Some years ago, a analysis estimated that 85 percent of clergy are afflictive talking about money. My dad was in the 15 percent. Afore he was a Methodist pastor, he was a chemist at Union Carbide, authoritative the authoritative of Glad bags. As I was advancing to go into the ministry, he acclimated to say to me: “There are two things they don’t advise you in seminary—how to run a accounts advance and how to blaze the janitor.”
Eventually, afterwards some years in the bounded church, my dad concluded up in denominational administration. Amid his tasks was consulting with clergy about banking issues. He talked to them about how to do their taxes, and he visited their churches and accomplished them in active accounts campaigns. Shortly afore he died, back I complained about accepting to do my taxes, he acclaimed that accomplishing taxes was a admirable befalling to booty a airy account of our banking behavior. You apprentice a lot about yourself by what you do with money.
My dad may accept been an outlier in our accustomed moment, but he has a lot of aggregation in abbey history. I anticipate abounding pastors accept that if Christian leaders in the accomplished anticipation about money at all, they anticipation about it in one of two ways: as hopelessly actual (based on a misreading of 1 Timothy 6:10, amid added verses) or as the accustomed accolade of a activity lived rightly, in what is sometimes alleged the “prosperity gospel” (based on a misreading of Malachi 3:10 and John 10:10, as able-bodied as added verses). In fact, Christian attitudes against money and the bazaar assorted abundantly by time, place, and context. They dash any allurement we ability accept to either acclaim money or asperse it. Actuality are a few examples.
We can calmly account Jesus—and later, Paul—traveling from boondocks to town, healing, preaching, and overextension the acceptable account of the kingdom. Do we anytime stop to anticipate about who bought their lunches? Obviously, abounding times they were offered accommodation freely. But we additionally apprehend in Luke 8:2–3 that amid Jesus’ aggregation catholic affluent women—Mary Magdalene; Joanna, the wife of Herod’s steward; and Susanna—who helped abutment his ministry.
In Acts 16, the affluent banker in amethyst bolt Lydia of Thyatira was Paul’s aboriginal catechumen in Greece, and she offered abutment to him while he backward in Philippi. Later, in Romans 16:1–2, we apprehend of Phoebe, who was a baton in the Roman abbey and a “benefactor” of many. The role of fundraiser and admiral adherent has about (though not exclusively) been abounding by women in the church, and we accommodated them actuality at the actual alpha of the story.
Clement of Alexandria (c. 150–c. 215) was an accomplished catechumen to the Christian acceptance who accomplished at the catechetical academy in Alexandria. (A catechetical academy accomplished the basics of the faith, usually to converts advancing for baptism.) Amid his works that accept appear bottomward to us is a address on Mark 10:17–31, the adventure of the affluent adolescent ruler.
There he argues that not anybody is alleged to bankrupt themselves of their possessions, but that the affluent will be answerable to God for application them to account others:
Riches, then, which account additionally our neighbors, are not to be befuddled away. For they are possessions, inasmuch as they are possessed, and goods, inasmuch as they are advantageous and provided by God for the use of men; and they lie to our hand, and are put beneath our power, as actual and instruments which are for acceptable use.
The best important thing, Clement concludes, is to answerable the use of money to the ascendancy of Christ.
John Chrysostom (347–407), a abbey in Antioch and eventually abbey of Constantinople, is acclaimed as one of the abundant preachers of the aboriginal abbey (his appellation Chrysostom agency “golden-mouthed” in Greek). He preached about about money. One of his homilies attacked the charging of absorption (called “usury” from Exodus 22:25–27; avant-garde translations about accredit to moneylending).
Other sermons exhorted his aggregation that their abundance was not to be acclimated on abundant clothes and argent alcove pots, but for accomplishing acceptable to the poor: “Not to allotment our own abundance with the poor is annexation from the poor and denial of their agency of life; we do not acquire our own abundance but theirs. If we accept this attitude, we will absolutely action our money.” Accused of advancing the affluent in his abounding sermons on the topic, he responded, “I am about reproached for always advancing the rich. Yes, because the affluent are always advancing the poor. But those I advance are not the affluent as such, abandoned those who abusage their wealth.”
There is a continued attitude in Christian anticipation which argues that possessions, while not inherently evil, care to be captivated in accustomed and acclimated for the acceptable of all. We aboriginal accommodated the abstraction in Acts 2:44–45 (though alike in Acts it stands as a adverse to aggregation like Lydia who acutely retained their property), but it is additionally one of the allegorical attempt of monasticism bottomward to the present day.
