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“It’s the economy, stupid!”
Sermon by Rev. Peter Dennebaum, FCC Chappaqua – January 4, 2009
Worship topic “The Financial Markets and our Faith”
Dear sisters and brothers,
As long as you have no Prof-title or minimum a PhD in
economy economists, politicians and specific lobbyists will feedback you very
fast that you have no competence to talk about economical issues. And when you
go on just trying to question things, which happened recently within our economy
you will receive just a compassionate smile and the question, if you really want
to threaten the industrial location USA or Germany or wherever. And certainly
you will get always the reference to the global competition and how much we have
already to compete for example with China. And latest at this point you realize
that you get into the defensive. Because you know immediately what you have to
listen to: And you start feel guilty before you even hear it: That you have 2
days the week off, while so many other people need two or three jobs to make a
living and are happy, if they have just 1 day the week off, you feel guilty that
you have 4 weeks vacation, while millions of people would be happy to have so
much. The message is always the same: The market requires that you do what it is
expected from you to do and that there is no alternative.
Many of you work in the city. I know that some of you get
up somewhere between 5 and 6 in the morning and come home late. Your family you
see almost just on weekends – the family life is mostly pressed into the 48
weekend- hours. Tired from your job week your children require you now as
parent. And your church you belong to and which you support with your money
invites you also to be somewhere and somehow engaged. Today I want to figure out
with you, if there might be for us ALL a common sense, why we are together
church and what church could mean for us, but also for this other world, we life
in.
I suppose that there must be a reason that you support
this church instead of using the amount of your pledge for consuming
investments. I suppose that your investment into this church and therewith also
into my and all the staffs salary has something to do with your hope for a
better world.
To everybody, who tries to tell us that the economy
follows its own rules, where faith and believe would have nothing to do with, we
have to say as Christians: No, this is not correct!
As Christians we cannot allow the economic system to exist
independent from the values we believe in. As Christians we demand the economy
to serve human kind and not reverse. We cannot allow the economy to force us
into a life as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. We cannot allow an economic system to
press us into a schizophrenic being: During the week forced to follow the
merciless rules of the markets and at
the weekends trying to live a life of solidarity, trying to follow the rules of
justice and trying to bring a little more peace onto earth.
A preacher is never allowed to preach him- or herself. It
has to be the word of the bible. This is the reason, why you find in your
bulletin an insert with some essential bible verses or stories to the theme
money and faith. Take the insert home with you and refer to them – about some of
them we will hear today.
The bible doesn’t describe and doesn’t demand a specific
economic system. But we clearly find an idea of man as well as criteria, which
an economic system has to fulfill so that Christians can live with it. Does an
economic system NOT fulfill our criteria we Christians are called to resist and
to humanize it - for Gods sake and Gods creation sake.
My thesis here is that competitive markets are good as
long special criteria are fulfilled…. Around the world church leaders of
different denominations called in their New Years addresses this week for a
social market economy as a civilized version of a free market economy and as a
third way between capitalism, which is just interested in financial profit as
end in itself and a state socialism, which sets social aspects over individual
rights.
Already in the first book in our bible, in Genesis the
foundation is laid for our Jewish-Christian idea of man: Created as Gods image
mankind is introduced as one brother- and sisterhood – based on being and not on
performance. Here lies for us Christians the reason for human dignity. Our
individual thinking and struggle for Human Rights has here its foundation.
Christianity was the first global movement, long before the capital got its
modern importance.
The letter of James, from which we heard today as reading,
calls us not to be only listeners of the word, but to be also doers of the word.
Interesting wise James as well in the First Testament already the Prophet Amos
admonishes the worshipers not to depoliticize religion. But exactly this
happened in the liberal theology of the 19th century in the time of
industrialization. It was in the absolute interest of the industry barons to
have obeying workers, who go Sunday nicely to church and to hear there that
religion has nothing to do with politics and society and that salvation would be
just a private thing just between themselves and God. Many clergies made
themselves guilty by refusing to be at the side of people working 7 days the
week and up to 18 hours the day, often under most inhuman conditions, for
example as minors. How so often bishops and ministers fraternized with the
powers. God’s word got betrayed by its own staff.
Still in our days the misunderstanding remains, that
religion would be just something for Sundays and would have just something to do
with God but nothing with society and politics. Background is then often the
experience, that ministers had misused the pulpit for right or left wing
politics of the day. But God doesn’t care if you are Democrat or Republican.
