By Bess Twiston Davies
Times Online
It's been a hell of a week for God and for Mammon. "The love of money is the root of all evil" Dr John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York reminded City bankers on Wednesday, adding, rather presciently as it turned out, "We have all worshipped it. No one is guiltless".
Indeed, less than 24 hours after the Archbishops of Canterbury and York had ripped into global capitalism, decrying the greed of "City robbers," it emerged that the investments controlled by the Church itself were involved in short selling – because its stock was lent to enable short selling to happen and because it owned shares in Man Group, a large hedge fund manager. As a morality tale, it was almost worthy of Chaucer’s Pardoner. Radix Malorum est Cupiditas: the Root of all Evil is Money he preaches in The Canterbury Tales, making, in the process, a tidy profit.
Yet for all the justified charges of hypocrisy, this weeks’ battles between Church and City have, if little else, turned the spotlight on God and the question of what, if anything, the world’s main faiths, Islam, Judaism and Christianity have to say about finance, debt and spirituality.
The answer is perhaps most obvious in Islam – specific verses of the Qur’an expressly forbid the charging or paying of interest says Sultan Choudhury, Commercial Director of the Islamic Bank of Britain. “Usury is a very big sin in Islam, one verse in the Qu'ran forbids it and another says that God will declare war on those who undertake it,” he explains.
Islamic banking services are designed to reflect this, he says: “The ban on usury means you cannot make money from money and for legal (as per Shariah) trading a real transaction has to take place."
In practice, what this means is that "a shopkeeper, for instance, is allowed to buy rice and to sell it on to the customer at a profit because a physical trading activity has taken place. What it does not allow is for Adam to give Mary £100 and demand £101 back the following week without a real asset or service being exchanged.”
Furthermore: “Islam also imposes ethical restrictions on what you trade and how you trade. There are detailed rules about transactions. Long before consumer legislation came, Islam said that there must be no deception involved in a transaction, that a transaction must be transparent for the consumer," Choudhury explains. He adds "Another very strong principle is that a transaction has to be linked to a real asset.
" When you look at the credit crunch, you’ve got banks buying paper, which may represent land in Florida, or housing but they are not sure of the underlying real asset. There is a divorce between the monetary system and the real system. By and large, speculation and hedge funds are prohibited in Islam, as is short-selling. You may only sell what you possess," explains Choudhury, drawing a parallel with the recent crisis: "In this case, people are selling things which they have never owned, which is what has been happening with speculators in HBOS. The problems we’ve had are unlikely to happen within an Islamic banking system.”
Usury was once strictly condemned by the Christian Church too: laws enforced during the Lateran Councils of 1215 specified that no one who lent money could enjoy a Christian burial, a ban which virtually forced all money lending to be executed by Jews, who, as a result, have been frequently and unfairly stigmatised for usury, with some websites today even blaming them for the current financial crisis. By the 16th century, despite issuing three papal bulls against usury between 1569 and 1586, the papacy relented, lifting an outright ban on the practice. However, greed, and the charging of exorbitant interest, are still prohibited, says Father Peter Harris, Roman Catholic Chaplain to Canary Wharf. He says Christ used the forgiveness of debt as a frequent metaphor for the forgiveness of sin, explaining: "The essential economy of the Church is debt-free as Jesus has paid the debt. We are the benefactors of God's freely given love through the Cross and Resurrection of Jesus."
The cancellation of debt is also integral to Jewish tradition, says Rabbi Jonathan Romain of Maidenhead Synagogue, who is the Chair of the Assembly of Reform Rabbis UK. “Deuteronomy includes the Jubilee idea of all financial debts being annulled and land sold reverting to the original owners every fifty years. However, this was seen as an ideal rather than a practicality, and there is no record of it happening. Jewish groups have been heavily involved in the Drop the Debt campaigns as a matter of religious principle.”
Unlike Islam, Jews do not attach any spiritual stigma to loaning money with interest, he adds: "It has always been a puzzle to Jews that in some other faiths the idea of wealth is regarded as shameful, while lending money with interest is seen as sinful,” Romain says. He adds “ For Jews, neither are intrinsically wrong, although serious question marks do arise if the method of earning money is dubious or if the interest charged to others is excessive.”
