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| Depiction of Council of Nicaea, Basilica of St. Nicholas, Demre, Turkey |
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 Elvira which took place around 306. Elvira’s twentieth canon includes a prohibition against usury for all Christians, both clergy and laity alike. This is followed by prohibitions in the councils of Arles (314), Nicaea (325), Carthage (348) and continues through to Pope Leo the Great’s (440-461) Nec hoc quoque which forbids Christian clergy from engaging in the sin of usury and says that laity who make money from usury are guilty of shameful gain.[1]
In this (hopefully shorter) post, I want to briefly look at the prohibitions against usury from both the Councils of Elvira (306) and Nicaea (325). After doing so, I’ll take up the question of what usury is and why the Church rarely speaks out on it today. At issue is what usury is, exactly - a question that is more complicated than it might at first seem.
If we equate usury with lending money with interest, then it becomes harder to see what the church can do at this point. When we put savings into banks, that money is loaned out with interest. Indeed, we even accrue a small amount of interest from the banks doing this lending done on our behalf. In the best of circumstances, the lending that banks engage in play a critical role in making capital available - “money from the future” as Jacob Goldstein memorably puts it in Money: The True Story of a Made-Up Thing - for people who want to pay for such things as higher education, buy a house, or start a business. Not only is such lending a pillar of the modern economy, but the important roles that microloans and credit unions play in reducing poverty suggest to me that just forms of lending can actually help in ways that even charity can’t.
And yet, there is a long biblical witness that suggests usury isn’t just about lending with interest but is particularly about lending practices that take advantage of the poor and exploit the vulnerable. The spirit of the biblical prohibitions on usury are connected to how exploitative lending enslaves the most vulnerable through debt. In the Old Testament, exploitative lending is a form of financial enslavement of the poor and is thus especially prohibited for a people who had to escape the slavery of Egypt.
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The Council of Elvira was held in the early fourth century near modern Granada, Spain and is the first church council of which the canons remain extant. The exact date of this council remains unclear and I’ve seen 300, 303, 306, and 309 as potential years for when this gathering took place. What is apparent is that the council was held just after a period of persecution and sought to restore order and discipline through eighty-one canons, church laws that are remarkable in their severity. Among these are laws prohibiting reconciliation with the church for idolatry, repeated adultery, and divorce, and canon 20 specifically addresses the sin of usury. Canon 20 reads:
Si quis clericorum detectus fuerit usuras accipere, placuit eum degraderi et abstineri. Si quis etiam laicus accepisse probatur usuras, et promiserit correptus iam se cessaaturum nec ulterius exacturum, placuit et veniam tribui: si vero in ea iniquitate duraverit, ab ecclesia esse proiiciendum.
If any clergy are found engaged in usury, let them be censured and dismissed. If a layman is caught practicing usury, he may be pardoned if he promises to stop the practice. If he continues this evil practice, let him be expelled from the church.[2]
Trying to find a translation of the Latin above has been a challenge and so I want to mention one other translation found in Robert P. Maloney’s “Early Conciliar Legislation on Usury: A Contribution to the Study of Christian Moral Thinking.” Summarizing the Latin broadly, Maloney notes “A cleric who violates the law is to be degraded and excommunicated. A layman offending for the first time is to be treated indulgently if he promises not to lend at interest again; if he persists, he too is to be excommunicated.”[3]
Maloney also notes that “from Elvira it is evident that the earliest extant disciplinary canon on the subject outlaws interest-taking for both clerics and laymen.”[4] This is an important point as there is significant disagreement as to whether both clergy and laity were prohibited from usury, with the general and often repeated view being that such disciplinary laws only applied to clergy. Maloney strenuously argues otherwise. “The Council of Elvira (306), an early Council at Carthage (348), the eighteenth canon of the Armenian Canones Apostolici Primi (4th cent.), the fifth canon from the Codex Canonum Ecclesiae Africanae (c. 419), and Leo's Nec hoc quoque all explicitly include laymen under the prohibition. While some Councils, like those of Arles (314) and Nicaea (325), treat the problem explicitly only in reference to clerics, it does not follow from this that laymen were permitted to take interest at that time.”[5] The later prohibition on usury from Nicaea is better understood, then, as an example of the church singling clergy out especially rather than exclusively.
