Kindly Note:
This presentation is solely intended to be general
information that might be beneficial to
stewards of all types. Please do not consider it
to be counsel that you should act upon without
researching in-depth and/or consulting your
various financial, legal or spiritual advisors.
“Affinity marketers,” particularly in the
religious communities, have too often hurt our
faith and investors. We hope to help change
that. But be prudent. While “the workman is
worthy of his wages,” be particularly careful if
you sense the presenter is more interested in
your business than the ethic of the Abrahamic
5
Dr. David Miller, former investment
banker,
author of God at Work and current
Director
of the Princeton University Faith & Work
Initiative reviewed this seminar and
wrote:
“Remember the old brokerage firm ad, ‘When
E.F. Hutton talks, people listen’? Today’s
version should be, ‘When Gary Moore talks,
concerned Americans should listen.’ Moore’s
insights into financial planning with ethical and
spiritual integrity should be mandatory study in
6
“With gratitude to The Financial Seminary,
the Interfaith Center for Corporate
Responsibility has used the material
presented in a wide variety of member
programs and welcomes the opportunity to
at long last have the entire presentation to
share with their members and friends in
congregations throughout the United
States.”
Laura Berry
Executive Director
ICCR
7
This is an advanced seminar that seeks to
prompt a deeper, more enriching way of
thinking and seeing our world, and then
acting upon that perspective, which is
largely what religion is when it comes to
economics. So we suggest you simply relax
and listen to your presenter, take the
handouts home to study, and perhaps go
online to www.financialseminary.org to
review the presentation, including the
presenter’s comments.
8
Financial Fusion:
Re-Integrating Faith & Wealth Management
Copyright @ Financial Seminary 2010
9
This seminar was created by Gary
Moore.
He has a degree in political science
and was
a senior vice president of investments
with
a major Wall Street investment firm
during the late ’80’s before founding
The
Financial Seminary. He has served
on the boards of the John Templeton Foundation,
Opportunity International, The Crystal Cathedral,
Messiah College and Empower America, as well as his
local YMCA, Samaritan Ministries and church. He has
10
been a commentator for UPI. You will immediately
Yet, despite the claims of “prosperity theology” and “name
it and claim it religion,” nothing Gary has learned the
past twenty-five years has challenged the old wisdom
regarding wealth and the eye of the needle. John Wesley,
the founder of Methodism, taught that the thrift and
work ethic of the Puritan approach to Christianity
would inevitably enrich a nation; but that wealth would
likely destroy the morality that created it. The recent
experiences of our nation should make us wonder if
Wesley might have had a point. So it is Gary’s hope that
this seminar might simply help a few dedicated souls to
make a most difficult journey, one that Christ said is
“impossible for man but possible with God.”
11
Gary grew up in a devout but poor
home.
As he grew older and prospered, he
increasingly experienced the
tensions
between faith and wealth. He also
saw
how that was affecting him and his
friends, both mentally and
spiritually. He thought of attending seminary but
discovered they didn’t deal with these issues any
longer. He also found the church to be of little
12
13
14
“Religious views are important to
whatever anyone does--investing,
writing articles, anything. How you see
yourself in relation to others and your
Creator, why, it’s the most important
thing that there is because you think
most clearly only if you’re at peace
with yourself and your Creator.”
Sir John Templeton
15
“This extraordinary man believes that
successful investing is a product of a
person’s overall relationship to life, to the
universe. Unlike most of us, Templeton is at
peace with himself. He has sorted things
out. He believes that God created and is
creating the universe. This gives Templeton
extra mental energy to make and stand by
his decisions.”
Forbes
16
“The individual needs the return to spiritual
virtues, for he can survive in the present
human situation by reaffirming that man is
not just a biological and psychological being
but also a spiritual being, that is creature,
and existing for the purposes of his Creator
and subject to him.”
Peter Drucker
Landmarks of
Tomorrow
17
“Peter Drucker’s ability to prophesy-almost always correctly--was
uncanny.”