God calls everybody of us, independent from our political
point of view for justice and to go with God on the road to the Promised Land.
As just is called in the bible the one, who follows Gods will. In the beginning
of Israel’s history it is the seventy-five year old Abraham, who should leave
home, all property, friends and security and got promised therefore succession
as much as stars in the skies and the Promised Land. The doing of justice is
here the answer to Gods loving acting. The Ten Commandments are in this context
guidelines for just acting. Especially the welfare for the poor and the
protection of the aliens are requested– because Israel was itself an alien in
Egypt. Later in Israel’s history religion started to emancipate from politics
–prophets like Jeremiah confessed against the ruler Gods justice as the higher
justice, when the king enriched himself on the cost of the weak and poor.
Today it is just in the least cases the governments who rip
the own population. As example we have to mention here the dictator of Zimbabwe
Robert Mugabe.
No, in our days excrescences of exploitation and misuse of
market rules are often not very obvious. We don’t see like 2000 years ago
soldiers breaking down house doors to collect much too high taxes from people
living in poverty and despair for the kings palace. In our days the cynics do
sit often in glass palaces of New York, London, Frankfurt, Tokyo and other
metropolises, making their decisions via computer or telephone call. We don’t
see them, but by just using their legal rights in often too deregulated
financial markets greed of gain oppresses the poor much more effective than in
any other time of history before. Let me give you an example: So called “vulture
funds” among the hedge funds are specialized to buy the debts of a country for
little money and sue afterwards the country for the whole amount inclusive
interest and interest on interest. The inventor of this model is the New York
billionaire Paul Singer. His hedge funds Elliot Associates bought 1996 debts
from Peru in a value of 20 million Dollars – for 11 million. Although the
majority of the debtors voted for a conversion of the debts he won in court 58
million dollars – again: after an investment of 11 million.
For everybody among us, who thinks that this is nothing
else than just successful business, another example: In April 2007, just 20
months ago, a court in London sentenced the south African country Zambia for a
payment of 17 million Dollar to the American vulture funds Donegal. Donegal had
bought Zambia’s debts of 15 million Dollars for the give-away price of 3 million
Dollars from Rumania. And this was the history of these debts: 1979 the bitter
poor country Zambia purchased on credit from Rumania agricultural machines, but
got very soon already in delay of payment. 1999 Donegal bought the rights on
this now 20-year-old contract and wanted first 55 million dollar for it. But the
court in London reduced this amount down to 17 million, because the judge was
convinced that Donegal had bribed the Zambian president at the that time,
Chiluba, with an one million “donation”, so that he agreed to sell the state
debts on the so called second market. Anyhow: The Donegal funds made still more
than 550% profit.
Especially perfidiously is this case, because Zambia
belongs to one of the poorest countries in the world. 64% of the 12 million
Zambians have less than one dollar the day for living. Therefore the
international debtors had agreed for a broad debt cancellation. The 17 million
dollar for Donegal does Zambia now payout of his social- and school budget.
Dramatic cuts for healthcare and alphabetization programs are now the
consequence. Urgent needed medicaments for around 100.000 people cannot be
financed; the AIDS-rate is in Zambia one of the highest worldwide, 20% of the
Zambian children is already now AIDS orphans.
When the BBC journalist Greg Palast asked the founder of
Donegal, Michael Sheehan, if he wouldn’t have any pangs of conscience Sheehan
answered unaffected: “These are not my debts. I just had the opportunity for an
investment.” Michael Sheehan has an office in Washington, D.C. His telephone no
can be found online.
Much more things would have to be pointed out, when we try
to break down the biblical understanding of justice into our world.
I just can touch some examples, where we are called as
Christians to show profile and to proof, that we don’t want to stay
schizophrenic:
By civil law hopefully not only in Europe the convention
exists, that contracts are null and void, when they are immoral. In fact for
more and more Christians it is immoral, when a manager earns up to 1000 times
more than a worker. More and more Christians think that 20 times more like in
Japan would be totally enough. And it would be new if Japanese companies were
NOT involved in the global competition. Managers have to be role models, also
for just behavior. Nobody is allowed to act in the business world with other
moral standards than at home with the family. It was the Jewish-German
political-philosopher Hannah Arendt, who searched from her exile here in New
York after the Second World War about the reason how it had been possible that
loving family dads in Germany had left in the morning home to organize the
million-fold genocide on our Jewish sisters and brothers. Her results should
help us to find back to an old Christian acknowledgment: We human beings are
integrated beings. To get split into two value worlds is not human and leads
guaranteed into destruction. As Christians we have to fight for a world, in
which we can stay as people integrated.
