Various churches including the ‘Kirk’ have now expressed their clear opposition to the extortionate rates of interest charged by pay day loan companies. Generally this ‘prophetic’ intervention into wider society has been welcomed not least as it has been accompanied by practical suggested alternatives. the latter is required because pay day loan companies do provide help for those who may have no other options and are better than local loan shark operators.
This prophetic intervention, however, has also resulted in some embarassing soul or at least investment seraching to ensure that churches have not been investing, however indirectly, in the sort of companies who engage in such loan activity. In turn , it has been at least interesting to see some of public discussion in relation to how different religous groups including Christianity have traditionally responded to the issue of giving loans and helping the poor etc. Scripture passages of various types have been quoted in the press including in the Herald article by Andrew McKie Churches play a blinder on the scourge of payday loans (my thanks to Doug Gay's tweet for drawing my attention to this).
All of this has to be welcomed.
Yet this discussion poses the Church with another question. This is the question of how we respond to Scriptures which are concerned primarily with our internal life as a 'community of believers' and which at least suggest some sort of redistribution of wealth as a characteristic of Holy Spirit inspired community Acts 2:44-45; 4:34-35 so that there are no poor among us. To be sure this approach has not been dominant in the mainstream tradition of church - yet it nags away suggesting that the upper limits of some may have to be lowered if others are to be lifted up.
I find this whole thing deeply challenging not least because of my own anabaptist inclinations. Historically as Arnold Snyder argues 'Economic Sharing' was an anabaptist church practice. Radical economic sharing was the the visible sign of ones committment to the community. Sometimes as with the Hutterites this took the form of an organised community of goods. For all, however, it meant caring for the poor, the widows, and the orphans.
This suggests to me that even as the Church seeks to transform or humanise wider society it has an internal challenge of practicing such care so that members of the Christian community need not resort to either Pay Day loan bodies or Credit Unions but find their immediate help in and from the community of faith.
In this I am not in any way suggesting the old maxim: 'charity begins at home' but rather the idea that 'Judgement begins with the house of God' and that bearing witness requires not simply suggesting a more ethical wider society but also embodying in practice a more ethical community. The salt of the earth also needs to be a light ona stand, a city on the hill.
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