Wealth and Poverty in Christianity

There is a song by the Dominican singer Juan Luis Guerra that can teach us a lot about how to read parts of the Old and New Testaments. For on one level, Ojalá que llueve café is a joyful and upbeat song and that could simply be heard as a charming and enchanted tour of Dominican food. In it, Luis Guerra sings "May it rain coffee in the countryside...a whole torrent of yucca and tea... May Autumn bring, instead of dry leaves, salted pork and a newly planted field of sweet potatoes and strawberries."  With his soft yet insistent voice, and through the song's energetic beat, Luis Guerra offers a vision of miraculous abundance - downpours of cheese, honey, and hills of wheat - images that are almost biblical in nature. Further, this song is a kind of prayer. While the first word of the song, "ojalá", is regularly translated as "may it be", this doesn't quite convey the depth of this Spanish word of hope. Better to note that ojalá is one of those many...

"The poor ask for medicine and you offer them poison; they beg for bread and you give them a sword; they plead for freedom and you subject them to slavery; they implore to be freed from their bonds and you entrap them in an inescapable net." - Basil of Cesarea A common argument against social justice Christianity is that this prophetic and socially-attuned version of the faith is considered a relatively recent development, something born out of the World Wars, identity politics, and liberation theologies of the 20th century. Yet when it comes to Christianity’s ancient history of condemning exploitation of the poor, this is patently untrue. On usury, the predatory lending of money at exorbitantly high interest rates to the poor, the Old and New Testament and early church fathers such as Basil of Cesarea, John Chrysostom, and Ambrose of Milan make many of today’s most fiery social justice preachers look tame by comparison. “You rich,” Basil fairly sneers in his Homily on Psalm ...

By the summer of 2005, I knew I was no longer Roman Catholic. The revelations about the child sex abuse scandal that the Boston Globe began publishing in 2002 combined with the conservativeness of the young seminarians I'd met while studying at a small Roman Catholic university in Texas, as well as the prospect of spending any more time arguing for "the basics" such as women's ordination and acceptance of LGBTQ+ people, led me to realize that I needed to go elsewhere to find a faith community that shared my core values. One year prior, I'd boarded an Amtrak train for a three-day trip to New York to begin studying for my Master of Divinity degree at Union Theological Seminary. Taking a train was both a romantic and terrible decision that I regretted as soon as I settled into my seat. Nevertheless, the train eventually brought me to Penn Station to begin my life in New York. After a tumultuous year of adjusting to life in the city, I was determined to try to find a ...

Depiction of Council of Nicaea, Basilica of St. Nicholas, Demre, Turkey Did you know that the Council of Nicaea had a canon prohibiting clergy from engaging in usury? It’s true. In addition to framing an initial version of the Nicene Creed, this first ecumenical council from 325 stated in canon 17 that as many clergy had been “induced by greed and avarice”, those found to be engaging in usury or other contrivances for the sake of dishonorable gain “shall be deposed from the clergy and their names struck from the roll.”  I did not know this when I wrote about Basil of Cesarea’s homily against usury in this blog post . It was my colleague, Rev. Dr. Patrick Cheng, who sent me a note afterward alerting me to Nicaea's prohibition. So thank you, Patrick!  In reviewing research on conciliar prohibitions against usury, particularly the work of Robert P. Maloney on usury, I learned that these took place not only at Nicaea but also at even earlier councils, including the council of Elvi...