Steve Forbes
The Wall Street
Journal
18
Q#1: Do other thoughtful people and history
agree we should, even could, go back to the
future?
19
A#1: Definitely!
“One cannot understand current
political or ethical trends, or properly
forecast future economic
developments, without understanding
the cycles in religious feelings in
American history.”
Robert Fogel, Ph.D.
Nobel Laureate in Economics
& Religious Skeptic
20
“Rather than denigrating Christianity and
religion in general, socially conscious elites
ought to be asking what the religious impulse
can teach us.”
Robert L. Bartley
Editor Emeritus
The Wall Street Journal
21
“If we do not manage our affairs both spiritually
and socially in a responsible manner, we will
inevitably come to regret it later.”
The Dalai Lama
22
“I wish that on every bedside table, next to
the Bible, there was an article explaining
the nature of investing, because people
are still either too confused, intimidated
or busy to know what to do.”
Peter Lynch
Former Manager
Fidelity Magellan Fund
23
24
“It is embarrassing to live in the most comfortable
time in the history of man and not be happy.
Auden called his era the age of anxiety. I think
what was at the heart of the dread in those days,
just a few years into modern times, was that we
could tell we were beginning to lose God. And it
is a terrible thing when people lose God. Life is
difficult and people are afraid, and to be without
God is to lose man’s great source of consolation
and coherence. I don’t think it is unconnected to
the boomers’ predicament that as a country we
were losing God just as they were being born.”
Peggy Noonan
Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of
Happiness
25
“The people who created this country built a moral
structure around money. The Puritan legacy
inhibited luxury and self-indulgence. For
centuries, it remained industrious, ambitious and
frugal. Over the past thirty years, much of that
has been shredded… The country’s moral
guardians are forever looking out for decadence
out of Hollywood and reality TV. But the most
rampant decadence today is financial decadence,
the trampling of decent norms about how to use
and harness money.”
by
ohn B
Introduction to Enough
By John Bogle
Founder, The Vanguard26
27
“The idea that economic crises, like the
current financial and housing crisis, are
mainly caused by changing thought
patterns goes against standard economic
thinking. But the current crisis bears
witness to the role of such changes in
thinking. It was caused precisely by our
changing confidence, temptations, envy,
resentment, and illusions—and especially
by changing stories about the nature of the
economy.”
Animal Spirits
28
The Credit Crisis & Great Recession
“The word credit derives from the Latin
credo, meaning ‘I believe.’”
Animal Spirits
By Ackerloff & Schiller
29
A#2: And history suggests we can!
“The business cycle is a psychological
phenomenon. Only when the memory of hard
times has dimmed can confidence fully
establish itself; only when confidence has led to
outrageous excess can it be checked. It was as
difficult for Mr. Hoover to stop the
psychological pendulum on the downswing as it
had been for the Reserve Board to stop it on
the upswing.”
Fredrick Lewis Allen
Editor of Harper’s Magazine
Explaining the Great
Depression
30
“The 1929 breakdown was at its roots, a
moral breakdown. We were not living right.
We had become extravagant. We had become
intoxicated by the alluring notion that the
royal road to riches did not lie through sweat
but speculation. We discarded and scorned
old-fashioned
B.C.virtues.”
Forbes
Founder, Forbes
Magazine
31
“The sins of Big Business and High Finance
were responsible for the over-whelming
voting of the New Deal into power.
Therefore, any and every act calculated to
bring business into disrepute is infinitely
regrettable.”
Forbes Magazine
July 1, 1944
32
“In the latest USA TODAY/Gallup Poll, Americans
are fed up with Washington and convinced by
more than 3 to 1 that the nation is heading in the
wrong direction.”
USA Today
February 16, 2010
33
Miserable
+13%
Source: The Economist
34
“The wealth of a nation is not to be found by
asking a statistically significant, random
sample of people to have a stab at it. What
people think, still less what they say, is not a
good guide to the way the world is. People
don’t know.”
