Charity: The place of the poor in the biblical
tradition
Gary A. Anderson
Yale University Press £20
(978-0-300-18133-3)
Church Times Bookshop £18 (Use code CT508
)
Manifesto of the Poor: Solutions come from
below
Francisco Van der Hoff Boersma
Permanent Publications £5.95
(978-1-85623-170-1)
Church Times Bookshop £5.35 (Use code
CT508 )
The Poverty of Capitalism: Economic meltdown and the
struggle for what comes next
John Hilary
Pluto Press £14.99
(978-0-7453-3330-4)
Church Times Bookshop £13.49 (Use code
CT508 )
Why Fight Poverty?
Julia Unwin
London Publishing Partnership £7.99
(978-1-907994-16-6)
TOO little has been learned from the financial crisis of 2008;
what is encouraging is the far greater attention being given by
churches and theologians to the subject of economic justice than in
the past; and the subject is being addressed at many different
levels. This selection offers a sample of the range of the
publications that are now available: biblical scholarship,
campaigning, political theology, social analysis.
Julia Unwin, chief executive of the Rowntree Foundation, asks
"Why Fight Poverty?" not as a rhetorical question with an obvious
answer, but out of the energy and commitment that the struggle to
end poverty has required over generations, and the consequent
questions whether it is worth it, and whether there is any sign of
success in the offing. She argues cogently that the need to end
poverty is urgent, because poverty is dangerous and wasteful, and -
perhaps above all - because we have the means to end it.
With clear diagrams to illustrate her evidence, Unwin shows how
much poverty there is, and how the economic realities of the
post-2008 years, as well as the welfare policies pursued, have made
things harder for those in poverty. She disposes of the comforting
thought that, in absolute terms, poverty is not as severe as it
used to be, or as it is in some parts of the world. In her second
chapter, she attacks the notion that poverty is both inevitable
and, in that sense, not a priority concern, because there will
always be some who do badly in a competitive world. That does not
alter the fact, she argues, that it is damaging and wasteful.
Particularly important is her chapter on public attitudes to
poverty and why they are an obstacle to change: her survey of
attitudes and how they are formed is especially valuable, something
those seeking change need to take seriously into account. Her next
chapter, "Is Poverty Inevitable?", is a vital part of that
discussion: there is a great deal of officially sponsored despair
about the possibility of change. Unwin's concluding changer is a
call to fight poverty because we can fight it and win. What the
book as a whole shows is just how much astuteness that struggle
will require. It is a really helpful resource for those who seek to
be as astute as they need to be.
For those seeking testimony that a fairer world is achievable,
and that the solutions to poverty and injustice are there,
available "from below", Francisco Van Der Hoff Boersma, co-founder
of Fairtrade certification, presents his manifesto. He has been
there - in South Mexico - lived the life and served poor farmers,
trusting their instincts, and working with them to produce modes of
production and trade which are a powerful critique of the single
model offered by a liberal, globalising economy. That model may
claim all kinds of achievements, including individual liberty and
technological progress. "However, there is one major problem that
it has not resolved: the poor distribution of the fruits of these
efforts, and the goods and wealth derived from them": that is the
"permanent crisis".
Before the reader assumes that means that this "manifesto" is
another example of concern with distribution to the neglect of
production, this is an account of concrete actions to enable people
to produce enough. The lesson of the Fairtrade movement is that
fair distribution is a condition of technological progress in the
long term: "I am not against globalisation; I would like to
globalise Fairtrade."
Behind this inspiring manifesto is a real economy and the
insights gained "from below". Here is another Francis demanding not
just that we do not forget the poor, but that we seek solutions
with them, because it is with them that the solutions lie.
And so to John Hilary's argument that the poverty we really need
to address is the poverty of capitalism itself. His book is an
analysis of the 2008 crisis, and like Van Der Hoff Boersma, Hilary
also believes that we are in a permanent crisis: the crisis is
capitalism itself. In a well-researched and documented work, he
takes the reader through the growing inequalities of wealth and
income distribution, and the way in which any claim that corporate
social responsibility - the voluntary activities whereby companies
seek to integrate environmental and ethical initiatives into their
business activities - can ever be anything other than an alibi for
a capitalism that will continue to deplete the planet's resources
and further impoverish the already poor.
This book derives its power from its three example chapters: on
the extractive, garment, and food industries respectively. The
Marikana mine conflict is probably the most vivid illustration of
the lengths to which some extractive companies will go, at the cost
of communities' livelihoods and individuals' lives, to achieve
their profits; but it is vivid because it reveals the way in which
the extractive industries have such a destructive effect on the
communities and localities in which they operate.
Hilary's account of the global garments industry - what our
well- known brands mean to the lives of those who actually make
their garments - should be compulsory reading for any who believe
that the organised exploitation of labour by capital is something
from a previous age.
It is an excellent strategy on Hilary's part to concentrate on
industries that exist to meet our most basic needs - energy,
clothing, and food. And the last of these again illustrates how the
processes of capitalist globalisation dominate both producers and
consumers. The relations between supermarkets and farmers are just
a small part of that: globally, the possibility of finding ways to
feed our population depends on evolving a system of ownership which
enables democratic sovereignty over the essential needs of
humankind.
Among the resources we most need and are most likely to neglect
are our sense of history, and, in particular, the wisdom at the
heart of our faith. Gary Anderson's Charity presents an
account of our relations with the poor which is rooted in scripture
and its earliest interpreters. The idea that charity towards the
poor amounts to nothing less than lending to God comes to the
reader first as a shock; then, when Anderson shows how central that
theme is to the biblical account of the poor, we might take refuge
in some caricature that presents that thought as the belief that
the generous are rewarded in the next life.
In fact, charity is a witness to the fundamentally merciful and
compassionate structure of the world as God has made it. It will be
by the continued flourishing of humankind and the created order
that the "loan to God" represented by charity to the poor is
repaid.
Anderson's agenda, in this highly readable and erudite work, is
to lead those who, out of their formation within the Reformation
debates, too readily equate such thinking with ideas of a "store of
merit" and, indeed, "justification by works" (whether they take
"Protestant" or "Catholic" sides in those debates). We need instead
to see in that theological theme the calling to find God's mercy at
the heart of creation, and the poor in the face of Christ.
Powerful as the other three books reviewed are, there is in
Anderson's work a remarkable inspiration towards a world that has
charity at the heart of its economy, and a challenging witness to
what scripture, faithfully interpreted, can bring to our
contemporary crisis.
Dr Selby is a former Bishop of Worcester.