While in the USA this week I only picked up the odd headline about the Archbishop of Canterbury and Wonga. Now I am back I am rather surprised and encouraged at what is going on.
First, it is encouraging that the Archbishop of Canterbury is taking a shameless lead in addressing the cancer that such businesses as Wonga represent. Go on to any English urban estate and see the havoc created by desperate people needing immediate cash. Yes, some of them might be 'chaotic' (to quote Iain Duncan Smith), but almost all of them will find current government policy regarding welfare cuts (but not banking reform, obviously) existentially challenging.
The iniquity of pay-day loan sharks has been oft iterated, yet rarely heeded. Such a socially destructive and corrosive business is allowed to continue because (a) most people don't want to face up to it and (b) the implications of tackling it will also cast doubt on the ethical propriety of other elements of our social systems. It is all as corrupting as the win-at-all-costs loadsamoney greed culture mocked by comedians during Thatcher's eighties, but now rooted in our current polarised culture in England.
It was further encouraging that the Archbishop, on discovering that the Church Commissioners invest indirectly in Wonga, went straight into the radio studios, faced the world and pointed out the obvious: that the is no 'clean' money in a complex capitalist world that depends for its pension funds (for example) on investments from sources that will give the highest returns. At least, because of his immediate response, the Archbishop has ensured that this current business will open up deeper questions than simply the adequacy of credit unions for providing alternatives to the spivs.
The two best responses to all this are by the wonderful Marina Hyde in the Guardian and Dr Luke Bretherton on an Australian website.
The task now is to make sure that the debate does not go away when the media's attention shifts elsewhere, and that the deeper questions about “what is money for” and “is society really to be simply a market directed by profit and fantasies of endless growth” get addressed seriously by politicians as well as churches.
I am pleased that in the midst of all this there is a quiet – reluctant, maybe – recognition that the Church is ahead of the game in addressing debt (why do we keep calling it 'credit'?) both at local and regional level. Credit unions are being set up all around the country.
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Nick Baines's Blog 
July 27, 2013 at 5:31 pm
Yet some are still claiming that no religious organisation ever criticises any business! There are a lot of people who hate.
July 27, 2013 at 6:39 pm
I’m also glad JW is addressing this issue. When on the PCC, I raised it in the Social Responsibility, modestly suggesting the need to work with the local credit union, to which I have since redirected some of my teacher’s pension funds. At the time, I was told this was not within the remit of the local church. I resigned from the PCC as a result.
July 27, 2013 at 7:12 pm
the Church is ahead of the game in addressing debt (why do we keep calling it ‘credit’?)
Because if you call it debt, the whole system of purchasing houses (a cornerstone of the British class system) is shown up for what it is. Everyone paying off a mortgage is a debtor, as much as the people resorting to the loan sharks.
July 27, 2013 at 10:47 pm
Money changers in the Bible: John 2:14-16
Jesus expelled the money changers from the Temple courts along with all those that were selling livestock. He drove the money changers out with a whip he made out of cords saying, “How dare you turn my father’s house into a market!”
July 27, 2013 at 10:49 pm
John 2.14 And found in the temple those that sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the changers of money sitting:
15 And when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers’ money, and overthrew the tables;
16 And said unto them that sold doves, Take these things hence; make not my Father’s house an house of merchandise.
17 And his disciples remembered that it was written, The zeal of thine house hath eaten me up.
Wonga indeed
July 27, 2013 at 10:49 pm
Now where is my Blood Whip…
July 28, 2013 at 3:15 pm
As much as I agree with Justin Welby’s view on companies such as Wonga and the profit they make on the backs of the poor, I have to disagree with your personal choice of the best responses in the press.
The Independent’s lead on Saturday “The Church should keep to matters spiritual” (sorry I can’t find a link) also agrees that JW’s concerns are valid, but concludes….
“Archbishop Welby is still the unelected leader of a minority institution which enjoys disproportionate influence on the basis of history alone. His efforts to reclaim the initiative and make the church relevant again are understandable, but erroneous.”
And…
That Bishops still sit in The House of Lords is an anachronism that makes a mockery of British democracy.”
July 28, 2013 at 3:36 pm
Glad you didn’t duck this one – and neither did the Arch – it’s complicated but us pew fodder have the right and reason to expect episcopal common sense and leadership.
July 29, 2013 at 2:49 pm
Much as I admire ‘The Independent’ as a bastion of free speech and sanctimony, the press in Britain also enjoys disproportionate influence, and often suffers from a lack of historical perspective. If its ‘leader’ understood the history of the reformed churches in Britain and Europe, it would also understand why it has always been the role of the church to defend the poor against usury and financial exploitation (especially, btw, by the Bishop of Rome). ‘British Democracy’ is no more democratic than the electoral system in the Holy Roman Empire at the time of the Reformation, and is just as much in debt to the bankers as were the temporal rulers, including the Papacy, at that time. The House of Lords is not the only anachronism in the British Establishment, but as long as it exists I, for one, am glad that we have Lords Spiritual sitting in it and a Defender of the Faith who is far more popular than the schoolboys in the other place who constitute our so-called government, which couldn’t even conduct a food-fight in the Eton mess. A fine ‘mess’ they have made of managing the economy, while Justin Welby is devising a cunning plan to use the Church’s money to achieve a measure of justice through free enterprise, working with co-operatives and credit unions which have always enjoyed the support of the faithful and respectable working classes (and I use the terms historically). History will absolve us of our ‘error’ in so doing… or perhaps the present Pope’s plan to provide indulgences in exchange for ‘tweets’ is more what ‘The Independent’ would see as a more spiritual way of encouraging the poor!
August 2, 2013 at 7:19 am
I don’t pretend it is a sufficient/ proper response to the Banking issues but did not Government ( Labour Coalition -I forget which) increase the sums the Banks must retain as capital in liquid form to cool down the frenzy of inappropriate lending? “Something” was done maybe not enough, and we all hope it contributes to preventing a repetition.