The First Council of Nicaea in 325 was the first ecumenical council of the Christian Church, and met in what is now modern day Iznik, Turkey. This council was called by the first Christian Roman emperor Constantine who hoped a general council would solve the tensions and rivalries created in the Eastern church by the priest Arius and the theological movement of Arianism. As an undergrad and then MDiv student at Union, I spent a fair amount of time understanding - or attempting to, anyway - the significance of theological controversies like the one that Nicaea sought to resolve. I don’t recall, however, learning about the economic justice concerns expressed in the Nicene canons. For in addition to producing an early version of the Nicene Creed and condemning Arianism as heresy, the Council also set forth a new church law concerning clerics who practice usury. Canon 17 reads:
Since many enrolled [among the clergy] have been induced by greed and avarice to forget the sacred text, "who does not put out his money at interest," and to charge one percent [a month] on loans, this holy and great synod judges that if any are found after this decision to receive interest by contract or to transact the business in any other way or to charge [a flat rate of] fifty per cent or in general to devise an other contrivance for the sake of dishonourable gain, they shall be deposed from the clergy and their names struck from the roll.
Importantly, this canon begins with the factual observation that a lot of Christian clergy were engaged in usury on a regular basis. What this observation suggests to me is that lending was as much a necessary part of life as, say, divorce, despite the unequivocal condemnations of both lending with interest and divorce by Jesus in the Gospels. Yet lending with interest can quickly become a form of exploitation of the poor.
This connection between lending and exploitation of the poor is even shown in the canon’s reference to verse five of Psalm 15. This is the biblical text that Nicaea is referring to as having been forgotten by clergy induced by greed and avarice. Psalm 15 begins by asking, “O lord, who may abide in your tent? Who may dwell in your holy hill?” and continues “Those who walk blamelessly and do what is right”. In the fifth verse, it includes among those who walk blamelessly those “who do not lend money at interest and do not take a bribe against the innocent.”[6] The use of Psalm 15:5 as a proof text against usury is picked up and then repeated in later councils and prohibitions as summarizing the law and the prophets’ view on the matter.[7]
Even so, all these prohibitions and condemnations appear to have fallen on deaf ears. Maloney concludes, “In both east and west ecclesiastical legislation prohibited what civil legislation allowed. Severe penalties were threatened against violators of the law. Yet even so, lending at interest went on. Both clerics and laymen ignored prohibitions and sought profit from their loans.”[8]
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From these councils, it is clear that at one point in the life of the church, we were really vexed about the sin of usury. But not so much today. Why?
I think a part of this has to do with questions around what counts as usury today. Does it only relate to lending with interest or is there, in addition to a generalized concern about lending with interest, a particular focus on exploitation of the poor? It’s apparent that in these early canons, all lending with interest was considered suspect and was to be prohibited, but today many - including myself - would argue that we’re throwing the baby out with the bathwater if we focus on usury as lending with interest alone. It is hard to imagine the Church taking up a call to stop all lending with interest and I think we’d run headlong into examples of excellent financial programs that employ forms of lending with fair interest rates to achieve economic justice. Focusing on general lending with interest may ultimately prevent the more urgently needed work of condemning exploitative and predatory lending practices that are rampant today.
In my searching the net, I came across a recent sermon on usury that makes the problem that I’m pointing to clear. In a very engaging sermon, Fr. Mark Sietsema of Holy Trinity Lansing, Michigan, a Greek Orthodox congregation, speaks of usury as lending with interest generally:
“Do you have an interest-bearing account at a bank? You are loaning the bank money at interest. You are a usurer. Do you have a retirement account, a 401K, a 403B? You might hold mostly stocks, but I bet the part of your portfolio is in bonds as well. Interest-bearing, usurious bonds and Treasury bills. It is inescapable. To be part of modern middle-class life in America is to be involved in usury. And even if you somehow have avoided every opportunity to charge interest to someone else, you are almost surely still guilty of paying interest in some way: on a mortgage, on a car loan, on a credit card. In willingly agreeing to pay interest, you are giving your creditor an occasion to sin. You are tempting someone else to do that which displeases the Lord, according to Psalm 15 and all of the Bible.”[9]
Before offering my critique, I want to say how great it is to read a sermon on usury. Fr. Sietsema’s sermon concludes that even though usury is so prevalent as to be inescapable, this doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s no longer a sin. It is simply a sin we stopped feeling sorry for. I accept that. My critique, however, would be that Fr. Sietsema doesn’t then explore whether some forms of lending are more sinful than others, or at the very least more explicitly condemned. The Old Testament, in particular, has a specific focus on the evils of lending with interest to the poor because it is a form of enslaving people through debt. I worry that this gets lost when we speak of usury as lending with interest generally.
