Sabbath Economics offers a vision of a world where we live with gratitude and accept our limits, and forgiveness is not just a spiritual matter, but a practical reality for systems of debt and ownership. This concise powerful collection of essays grasps the nettle of Biblical stories and parables we prefer not to take literally, revealing an ancient standard of social justice waiting to be revived.
Ched Myers is an activist theologian who has worked in social change movements for almost 40 years. With a degree in New Testament studies, he is popular educator on faith-based peace and justice.
You don’t have to be religious to realise that Sabbath economics makes sense. It’s influenced by stories from the Bible, knowing that our world has enough for everyone (we waste three times more food each year than is needed to feed all the world’s hungry) and if we live within our limits, there won’t be the huge disparity between rich and poor.
Consider companies not protecting the (often very poor) residents of Grenfell Tower, which lies in one of the most affluent areas on earth, with billionaire mansions nearby. ‘Forgiveness of debt’ is also a Biblical principle.
If you think that religion does not care about the poor, this is not true, it’s more ‘religious politicians’ that pretend to care, then bring in laws that often kick the poor and disabled and vulnerable further down the rungs of the ladder, so it’s harder for them to get up.
Nearly all the previous government cabinet were millionaires, yet often voted to cut benefits for the poorest in society (and often the disabled). And yet some promote themselves to be of deep faith. We can all assume that Jesus Christ would not have voted to cut benefits for the most vulnerable in society, especially in order to ‘keep inflation low’ or use money saved to buy weapons.
A few years back, 70 ‘leading Catholics’ actually wrote to Iain Duncan Smith, asking him to rewrite policies to be more in line with Christian values, as Tory policies were having devastating effects on the poor. It was also discovered that the Department of Work & Pensions were actually publishing fake testimonies of claimants ‘enjoying their benefits cuts. Yet in the 3 years during that time, almost 3000 people died just after ‘work capability assessments’ declared them fit to work’.
The controversy was found when readers noted a ‘fake claimant’ happily relaxed after ‘losing 2 weeks benefit’ for not completing a CV in time to find work. People on low incomes noted that losing 2 weeks benefit would likely result in people not being able to eat (taking months to get back to where they were). Proving that those in power have no idea, how people on the bottom of the financial rungs struggle.