Conversely, there is no objection to Jews receiving credit, which is also seen as a normal mechanism of business and free of any religious strictures. However, it is subject to the caveat that if there is no intention of repaying the debt - or clearly no ability to do so - then taking a loan amounts to stealing and transgresses that commandment."
So is money in itself wrong? No, says Kit Dollard, a former businessman and the co-author of Doing Business with Benedict: the Rule of St Benedict and Business Management, a guide to finance based on the 6th century rule of the Italian saint. “St Benedict, while not commenting directly on money, does say that “God is present everywhere”, that those who use their creative gifts in the monastery’s workshops should exercise “proper humility” and when charging for their products should “avoid any taint of avarice.” It is more about good stewardship – how and where we spend our money,” he explains.
Spending, however, is a conscience issue argues Father Harris: “Although the right to work, to support oneself and one’s family is part of Church teaching, so is sharing. How vital is it really to own a Porsche in London? When I first arrived in Canary Wharf, I would see Audi and Ferrari car dealers set up their stands at bonus time, and bankers literally hand over their bonus cheques.”
For the Right Rev Bernard Longley, the auxiliary Roman Catholic bishop of London, the Biblical parable of the Talents – where a master asks his servants about the use to which they have put the gifts he has given them – offers pertinent reflection for those impacted by the market crisis.
After celebrating a Mass in Canary Wharf, he explained: “ The Church teaches that the mission of baptised Christians is to witness to faith in the midst of the world. You could not look for a better example of that than here in Canary Wharf. In the midst of all the commercial activities, these Christians who have just come to Mass and work here believe in grace – which is something offered for nothing. That influences their personal and professional relations. These are people who know to use what is given to them as gifts received.”
So what exactly can faith offer depressed bankers in the credit crisis? “Hope” says Bishop Longley. Katalina Reynolds-Carryl, a regular worshipper at the weekly Wharf Mass agrees. An analyst with the global finance managers, State Street Corporation, her company has been directly impacted by the recent market turmoil:
“What happened to Lehmans has had an impact on our business and we felt the threats to AIG in a big way. To an extent you have to put yourself in the Lord’s hands,” she says. “But what can you do? You can’t worry about every little thing. For me, being able to come here once a week [ to Mass ] is a sanity check. People often try to book meetings during the lunch hour but I miss enough lunch hours and work enough weekends to justify taking thirty minutes out of my week once a week to come here. This is my time. It is a moment of peace.”
On Monday, the Church of England posted a prayer for the debt-trapped on its website, which calls on God to be a "tower of strength" amid the "shifting sands" of the current economic climate. By Thursday it had called for a stringent review of financial regulations, and the Archbishop of Canterbury had suggested that, at least in part, Marx may have had a point in his critique of Capitalism.
Economic liberalisation in itself is not to blame, claims the Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. Speaking on Radio 4’s Thought for the Day on Friday he said: "Markets remain the best way we know of harnessing human creativity for the benefit of all. Economic liberalisation has taken 500 million people out of poverty in China, and 130 million in India. They're also the best antidote to war. As Montesquieu pointed out in the eighteenth century, when two nations come into contact with one another, they can either fight or trade. If they fight, both lose; if they trade, both gain."
What is both "wrong" and "unacceptable" the Chief Rabbi argues is rather "the unbridled pursuit of short term gain at the expense of long term economic health, financial greed at the cost of moral responsibility. "
One of the Chief Rabbi's first initiatives on taking office was to found the Jewish Association of Business Ethics. This now offers its programme, Markets and Morals, to all British schools. He says: "This summer, representatives of all the faiths in Britain marched together with the Archbishop of Canterbury in support of the Millennium Development Goals. Markets need morals. Trade needs responsibility. God's gifts must be for the benefit of all.” .
Will the current crisis, wonders Kit Dollard make people “more humble or more angry? This of course varies as to how you have been affected and where you see the money coming from in the first place."