The Economist
35
Angry
36
Source: The Economist
37
WSJ, September 15, 2010
38
“The problem with the tax debate is not that
Democrats and Republicans disagree, but
that they mostly agree. Democrats think
98% of Americans should not pay higher
taxes; the Republicans say 100% should not.
Taxes this year will come to less than 15% of
GDP, the lowest share since 1950… Raising
taxes on the rich would lift the ratio to only
20%. That is nowhere near enough to pay for
federal spending, estimated at 24% of GDP
in 2020.”
The Economist
39
Source: Perotcharts.com
40
And
Depressed
41
42
“It’s very interesting to me that the
spread of communications has
increased the misery of people…we’re
flooded with bad news. And this bad
news is making people depressed at a
time when prosperity is at its greatest
ever.”
Sir John M.
Templeton
43
“There has always been something in
human nature which makes you buy a
newspaper which has the most horrible
headline. Therefore, to be successful in
the publishing or television business, you
have to feed the public these catastrophes
or the negative viewpoint. Therefore the
public is brainwashed.”
Sir John Templeton
44
“The agenda of the world-the issues and items
that fill our newspapers and newscasts-is an
agenda of fear and power. A huge network
of anxious questions surrounds us and
begins to guide many, if not most, of our
daily decisions. Clearly those who pose these
questions which bind us have true power
over us. Jesus seldom accepted the questions
posed to him. He exposed them as coming
from the house of fear. They did not belong
in the house of God.”
Henri Nouwen
45
“Politicians earn much of their living by
exploiting anxieties, encouraging
people to feel worse than they should
about the state of their country.”
The Economist
46
“The whole aim of practical politics is to
keep the populace alarmed—and hence
clamorous to be led to safety—by
menacing it with an endless series of
hobgloblins, all of them imaginary.”
H.L. Mencken
47
“Few men have virtue to withstand the
highest bidder.”
George Washington
48
Proving some things are indeed eternal,
a prominent politician has said:
“Our government in Washington now is a horrible
bureaucratic mess. It is disorganized, wasteful, has no
purpose, and its policies—when they exist—are
incomprehensible or devised by special interest groups
with little or no regard for the welfare of the average
American citizen. The American people believe that we
ought to control our government. On the other hand,
we’ve seen our government controlling us.”
Governor Jimmy Carter
1976, Dow Jones Apx 800
49
“No matter how serene today may be, tomorrow is
always uncertain. Don’t let that reality spook you.
Throughout my lifetime, politicians and pundits
have constantly moaned about terrifying problems
facing America. Yet our citizens now live an
astonishing six times better than when I was born.
The prophets of doom have overlooked the allimportant factor that is certain: Human potential is
far from exhausted and the American system for
unleashing that potential remains alive and
effective.”
Warren Buffett
50
Letter to shareholders
“The deficit is not a meaningless figure, only a
grossly overrated one…Our politicians have
conjured the deficit into a bogeyman with
which to scare themselves. In symbolizing
the bankruptcy of our political process, the
deficit has become a great national myth
with enormous power. But behind the
political symbol, we need to understand the
economic reality, or lack of it. In the
advanced economic literature, the big
debate is whether deficits matter at all.”
Robert Bartley
Editor
The Wall Street Journal
Seven Fat Years, 1992 51
52
53
“When Americans look at their economy
these days, they are horrified by what
they see, or think they see. Economic
paranoia has become an American
habit. America worries as it prospers.”
The Economist
Sam, Sam, The Paranoid
Man
54
Extraordinary Popular Delusions
&
The Madness of Crowds
“‘This time is different’ are the four most
expensive words in the English language.”
Sir John M. Templeton
55
Counting
Our
Assets, Or
Blessings,
For A
Change
www.whitehouse.gov/omb/2010budge
56
A
B
C
D
57
America’s Wealth
$125.5 Trillion Gross (A)
-7.2 Trillion Owed
(B)
=$118.3 Trillion Net (C)
Source: OMB, White House
58
“The size of the net foreign debt is relatively
small compared with the total stock of U.S.
assets (D). In 2007, it amounted to 7% of
total assets including education and R&D
capital.”
