Penny Mawdsley asks ‘Blessed are the Wealth Makers?’
An article bearing this title, but without the question mark, by Hugh Rayment-Pickard appeared in Church Times on 20th July 2012. I had saved it and came across it recently. Rayment-Pickard is now the Co-Director of the Professional Teaching Institute, University of London, which supports teachers and, in turn, pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds, to acquire University places.
The article encourages readers to look positively at money-making rather than to hold it in patronising disdain, as the Church has often been wont to do – as the ‘filthy lucre’ of Tyndale’s New Testament. The article begins by citing that 23 million people work in the private sector (27 million in the second quarter of 2023) and of this number retail provides 4.8 million jobs (2023 figure 3.54 million). It reminds us that the wealth created via taxation from this group helps substantially to pay our public servants and provides our vital infrastructure services.
The Church of England is of course as involved as any other institution with money making at all levels. Collection plates are filled from the wealth created by all the church’s parishioners. Cathedrals sell access to their sacred buildings, either directly or occasionally, by operating shops and restaurants. Churches rent spaces to user groups, and the Church Commissioners now hold £10.3 billion worth of investments (updated 2023), albeit in recent years choosing more ethically and financially sound ones than in the past. But, says Rayment-Pickard, ‘For all this, the Church instinctively regards money-making as sinful, at best as a necessary evil’. It’s not just the usury to which it once objected, let alone paying tithes. ‘Visions of the heavenly kingdom imply a gift-economy in which everyone will be provided for through a fair sharing of God’s abundance’. There would be no need for money ‘as with final stage Communism’, writes Rayment-Pickard, ‘we will contribute according to our abilities and receive according to our needs’.
Activities like business and trade have been long regarded in some ‘respectable’ circles as sub-ethical and contrasted with ‘moral’ professions like teaching, medicine and the Christian ministry. The concept of the welfare state may further discourage us from questioning too deeply from where the money for these services we freely use actually comes.
We should remember that all thriving businesses give their individual employees work, dignity, purpose and economic security, but we should not be afraid to criticise examples of greed, exploitation and gross materialism when we come across them.
The New Testament provides examples for a theology of human flourishing. The Parable of The Talents, as Rayment-Pickard points out, encourages us to make a profit from our endeavours, and God is likened to a successful businessman in his dealings with workers. Many Christian traditions provide further examples of good working practice to follow, amongst which are the Roman Catholic social teaching principles, and in the one-time Archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple’s 1942 ‘Christianity and Social Order’. The 19th century Quaker and other Nonconformist entrepreneurs and other philanthropists in Britain, and the Shakers in the USA provide good examples of living out ethical work principles. The Cadburys in Birmingham gained a reputation for fair pricing, honesty and reliability, and actually found that their outlook gave them a competitive edge.
Since 2012 the world has moved on and the press have often drawn our attention to the global businesses which have not paid their fair share of taxes. Certain service industries too, some of which are now part or wholly privatised, have not behaved ethically. Although the Government has known for a long time that there were serious queries about the ‘Horizon’ system which they had introduced to the Post Office and that postmasters and mistresses were complaining about it, they have given numerous further contracts to the company which supplied the system without thoroughly investigating the one set up by the Post Office.
Rayment-Pickard’s article concludes by making a plea for us all to ‘shrug off unexamined prejudice against money-making and to present people with a positive vision of what it means to create wealth for the common good’. I fear though, it won’t be so easy for the public to disabuse itself of the idea that generally public services are wholesome, whereas traded services are contaminated by the profit motive.