Month: January 2011

Here’s the gist of Saving Time – the Economic Consequences of Hurry

Bad theology comes from the bad conscience of one generation in the West which has determined to separate itself from its own sources in its inherited culture, and to grasp the present so that no unknown or new thing may ever interrupt it. This bad theology generates the agendas which control an increasing proportion of our national economic product. The fear that as individuals we cannot cope with the responsibility for our own public action and economic relationships, and contrive agendas that delegate this responsibility onto the state institutions from which a large proportion of the population receives their identity and income. This secularist theology can load new burdens on the economy, and it can pay for them for a while by asset-stripping that culture, but it cannot support an open public square or healthy economy for its has no resources of its own.
Good, Christian, theology creates a culture in which we are open to other people and to new encounters with what we cannot control or know in advance, in which we concede our own transience, identify ourselves with those who will come after us and we get on with making the investments that will give them the same hope of prosperity we had.
A healthy economy is embedded within and driven by a healthy culture with a healthy public square. A society is healthy when the current generation acknowledges its obligations to its own progenitors and its duty to its successors and so recognises its place in the transmission of life and does not attempt to out-live its welcome.
Christianity creates secularity (wide tolerance) and cultural confidence. Left to itself, secularity tends to become ideological secularism (tolerance narrowing towards conformity and centralisation). Secularity remains secular only when the public square can receive the contribution of Christianity

The full version is at Scribd and there is more at the Saint Augustine Institute

Next Economy Working Group Events

March 10th Edward Hadas Re-Setting Money
May 5th
June 6th Paul Mills Give Gold a Chance? ? What the Bible really says about money and debt

‘Economy’ means management and nothing more; and it is generally applied to the affairs of a house and family, which affairs are an object of the greatest importance, whether as relating to individuals or to a nation. A nation is made powerful and to be honoured in the world not so much by the number of its people as by the ability and characteristics of that people; and the ability and character of a people depend, in great measure, upon the economy of the several families, which, all taken together, make up the nation.
The man who by his own and his family?s labour, can provide a sufficiency of food and raiment, and a comfortable dwelling-place, is not a poor man?.
But it is necessary to the very existence of a people, that nine out of ten should live wholly by the sweat of their brow; and is it not degrading to human nature, that all nine-tenths should be called ‘poor’; and what is worse, call themselves poor and be contented in that degraded state? The laws, the economy or management, of a state may be such as to render it impossible for the labourer, however skilful and industrious, to maintain his family in health and decency; and such has, for many years past, been the management of the affairs of this once truly great and happy land.

William Cobbett Cottage Economy