Office of Management & Budget
The Bush White House
Budget of the U.S. Government
Fiscal Year 2009
59
America’s Federal Debt to Assets
12.00%
10.00%
8.00%
6.00%
4.00%
2.00%
0.00%
1960
1970
1980
1990
2000
2007
Source: OMB in Bush White
60
61
“Every dollar of US international
indebtedness is matched by a dollar of
assets abroad.”
Professor Jeremy Siegel
The Financial Times
October 6, 2009
62
College
Degrees
Source: The Economist63
Innovation
Source: The
64
“Thanks to the liberating forces of globalization and
Googlisation, innovation is no longer the preserve of
technocratic elites in ivory towers. It is increasingly
an open, networked and democratic endeavor. If man
really can find a way of harnessing the innovative
capacity of 9 billion bright sparks, then the audacious
prediction about feeding the much hungrier world of
2110 using less land than today may very well be
proven right. After all, man’s greatest asset is his
ability to harness that one natural resource that
remains infinite in quantity: human ingenuity.”
The Economist
May 15, 2010
65
“If the U.S. economy’s long-term economic
growth rate increased to 3.5% from the 3%
rate that has prevailed since 1970, we’d be
able to cover all the spending promises
we’ve made to ourselves without raising any
additional funds through higher taxes or
increased borrowing.”
Claremont Review of Books
“Paul Ryan’s Roadmap”
Summer 2010
66
Yes, the
“Great
Recession”
hurt, but…
Source: Federal
67
$1 Billion in Stacked $100
Bills
68
$1 Trillion in Double Stacked
$100 Bills
69
“The national debt peaked at 128
percent
of GNP in 1946.”
U.S. Department of Commerce
70
71
NATO
Defense
Spending
Source: The Economist
72
The Economist
March 17, 2001
73
Conclusion?
“The welfare of a nation can scarcely be
inferred from a measurement
of national income.”
Simon Kuznets
Creator of the GDP in
1932
74
“The biggest threat to America right now is
not government spending, huge deficits,
foreign ownership of our debt, world
terrorism, two wars, potential epidemics or
nuts with nukes. The biggest long-term
threat is that people are becoming and have
become disheartened, that this condition is
reaching critical mass.”
Peggy Noonan
The Wall Street
Journal
November 1, 200975
“The economy isn’t the only reason for our
unease. There’s more to it. People sense
something slipping away, a world receding,
not only an economic one but a world of old
structures, old ways and assumptions. The
moment we are living now is a strange one,
a disquieting one, a time that seems full of
endings. Too bad there’s no pill for that.”
Peggy Noonan
Wall Street
Journal
March 14, 2009
76
Part Two:
Religious Challenges to Our WellBeing
77
So, if religion is so enriching and most Americans still go to
church, how could religion have played a role in the Great
Recession?
78
A # 1: Cultural Religion is More Socially
Harmful Than No Religion!
79
“Economics is more than a matter of
interest rates and deficits. Morality is
more than a matter of stained glass and
hymns. Economic success is built on
moral foundations. An economy reflects
the moral image of its people.”
Jack Kemp
80
“I think that what happened in the nineteenth
century was that religious leadership in all
religions simply abandoned the field of
economic morality to the secular world.
Religion thus became irrelevant to many
people. We helped create a split personality
among the business leaders. They could be
pious men, they could go to church or to
synagogue or to the mosque, but religion made
no demands on them in the marketplace. This
separation of personality, I think, is a major
tragedy for religion and for the businessman.”
Rabbi Dr. Meir Tamari
81
“Discipline begets abundance, and
abundance, unless we take the utmost care,
destroys discipline; and discipline in the fall
pulls down abundance.”
