the Church of England's general Synod, as the decision on women bishops is taken. Dave Walker has been doing a good job, too.

Viewed from the outside, these proceedings can seem rather bizarre. This is something the C of E has partly brought upon itself by pompously setting up its central body as a quasi-parliament. That means living in the blinking headlines of a constant media culture, so that moments of decision and emotion which might previously have been conducted with public eyes averted are now available for all to stare at -- often uncomprehendingly, since mere sight does not necessarily equal understanding of what is viewed. The distinction between privacy and secrecy is also lost. I'm in favour of public scrutiny, especially when power which otherwise might be unaccountable is being deployed. But there are losses, too, in terms of human and spiritual process.

Last night, for example, Jeremy Paxman (on BBC2's Newsnight) heaped ridicule on the idea that Synod had passed a motion without full resolution of all the details - as if the notion of going through a dispute process was inherently absurd. The idea of trying to accommodate rather than crush dissent is thereby portrayed as weakness and vacillation. It can be, of course. But compromise based on principle rather than expediency, where this is possible, is not to be despised and can make a real difference. It's difficult to get at when every move is being politicised, however.

That said, I am nervous about the word "statutory" attached to the 'code of conduct' idea. The Church having decided, at long last, to consecrate women as bishops, the purpose of pastoral measures should be to aid reception with sensitivity, not to set up road blocks or assist those who wish to do so. That is a crucial distinction. In the long run, those who cannot recognise women in positions of authority cannot expect (or be expected) to live in permanent ecclesiastical "no fly zones", and it is cruel as well as unhelpful to pretend otherwise. That is not conflict transformation, it's the institutionalisation of incurable pain - to everyone's harm, as the disastrous Act of Synod preceding the ordination of women in 1994 has demonstrated.

WOMEN BISHOPS IT IS

The good news from the Church of England (for once) is just emerging (22.53 GMT). But watch out for the small print... this on Ekklesia: Church of England makes historic decision for women bishops (23.34 GMT).

A SACRAMENT OF HOPE

I have just been watching a very moving C4 documentary, The Miracle of Carriage 346, on the aftermath of the London bombings on 7 July 2005. The term "miracle" is often misused (by religious believers and non-believers alike) as a synonym for arbitrary magic. A better definition would be "a potent sign of life". This programme used it with dignity - not positing a deus ex machina protecting some and ignoring others in the midst of tragedy, but highlighting the life-giving and death-defying significance, as Gill Hicks put it, of "every person who touched me and who I touched that day." Gill, the last person to be rescued alive from the train carriage in which 26 died, has gone on to be a vigorous advocate for the excellent NGO Peace Direct, and talks of her post 7/7 existence as "my second life" which she will use to work for humanity because "it did not come without preconditions": a sense of responsibility she has willingly embraced through and beyond her disfigurement.