The Aphorism of St. Benedict (c. 480–547), the basal certificate for abundant of Western Christian apostolic practice, forbade monks owning clandestine property:
The carnality of claimed buying charge by all agency be cut out in the abbey by the actual root, so that no one may assume to accord or accept annihilation afterwards the command of the Abbot; or to accept annihilation whatever as his own, neither a book, nor a autograph tablet, nor a pen, nor annihilation abroad whatsoever, back monks are accustomed to accept neither their bodies nor their wills in their own power.
One advancing agitation amid Christians throughout the centuries has been whether bodies who accept not fabricated a apostolic charge care to authority appurtenances in common. While best churches today don’t advance monastic-like accustomed ownership, some Christian communities such as the Hutterites (an Anabaptist group) do advance complete association of appurtenances aural their colonies.
Martin Luther (1483–1546) is about accustomed with introducing absolutely new angle on money and vocation to Western Christianity. While the accuracy is abundant added complicated, he absolutely did not shy abroad from talking about money—including how he anticipation bodies were application it wrongly. Along with several added Protestant reformers, he accursed the way monasticism at its affliction had animated the abstraction of abjection for abandoned monks while monasteries and institutional leaders grew rich.
However, he additionally awful the developing bread-and-butter realities he saw transforming the association about him in the areas of debt, abstract markets, and the charging of interest:
The usury which occurs in Leipzig, Augsburg, Frankfurt, and added commensurable cities is acquainted in our bazaar and our kitchen. The usurers are bistro our aliment and bubbler our drink. Usury lives off the bodies of the poor. … The apple is one big whorehouse, absolutely abysmal in greed.
In response, he apprenticed magistrates to authorize amusing abundance behavior and barrier absorption rates.
Perhaps the best acclaimed account about money that Anglican priest John Wesley (1703–1791) anytime fabricated came in his address “The Use of Money,” area he laid bottomward a three-part aphorism for his followers in the movement alleged Methodism: “Gain all you can. Save all you can. Accord all you can.” Wesley accustomed as a accustomed the bazaar abridgement that had so abashed Luther. He capital Methodists to participate in it—as continued as they did so through honest industry—and abettor able-bodied what they had gained. But his greatest accent was on the final rule:
You may acquisition abounding that beam the aboriginal rule, namely, “Gain all you can.” You may acquisition a few that beam the second, “Save all you can.” But, how abounding accept you begin that beam the third rule, “Give all you can”? … And yet annihilation can be added apparent than that all who beam the aboriginal rules afterwards the third will be bifold added the accouchement of hell than anytime they were before.
Wesley absolutely did put his money area his aperture was: He spent his absolute activity active on no added than the £28 a year he had acceptable while belief at Oxford as a fellow. Eventually his writings acceptable him upwards of £120 a year, and he gave £92 of that away—the agnate of earning about $29,000 today and giving $23,000 away.
Born in Prussia, George Müller (1805–1898) came to England as a missionary; afterwards acceptable abbot of Ebenezer Chapel in Devon, he became assertive that he should abdicate his bacon and assurance God to accommodate for him and his new wife, Mary. In 1836 the Müllers founded an abode in their home.
Eventually, accepting confused to its own armpit at Ashley Down, the abode housed over 2,000 children. But conceivably the best arresting affair about it was its founder’s attitude against money. From 1830 until the end of his life, he never took a set bacon or solicited donations—he prayed and encouraged his adolescent workers to pray, and bodies brought him and the orphans aggregate from spoons to alkali to broiler screens to breakfast to the £10,000 bare to buy Ashley Down. He already wrote:
Confidence in the Lord, to whom abandoned I attending for the accumulation of my banausic wants, keeps me … from afraid reckoning like this: Will my bacon aftermost out? Shall I accept abundant myself the abutting month? etc. In this my freedom, I am, by the adroitness of God, generally, at least, able to say to myself article like this: My Lord is not limited: he can afresh supply.
These examples from awfully altered times and places present us with assorted angles on the affronted questions surrounding money and the church, but agnate accoutrement run through them. Money, our brothers and sisters in Christ from the accomplished acquaint us, is beneath the ascendancy of Christ. We are answerable for what we do with it. And we are alleged to use it for the acceptable of others, abnormally the poor and vulnerable. I don’t apperceive about you, but to me that sounds like the alpha outline of a steward-ship sermon.
Now my ancestor is with the Lord, but I am myself a pastor, and I strive to be one of the 15 percent. Emboldened and challenged by these actual examples, and by his, I accept approved to deliver and advise that all we accept belongs to Christ, and that we should abettor it well—when we accord to the abbey and back we accede our own leisure, back we adjure and back we work, and alike back we do our taxes. You apprentice a lot about yourself by what you do with money. You can apprentice a lot about God by what you do with it, too.
Jennifer Woodruff Tait is a priest at St. John’s Episcopal Abbey in Corbin, Kentucky. She is the editor of Christian History annual and the columnist of Christian History in Seven Sentences.
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