Is there a Christian economic ethic?

Apart from its (almost mandatory) snide headline, and a couple of "nudge, nudge" witticisms in the accompanying text, The Independent has published an article on Christianity and ethical investment which could be a useful discussion-starter.

The second paragraph reads,

Cash has always been a thorny subject for the devout. How can one be rich and pious? There can't be too many Christian bankers who are unaware that, according to Christ, camels have a better chance of passing through the eye of a needle than bankers do of getting into heaven. Yet the wealthy may be able to sleep more soundly following the creation this week of Europe's first "Christian equity index". The Stoxx Europe Christian Index is the brainchild of a German investment firm that has spotted a gap in the market to provide a list of companies that the faithful can happily invest in without feeling like they are sinning at the same time.

Of course, Christian interest in ethical economics has been around for a long time. In the 1970s and 80s evangelicals in this country were trying to think through some of the issues involved. Sir Fred Catherwood penned a number of works which I seem to remember were regarded as quite controversial for not saying that Capitalism and wealth-creation were bad (remember, this was in the days when Christians either worried about, or rather approved of, Marxism).

And there have long been Christian groups and companies developing means of 'ethical investment'. The Ecclesiastical Insurance Group, for example, has certain standards it maintains for its 'Amity' funds.

But back in the sixteenth century, Martin Luther and others were writing about what we today would call 'economic justice'.

In the last couple of decades, though, it all seems to have gone rather quiet. One of the few solid works I'm aware of on the subject is Andy Hartropp's What is Economic Justice? Biblical and Secular Perspectives Contrasted. This is a very solid work and deserves to be widely read and known. But the commitment in the 'Five Marks of Mission' to "seek to transform unjust structures of society" and to "strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and renew the life of the earth" don't seem to be translating into very much except (still!) a vague hostility towards and discomfort about Capitalism, which has meanwhile so richly blessed us in the West.

What the article in The Independent might usefully prompt is a discussion on precisely what is a 'Christian' view of economic life. Regulars on this blog, for example, will know that I have a 'thing' about the biblical mandate against usury in any form. (And, contra an opinion in The Independent, I did not take my cue in this from the Muslims, though I do think they usefully show that an ethical principle can actually have an economic application.)

Most of us are also dimly aware of the examples of past Christian entrepreneurs, especially amongst the Quakers.

I cannot help wondering, though, whether from a Christian point of view what matters is not the great scheme of things but the small - the 'insignificant' - details. It is surely as great a challenge to be personally honest in one's business dealings in the office as it is to come up with some 'macro-economic' theory.

Many years ago, I heard someone who was regarded as something of an evangelical leader advocate that Christians in the workplace should go along with the 'dodgy practices' and 'petty' dishonesties so that, when the time came for them to speak up in the Trade Union meetings, they would not have lost the respect and the hearing of their workmates because of their 'stand-offish' attitude. That has got to be mad, hasn't it?

Personally, I think that telling the truth at work because you are a Christian is just as likely to get you 'crucified' as wearing a cross - and I have to admit to being frankly relieved that my own form of employment lets me off most of these ethical challenges.

John Richardson
28 April 2010


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How can I be just? The intellectual incoherence of the West

Following the (non) reaction to my post about the ‘legality’ of the Iraq war, I wanted to return to the question of law and modern society. This is an area where I feel two issues arise. One is that Christians ought, from their unique perspective of the gospel, to have something radical to say. The other is that this issue highlights what I believe to be the increasing incoherence of modern society.

Incoherence
Why do I speak of ‘incoherence’? The reason lies, I believe, in the tension between what I will call moral demand and material narrative.

On the one hand, we see a continuing moral demand for justice and, with it, an expectation that law can be so framed as to produce that justice. Hence, according to some modern commentators, Tony Blair must not merely be condemned but ‘arrested’ for starting the Iraq war because what he did was ‘illegal’.

On the other hand, we have the prevailing material narrative which undergirds our understanding of the nature of existence. That narrative, quite simply, is that human beings are just one amongst many meaningless products of meaningless processes. We are distinct from animals —or rather from the other animals —only in degree, not in kind, and our much-vaunted ‘ethical’ values are nothing more, ultimately, than the product of evolutionary forces written into our genes by natural selection.

What is justice?
Thus, whether we realize it or not, there is a contradiction between what we believe we want and what we believe we are. The ethicist Peter Singer puts it like this:

Justice is not, as often thought, a sacrosanct moral principle imposed on us by a divine being, nor is it somehow engraved into the bedrock of the universe.