But let me show my work. There is an explicit linkage between debt and the enslavement of the poor in many passages of the Old Testament. Creditors are described as coming to take away debtors’ children as slaves (2 Kings 4:1); the Old Testament describes the horrific results of families having to borrow money on their own fields to pay the King’s tax: “We are forcing our sons and daughters to be slaves, and some of our daughters have been ravished; we are powerless, and our fields and vineyards now belong to others,” (Nehemiah 5:4-5).
The connection between usury and slavery is perhaps most movingly expressed in the prohibition on charging of interest on the poor that appears in Leviticus 25:35-38:
“If any of your kin fall into difficulty and become dependent on you, you shall support them; they shall live with you as though resident aliens. Do not take interest in advance or otherwise make a profit from them, but fear your God; let them live with you. You shall not lend them your money at interest taken in advance, or provide them food at a profit. I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, to give you the land of Canaan, to be your God.”
Christianity’s views on usury build on this perspective that connects lending and enslavement. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus’ announcement of his mission as bringing Good News to the poor (Luke 4:18a) builds on the Old Testament’s longing for a Year of Jubilee which looks toward the release of debtors from their debts and slaves from enslavement. In this passage of Luke, Jesus is quoting Isaiah 61:1-2a which foretells of a future anointed one who brings Good News to the oppressed: “He has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn.” Both Jesus and Isaiah’s inclusion of the term ‘the year of the Lord’s favor’ connects the anointed one’s mission to the priestly proclamation of the Year of Jubilee, a time when all agricultural work must cease, debts, slaves, and indentured servants are released, and ancestral property that was previously sold reverts to its original owners (Lev 25.8–17; cf Deut 15.1–3,12–18).
I realize I am condensing too much in just a few sentences here, but what I hope to make clear is that an essential image of Jesus’ mission is, therefore, the release of the poor from the enslavement of debt.
In light of biblical views on usury and the first councils of the Church, I think it’s fair to say that lending with interest was especially condemned because of the way it was inevitably bound up with oppression of the poor and reducing people to enslavement with debt. I think we need to follow the spirit of this condemnation and focus on the many instances in which lending is still very much a predatory practice.
This focus on predatory lending was taken up in 2012 in the Episcopal Church’s General Convention resolution condemning usury. In resolution 2012-A081 entitled “Reform Usury Laws”, the church committed to working toward usury laws that “establish the principles of fair loan structures, fair repayment schedules, and interest rates such that debts can be repaid in a timely manner without crushing the debtor” and committed to working at local, state, and federal levels to eliminate loopholes “that allow for and sustain predatory lending practices.”[10] This strikes me as a contemporary treatment of usury that is much more in line with the biblical witness and is in keeping with where our moral voice needs to be heard today. Of course, with the Episcopal Church, it’s rarely the theology that I have issues with so much as the follow through, and so I’d be interested to learn more about what concrete actions have resulted from this resolution.
If one understands usury as particularly referring to predatory and exploitative practices, one finds that there is a lot of work for the Church to be engaged in. Usury is rampant today, particularly in the form of payday lending and high-interest loans targeted to low-income communities of color, both of which are lending practices that exploit people in desperate circumstances.
