Theology

Any resume of theological writings related to money will be selective and idiosyncratic. As a nonspecialist, I am certain that there are many excellent books relating the religious to the economic life that I have never heard of, much less read. I offer the following comments on my favorites in the hope that it will inspire readers to seek out works that speak to their own souls.

Herman E. Daly and John B. Cobb's For the Common Good: Redirecting the Economy toward Community, the Environment, and a Sustainable Future critiques the assumptions of capitalist economics from the standpoint of process theology. Fortunately, given the importance of the topic, Daly and Cobb largely eschew the jargon that has kept process thinking from entering the mainstream thought of seminarians and the clergy. But seriously religious people of all faiths should read For the Common Good, not to accept all of the specific proposals (some of which, appropriately for process thought, have been substantially revised since the original edition in 1989), but for its stimulating interplay of theology and economics.

A younger process theologian, Carol Johnston, has published an evocative study of the origins and contradictions of today's conventional economic thinking in The Wealth or Health of Nations: Transforming Capitalism from Within. Focusing on the canonical figures of Anglo American economics—Smith, Ricardo, Malthus, Mill, Marx, Marshall, Keynes, and Friedman—Johnston restates with fresh argument familiar criticisms against this tradition's individualism and amorality. Johnston also provides helpful ways to use an ecological philosophy to challenge and temper capitalism's excesses.

A recent treatment of the Christian scriptures' teachings about money is Sondra Ely Wheeler's Wealth as Peril and Obligation: The New Testament on Possessions. Wheeler finds no simple code of economic behavior in the teachings of Jesus and the early church but rather a complex awareness that money and other forms of wealth pose "dangers of distraction and entanglement, of misplaced trust and loyalty" while at the same time providing the means to fulfill the duty of "provision for oneself and one's family."⁶

A variety of original thinkers have contributed to Rethinking Materialism: Perspectives on the Spiritual Dimension of Economic Behavior, edited by Robert Wuthnow. The first half of the book includes historical and sociological essays, such as Wilfred M. McClay's "Where Have We Come Since the 1950s? Thoughts on Materialism and American Social Character" and Marsha G. Witten's "'Where Your Treasure Is': Popular Evangelical Views of Work, Money, and Materialism." The latter half moves toward constructing a critical alternative to materialism and features Nicholas Wolterstorff's "Has the Cloak Become a Cage? Charity, Justice, and Economic Activity" and Albert Bergeson's "Deep Ecology and Moral Community." It is clear that scholarly reflection on this subject is at an early, formative stage, and Rethinking Materialism contains much of the best thinking up to its publication in 1995.

In a more popular vein, Money and the Meaning of Life by Jacob Needleman rambles delightfully as it follows the course of one of Needleman's seminars in the University of California's extension program. As he grapples with his own ideas and the questions posed by adult learners steeped in various backgrounds and vocations, Needleman is refreshing in his honest confrontation of the real but hidden loyalties that interfere with those we are prepared to acknowledge and nourishing in his eclectic probing of his own tradition (Judaism) and others for guidance useful to the serious inquirer.

6. Sondra Ely Wheeler, Wealth as Peril and Obligation: The New Testament on Possession (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1995), 134.