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10/12/2008: "Usury is a sin"

Let us make no bones about it. This financial crisis is a major spiritual crisis. It is the crisis of a society that worships at the temples of consumption, and that has isolated and often abandoned millions of consumers now trapped on a treadmill of debt. It is the crisis of a society that values the capital gains of the rentier more highly than the rights of people to a home, or an education or health. It is the crisis of a society that idolises money above love, community, wellbeing and the sustainability of our planet. And it is a crisis, in my view, for faith organisations that have effectively colluded in this idolatry, by tolerating the sin of usury.

I define usury as the exalting of money values over human and environmental values; of creating money at no cost and lending at rates of interest intended to accumulate reserves of unearned income. Of reaping that which one did not sow.

Christians began to dilute the sin of usury as far back as the 1500s. John Eck, supported by the Fugger banking family, in his book Tractates contractu quinque de centum (1515), defended 5% as an acceptable rate of interest as long as the borrower and lender mutually agreed to the loan. Martin Luther took exception to this laxity, and raged that "heathen were able, by the light of reason, to conclude that a usurer is a double-dyed thief and murderer. We Christians, however, hold them in such honour that we fairly worship them for the sake of their money ... Meanwhile, we hang the small thieves ... Little thieves are put in the stocks, great thieves go flaunting in gold and silk."

[ The Bible has been interpreted in such a way as to allow usury. Had paganism prevailed this would have been far less likely - but many Christians like this author and Martin Luther know that allowing usury amounts to giving money lenders the opportunity to acquire everything of value in the world, without earning it - the ultimate conjuring trick. ]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/oct/11/globalrecession-marketturmoil