For example, just prior to a 2016 popular referendum in South Dakota that resulted in the banning of payday loans, the average interest on payday loans in South Dakota was 652%. One can imagine the impact of such an interest rate on a South Dakotan family that had to borrow $100 to make rent. Tragically, after a brief period in which this ban was into effect, President Trump’s administration instituted a permanent loophole for payday lenders that has rendered South Dakota’s 2016 ban moot.[11]
Yet usury today is hardly confined to the payday loan industry. Some of the most disturbing stories from the 2008 financial crash involve the predatory lending practices of major banks such as Wells Fargo and Bank of America and how they targeted low-income communities of color for subprime mortgages.[12] It is now established that Wells Fargo sent bank employees to many of Baltimore’s black churches to sell subprime mortgages, and in Memphis this same bank also intentionally targeted elderly African-Americans because they were perceived as less likely to understand the terms of the agreements they were entering into.[13] Low-income communities of color were targeted by both Wells Fargo and Bank of America for these loans and bore the brunt of foreclosures amidst the financial crash. Richard Rothstein, Distinguished Fellow at the Economic Policy Institute and author of The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segmented America, noted “Many of the victims were in California, and of Mexican origin. Those in the East and Midwest were mostly African American. Although not specifically detailed in the government’s complaint, many lost their homes to foreclosure when they were unable to meet the harsh repayment terms to which they had agreed, mostly unwittingly.”[14]
There is much work to be done and the world needs the Church to revive its moral witness - including condemnation - of modern day usury.
Multiple councils of the church - including Elvira around 306 and Nicaea in 325 - condemned usury and prohibited both laity and clergy from lending with interest. This longstanding condemnation of usury has implications for the work and witness of the church today. However, when we try to think about what usury is today, I worry that general prohibitions on lending with interest may obscure the biblical tradition’s special concern on exploitative and predatory lending practices that result in the enslavement of the poor in debt. I hold there is still a much-needed role for the Church to play in condemning usury, although we should focus primarily on those areas like payday loans and other predatory lending practices that target the most vulnerable.
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[1] Maloney, Robert P. “Early Conciliar Legislation on Usury: A Contribution to the Study of Christian Moral Thinking.” Recherches De Théologie Ancienne Et Médiévale, vol. 39, 1972, pp. 145–157. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/26188306. Accessed 8 Dec. 2020. 156-157
[2] Translation from Sexuality and Power: The Emergence of Canon Law at the Synod of Elvira (Philadelphia: 1972), through website here: http://legalhistorysources.com/Canon%20Law/ElviraCanons.htm#Clergy%20and%20trade
[3] Maloney, Robert P. “Early Conciliar Legislation on Usury: A Contribution to the Study of Christian Moral Thinking.” Recherches De Théologie Ancienne Et Médiévale, vol. 39, 1972, pp. 145–157. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/26188306. Accessed 8 Dec. 2020. Page 145
[4] Maloney, Robert P. “Early Conciliar Legislation on Usury: A Contribution to the Study of Christian Moral Thinking.” Recherches De Théologie Ancienne Et Médiévale, vol. 39, 1972, pp. 145–157. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/26188306. Accessed 8 Dec. 2020. Page 145
[5] Maloney, Robert P. “Early Conciliar Legislation on Usury: A Contribution to the Study of Christian Moral Thinking.” Recherches De Théologie Ancienne Et Médiévale, vol. 39, 1972, pp. 145–157. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/26188306. Accessed 8 Dec. 2020. Pages 156-157
[6] Psalm 15: 1-2, 5
[7] Maloney, Robert P. “Early Conciliar Legislation on Usury: A Contribution to the Study of Christian Moral Thinking.” Recherches De Théologie Ancienne Et Médiévale, vol. 39, 1972, pp. 145–157. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/26188306. Accessed 8 Dec. 2020. Pages 147, 156-157
[8] Maloney, Robert P. “Early Conciliar Legislation on Usury: A Contribution to the Study of Christian Moral Thinking.” Recherches De Théologie Ancienne Et Médiévale, vol. 39, 1972, pp. 145–157. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/26188306. Accessed 8 Dec. 2020. 145
[9] https://www.holytrinity-lansing.org/articles-from-father-mark-1/2020/1/20/the-sin-we-stopped-feeling-sorry-for
[10] General Convention, Journal of the General Convention of...The Episcopal Church, Indianapolis, 2012 (New York: General Convention, 2012), p. 282.
[11] Moattar, Daniel. “Trump to Payday Lenders: Let’s Rip America Off Again.” February 2020 - https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/02/trump-payday-loan-bank-rule/
[12] Rothstein, Richard. “A comment on Bank of America/Countrywide’s discriminatory mortgage lending and its implications for racial segregation.” January 2012
[13] Rothstein, Richard. “A comment on Bank of America/Countrywide’s discriminatory mortgage lending and its implications for racial segregation.” January 2012
[14] Rothstein, Richard. “A comment on Bank of America/Countrywide’s discriminatory mortgage lending and its implications for racial segregation.” January 2012
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