The Monastic Cycle
82
“When the Protestant Reformation did away
with monasticism, rejecting what it took to
be an attempt to gain heaven by works, it
also did away with what had long been
monasticism’s reminder to the entire
church of the need for obedience in
economic matters.”
Professor Justo
Gonzalez
Faith & Wealth
83
“The Protestant Reformation released the
great surge of individualism that created
the modern West, including what we now
call capitalism and democracy. But for the
first two centuries, this new dynamo
operated inside a still generally accepted
body of Christian discipline. Then, in the
eighteenth century, this sort of discipline
began to break down. Humankind was selfsufficient.”
The Economist
84
“If, after diligent work, his efforts fail, he who
has borrowed money should and may say to
him from whom he has borrowed it: This
year I owe you nothing…If you want to
have a share in winning, you must also have
a share in losing. The money lenders who do
not want to put up with these terms are as
pious as robbers and murderers.”
Martin Luther
85
“Do we need any admonition to earn all we can?
Close reading of Wesley, however, quickly shows
that he was not giving theological rationale for an
aggressive acquisitiveness that characterizes
much of American society. His sermon is actually
a polemic against destructive ways of earning.
How income is earned is as integral to Christian
stewardship as what is done with the earnings.
Wesley warns against earning money by hurting
oneself or others or God’s creation.”
Bishop Ken Carder
A Wesleyan Perspective on
Christian Stewardship 86
“For Christians, lending money at interest
was a sin. Usurers, people who lent money
at interest, had been excommunicated by
the Third Lateran Council in 1179. Even
arguing that usury is not a sin had been
condemned as heresy by the Council of
Vienna in 1311-12. Christian usurers had to
make restitution to the Church before they
could be buried on hallowed ground.”
Professor Niall
Ferguson
87
“There is one bit of advice to us by the ancient
heathen Greeks, and by the Jews of the Old
Testament and by the great Christian teachers of
the Middle Ages, which the modern economic
system has completely disobeyed. All these
people told us not to lend money at interest; and
lending at interest—what we call investment—is
the basis of our whole system…It does not
necessarily follow that we are wrong. That is
where we need the Christian economist. But I
should not have been honest if I had not told you
that three great civilizations had agreed in
condemning the very thing on which we have
based our whole life.”
88
“In 1639, the elders of the First Church of
Boston brought charges against a Puritan
merchant named Robert Keayne for
dishonoring the name of God. Soon after, he
was tried and found guilty by the
Commonwealth as well. Writing his memoirs
some sixteen years later, he was still stung by
the disgrace of the event. His sin was greed.
He had sold his wares at a six percent profit,
two percent above the maximum allowed.”
Robert Wuthnow
God and Mammon In America
89
“For at least another hundred years we
must pretend to ourselves and to
everyone that fair is foul and foul is
fair; for foul is useful and fair is not.
Avarice and usury and precaution
must be our gods for a little while
longer still.”
John Maynard
Keynes
90
“The way stewardship is practiced in North
America often has little to do with the Bible. It
stems primarily from the most influential
American theologian, Andrew Carnegie. The
Christian religion, Carnegie maintained,
become pertinent only after production has
run its course, money has been made and
money has been reinvested. In other words,
Carnegie said that Christian faith has to do
with charity, and charity does not extend to the
questions of economics.”
Professor Doug Meeks
God The Economist
91
“The problem of dualism and
compartmentalization: This horrible heresy
divides reality into the distinct categories of the
spiritual verses the physical, the sacred verses the
secular, and the eternal verses the temporal.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer called this split view of
reality the most ‘colossal obstacle’ to genuine
faith. This mega-problem of dualism is the chief
cause for the reduced, powerless versions of
Christianity that are commonplace in far too
many Christian communities today.”
David K. Naugle, Ph.D.
92
“Idealism is a principle and tradition in
metaphysics that maintains that something
‘ideal’ or nonphysical is the primary
reality…Idealism underplays the
importance of history and historical forces
and ignores the way culture is lived and
experienced. Further, idealism ignores the
way culture is generated, coordinated, and
organized.”