His first point is, of course, gladly embraced by most of our leading moral commentators. There is no God, therefore moral principles have no divine sanction.

What is generally missed is his second point: neither do moral principles derive from the fabric of the material world. You may look down through a microscope or up through a telescope, but you will see nothing that tells you what you ought to do when faced with a so-called ‘ethical dilemma’. What, then, is ‘justice’? Singer continues,

Justice is neither more nor less than a set of conceptual tools for making Tit for Tat work in the real world. (Peter Singer, How are we to live? [Oxford: OUP, 1997], 176)

Tit for Tat (or Doing unto others as they have Done unto you) is, quite literally, Singer’s basis for ‘moral’ behaviour, advocated because it ‘works’ in producing what Singer argues is the best outcome for everyone (and is therefore the ‘best’ outcome). In all this, Singer is thoroughly reductionist — the proof of Tit for Tat morality is in game theory and the ‘Prisoner’s Dilemma’, and when we see it applied in human society we should recognize we are doing nothing basically more than chimpanzees grooming one another for fleas — but on it he wishes to rest the whole edifice of moral living.

Whence justice?
Singer’s particular ‘explanation’ does not appear to have gained wide acceptance. Nevertheless, I suspect that the general principles it entails are becoming almost universal in Western thinking, albeit in a semi-conscious way. The atheist who is also an unthinking materialist would surely find little to contradict in Singer’s view that justice is neither divinely imposed nor a fundamental property of the material universe. It must then, in some sense, be derived from ourselves alone.

The problem is, from whence in ourselves can such a notion of justice derive, and of what value is it once it has been so derived?

The standard ‘evolutionary’ explanation increasingly focuses on ‘altruism’ as the basic source of ethical behaviour — evolutionary altruism being behaviour which appears to be inimical to the survival of the individual but actually favours the survival of the group, and which is therefore increased by natural selection.

On this view, our sending money to help the people of Haiti is an unconsciously driven ‘human survival’ mechanism. And indeed, one can see how such an explanation has a superficial appeal. If our ‘being good’ comes down, ultimately, to prospering the human gene, then clearly appeals for help will tend to succeed, whether they be those of crushed Haitians or drowning swimmers.

But actually that is not how things work, as is shown by the so-called ‘bystander effect’. The truth is, we are not all impelled by instinct to help those we perceive to be in trouble. On the contrary, we turn off the TV, we look the other way, we regard it as ‘none of our business’, even when the personal risk is minimal. Somehow, our ‘altruistic instinct’ turns out to be rather inefficient.

On the other hand, Singer himself is adamant that argument and reason can, and must, be used to induce ethical behaviour. It would appear that our genes are not strong enough —indeed, Singer sees this as taking us beyond “the straight line of evolution” which gave us the capacity to reason in the first place (p 269).

What is ‘I’?
But that being the case, we must ask, “With what are we reasoning and on what is our reasoning working?” The automatic answer is that we are reasoning with our minds. But what is the mind? The contemporary Western material narrative says that the mind is created by physical processes resulting from evolutionary forces. (That may not be what modern research is showing, incidentally, but it is, I believe, what is being accepted as the ‘popular view’.)

The key question, though, is whether we can control those forces. If ‘I’ am the product of material forces, how can ‘I’ turn round and, in an instant, manipulate those same forces which make up ‘me’? It would surely be like a puppet suddenly grabbing its own strings. The material narrative can tell me how ‘I’ experience what I do as a result of electrical processes in the brain. I can even watch them happening. But it leaves me with a problem as to how the brain that produces those phenomena can be told what phenomena to produce.

The modern dilemma
Like many moderns, Singer is an ardent ‘moralist’. That is to say, he is a man for whom human moral issues are a consuming interest. I am sure he would make a very good neighbour (unless you were, perhaps, senile or terminally ill, in which case I am not so sure).

It is similar moralists who want Tony Blair arrested. But what, according to the material narrative, has Blair done wrong? Biologically, he is a product of evolution. Individually, his thoughts and decisions are the product of material processes in the few pounds of jelly contained in his cranium. His is, to use Desmond Morris’s terminology, a ‘naked ape’ — as are we all.

The pure materialist might argue that rather than being arrested, Blair should be put down. Yet that would surely require a judgement which would be independent of the same limitations that the nature of material reality imposed on Mr Blair. And it is difficult to see how, according to the material narrative, that is something any of us has.

Revd John P Richardson
28 January 2010

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