The problem is complex.
Having worked once in the financial world I have to
confess: I felt in these times special and didn’t want to be organized in an
union – even I had been active before for employee rights. I was proud to get
therefore more money, I felt important and acknowledged in my job and wearing a
suit was a lifestyle, representing a social, and a BETTER social class.
Retroactive I am convinced that money can be very convincing. And even I was not
really important, but having been in Commerce bank Germany a member of the team
Compensation and Benefits with the responsibility for surveys and once in charge
of the project “updating of our benefits-portfolio” – I know: bonuses can be
tremendous high - in form of cash, shares or real assets like up to a villa. I
think that we all are corruptible up to a specific, but individual point. And
this is exactly often the reason why money gets paid in these dimensions– not
for performance, but as buying out of our own families and for other people’s
interest. Often too much one of Gods children remains so inwardly empty or dies
then on an early heart attack. Is it worth?
And another side of the problem: Because we are proud to
have succeeded by ourselves we have unlearned to live a culture of solidarity.
As managers we have become lone fighters, little Rambos – and we are proud about
it; as strange as it sounds: Our individual success avoids doing what the labor
class in the 19th century demonstrated: Corporation, developing of
countervailing power and therewith the power to change the system to more
justice and labor rights. I don’t see for example, why German employees can have
6 weeks vacations the year, but in the US still people are proud not to take all
of their few vacation days - do American families don’t want to have the same
time together? I doubt it … so why not change it?
Let me end with 2 examples for Christian identity. One as
example from the past and one envisioned for the future:
The early Christian writer Tertullian (around 200) reports
how much the care of the Christians for needy fellow human beings amazed their
pagan environment. Hospitals did not exist in the Late Antiquity. At single
temples, built in honor of health gods, hospices did sometimes exist, where
wealthy people were able to get treatments from priest doctors. And on big
manors and in army camps military hospitals did exist; but their purpose were
not caretaking, but pragmatically to sustain the slaves’ ability to work or the
solders’ ability to fight. The first hospitals for everybody and especially the
poor were built in large Christian communities, such as by bishop Basilius of
Cesarea (around 350). This was the way how the early Christians made a
difference in their times and changed the world.
Today many
Christians ask where we are different to the Rotarians or our Jewish sisters and
brothers or other faith communities; more and more Christians ask their leaders
to help them developing a clear Christian profile in our world of today. So:
What would happen, if we Christians would develop a Justice logo, with which we
would price products – for example financial products, which do NOT destroy life
here and elsewhere on this planet as well as real assets. God has mandated us to
govern the world and to use our talents. So why not using market rules, why not
acting as entrepreneurs and price the Indian carpet, which is NOT made through
children work and price the Chinese T-shirt, made by a fair paid salary with a
Christian Justice Logo? Instead of going to D’Agostinos and staying in front of
the food products just counting silently how many Weight Watchers points the
product has per serving I would love to be able factoring in with the help of a
Christian Justice Logo, if the 10 Cents more would be worth for me to be sure
that the product got fair traded. Let us use our money, let us use our freedom,
let us use our faith and let us use the market to change the world for more
Justice! With a Christian Justice Logo can be also priced by the way
administrations, which have rules against corruption - or NGO’s fighting for a
better access of Developing Countries to our with protective tariffs so
protected markets. Our globalized world needs urgently a regulation framework,
in which the poor and weak can be protected. We cannot allow to get played off
against our sisters and brothers here, in Europe or in Asia. Human Rights are
universal, Gods call for more justice still remains for us– just the
circumstances have become more complex. Supranational organizations have to be
sustained, as we have to accept that we 150 families of FCC Chappaqua will not
be able to make it by ourselves. The challenges of our times demand also to open
ourselves to other churches and to corporate within the wider church – because
just cooperating together national- and international wide we will be able to
face the challenges of our days and to develop again what we obviously lost
somewhere on the road: Our Christian identity! So even Bill Clinton probably
never thought it this way, when he chose for his first campaign for presidency
his slogan – but for us Christians it is exactly the right field to show
profile: “It’s the economy, stupid!” Amen
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