James Davison Hunter
To Change The World
93
94
“Wealth and enterprise have so woven
themselves around the message of Jesus that
popular models of Christianity appear as
nothing more than self and greed at the center,
with strands of Christian thought at the
periphery.”
Ravi Zacharias
Jesus Among Other Gods
95
“I believe in God, family and
McDonalds. And in the office, that
order is reversed…If any of my
competitors were drowning, I’d stick a
hose in their mouth and turn on the
water. It is ridiculous to call this an
industry. This is not. This is rat eat rat,
dog eat dog. I’ll kill ’em, and I’m going
to kill ’em before they kill me. You’re
talking about the American way--the
survival of the fittest.”
Ray Kroc
Founder of
McDonalds
96
“This framework of separated areas of
life is deeply embedded in the Christian
Church, in its theology and in the daily
life of its people. On Sunday morning
or during our devotional or prayer life,
we operate in the spiritual realm. The
rest of the week, and in our professional
lives, we operate in the physical realm
and, hence, unwittingly act like
functional Bryant
atheists.”
Myers,
Ph.D.
WorldVision
97
“Fewer than one out of every ten born again
Christians possesses a biblical worldview
that impacts his/her decisions and
behaviors…The problem with Christianity in
America is not the content of the faith, but
the failure of its adherents to integrate the
principles of the faith into their lifestyles.”
Sociologist George
Barna
98
This Is A Post-Modern Brain On
Compartmentalization
Economics
Politics
Personal
Finances
Religion
“Many leaders, I’m afraid, place their religious
and moral convictions in separate
compartments and do not think of the
implications of their faith on their
responsibilities.”
Billy Graham
99
“It is possible to envision a time when
evangelicals have the ‘consistent Christian
perspective tools’ they require in this area of life.
But it is probably best to expect Christian
theology for life under modern high-tech
capitalism to come mainly from where it now
does--from Jewish, Catholic, Reformed, and
Lutheran sources, in which traditions exist for
relating doctrines of creation to matters of
redemption in a modern economic context.”
Professor John R. Schneider
Calvin College
100
“In his recent book, The Great Giveaway,
David Fitch addresses the knee-jerk way in
which evangelicals admire and copy
churches and ministries that garner large
followings. He speaks of evangelicalism’s
‘culture of numbers’ and show how it often
owes more to free-market capitalism’s
concern for efficient production than it
does to the gospel.”
Christianity
Today
101
“[Americans are gravitating toward] a religion
that is easygoing and experiential rather than
rigorous and intellectual…We must fight the
temptation to treat our faith the way we treat
our careers--as a source of entertainment,
fulfillment, and happiness. Remember the
warning of C.S. Lewis: If you’re seeking
happiness, don’t choose Christianity, choose
port wine.”
Chuck Colson
102
“Nearly two billion people unblushingly call
themselves Christian, happily breaking
almost every commandment should the
occasion arise, serving Mammon and
goodness knows who else.”
An Obituary For Jesus
The Economist
Easter 1999
103
“The area known as economics was never
isolated by itself in Islamic society. It was
always combined with ethics. That is why the
very acceptance of economics as an
independent domain, not to speak of as the
dominating factor in life according to the
prevailing paradigms of the modern world, is
devastating to the Islamic view of human life.”
Professor Seyyed Nasr
The Heart of Islam
104
“Despite, or maybe because of the world’s
economic travails, Islamic finance has continued
to stride ahead, as investors seek alternatives to
products that have let them down in the past.
Assets in Islamic finance rose to $822 billion last
year, an increase of 29 per cent compared to 2008
…Might the inherently prudent principles of
Islamic finance have prevented lending to people
who were likely to default, for instance?
According to sharia law, the selling of loans is not
permitted, nor is interest-bearing debt more
generally—all factors that contributed to the
crisis.”
