Christian Economic Ethics: History and Implications

16 Contemporary Protestant Thought on Economic Life

16 Contemporary Protestant Thought on Economic Life The Protestant Reformation, as we saw in Chapter 10, was a challenge to Roman Catholicism on a wide range of fundamental issues, from sin and redemption to the character of the Christian church. Yet in spite of these differences, we also saw a remarkable similarity in the understanding of economic life in Protestant and Catholic traditions. Today that similarity endures: the Protestant and Catholic churches of our day continue to base their view of the economy on the fundamental commitments of the gospel. Thus it will be helpful to treat in this chapter contemporary Protestant views of economic life, prior to returning in the next chapter to the most recent of papal statements on these matters. In 2004, the World Alliance of Reformed Churches met in Accra, the capital of Ghana and formerly a main shipping point for the Atlantic slave trade. The delegates—from 250 churches in 110 nations, including the Presbyterian Church and the United Church of Christ in the U.S.—visited two “slave castles” on the coast. There they reflected on the dominant role in the slave trade that was played by Dutch Reformed Christian merchants, soldiers, and political leaders who lived and worshiped God in the castles’ quarters, just one floor above the dungeons where captured people were kept in waiting for the arrival of ships destined to take them to America. Over three centuries, more than fifteen million horrified Africans were taken from their homes, sold to traders, transported, and sold again in the Atlantic slave trade—and more than a million others died in this brutal process. The delegates reported their angry bewilderment that committed Christians, their own spiritual ancestors, could lead so bifurcated a life: worshiping a loving God, being themselves committed to love of neighbor, but simultaneously condemning other humans to a life of pain and degradation 275 in slavery. They asked, “How could these forbears of Reformed faith deny so blatantly what they believed so clearly?” But after some time of “tears, silence, anger, and lamentation,” the delegates came to ask that same question about themselves, so many of whom were comfortable citizens of prosperous nations in a world where hundreds of millions live without the most basic necessities of life. As they put it, “today’s world is divided between those who worship in comfortable contentment and those enslaved by the world’s economic injustice and ecological destruction who still suffer and die.”1 Like Catholics, Protestant Christians have searched for the implications of Christian economic views as they pertain to life in an industrialized world. And they bring to this task a strong awareness of the power of sin in the lives of ordinary believers. Unlike Catholics, however, Protestant denominations lack the clear lines of denominational teaching authority and central authoritative figures represented by the bishops and pope in the Roman Catholic tradition. Of course, this looser understanding of teaching authority in Protestantism is no accident. It is rooted in the Reformation’s view of church that rejects a central ecclesiastical office with as much power and authority as the pope possesses for Roman Catholics. As a result, it is not as easy to summarize Protestant thought on economic life.2 In this chapter, we will focus on official texts of both mainstream Protestant denominations (Episcopalian, Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian, and United Church of Christ) and the National Evangelical Alliance (representing forty denominations and thousands of individual churches). Two cautions are in order. The first is that no individual denominational statement would likely be endorsed in its entirety by all Protestants denominations. Still, many of the texts quoted in this chapter give an indication of what we might call a general consensus among Protestant churches about economic life. Some statements quoted here, however, indicate a diversity of perspective on a few issues. The second is that, just as the official Catholic teaching of the popes is only a part of overall Catholic thought on economic ethics, denominational statements are far from the total of Protestant thought on economic life. In both traditions, many scholars write faithfully and creatively on Christian economic ethics independent of their church’s leadership.3 Of course, most of those Protestant scholars have been called upon for service in drafting the statements of their own denomination. This is a much wider and more public process than the consultations that occur prior to the publication of most papal statements, 276 | Christian Economic Ethics [18.221.53.209] Project MUSE...