The Financial Times
105
“(Unless Christian economists at major
universities) keep their economics and their
religion in separate compartments, they are
likely to be denied tenure. It is acceptable to
be Marxist, feminist, environmentalist,
progressive, or other quasi-religious brand of
economist, but not a Judeo-Christian
economist.”
Robert Nelson, Ph.D.
Forbes
106
107
Somewhere in the seventies, or the sixties, we started
expecting to be happy. I think we have lost the old
knowledge that happiness is over-rated—that in a way
life itself is overrated. We are the first generations of
man that actually expected to find happiness here on
earth, and our search has caused such unhappiness. The
reason: if you do not believe in another, higher world, if
you believe only in the flat material world around you, if
you believe that this is your only chance at happiness--if
that is what you believe, then you are more than
disappointed when the world does not give you a good
measure of its riches, you are in despair.”
Peggy Noonan
Life, Liberty and the Pursuit108of
“My advice to a school of business management is
to teach the business manager to give unlimited
love and he or she will be more successful."
Sir John M. Templeton
“Education which stops with efficiency may prove
the greatest menace to society. The most dangerous
criminal may be the man gifted with reason, but
with no morals.”
Martin Luther King
109
“Wall Street says: split yourself off from your
values and invest strictly for profit. We say:
invest with as much integrity as possible. An
uncomfortable state of dissonance occurs when
our actions are out of alignment with our
hearts. It is possible to live with such
inconsistencies only by putting on blinders--by
maintaining that an investor has no
responsibility for the actions of the companies
in which his or her money is invested. But such
conflicts are real, and no amount of denial can
make them disappear.”
Investing With Your Values
110
111
“The investor likes to think of himself as a
force for honesty and transparency, but he
has proved in recent years that he prefers a
lucrative lie to an expensive truth. And he’s
very good at letting corporate management
know it. Investors, in their shortsightedness,
encourage companies to neglect their social
responsibilities.”
Michael Lewis
The Irresponsible
Investor
New York Times
112
March
2009
113
“Those who buy counterfeit designer goods
project a fashionable image at a fraction of
the price of the real thing. You might think
that would make them feel rather smug
about themselves. But an intriguing piece of
research published in Psychological Science
suggests the opposite: wearing fake goods
makes you feel a fake yourself, and causes
you to be more dishonest in other matters
than you would otherwise be.”
The Economist
June 26, 2010
114
“Religion is not some kind of psychic
exercise that occasionally offers a
transcendent experience. It either
shapes one’s life—all of one’s life—or
it vanishes, leaving behind anxious,
empty souls that no psychotherapy can
reach.”
Irving Kristol
The Wall Street
Journal
115
“It is a curious fact that as we leave the most
primitive peoples of the world, we find the
economic insecurity of the individual many times
multiplied. The solitary Eskimo, Bushman,
Indonesian, or Nigerian peasant, left to his or her
own devices, will survive a considerable time.
Living close to the soil or to his or her animal
prey, such an individual can sustain his ownmore rarely, her own- life. But when we turn to
the New Yorker or the Chicagoan, we are struck
by exactly the opposite situation, by a prevailing
ease of material life coupled with an extreme
dependence on others.”
Robert Heilbroner
116
“Feeling down, anxious? Your problem may be
that fat bank account. New research says the
hell-bent pursuit of money can be hazardous to
your mental health. It debunks the popular
belief that having a goal, any goal, is
psychologically beneficial. People who value
extrinsic goals are more prone to behavioral
problems and physical ailments...The gold
diggers interviewed scored far lower on
measures of vitality and self actualization...There’s no drawback in having
money. You just need to remember
the
Forbes
things that truly provide meaning in life.”
117
“The church’s often-dismissive response to
the layperson’s optimistic desire to
integrate faith and career cannot be
justified. In fact, this attitude may be the
largest act of self-marginalization
mainstream churches have ever engaged
in.”
Professor Laura Nash
Harvard University
118
Sweating The Small Stuff…
“Many people think the
church
asks too much of its
members.
In reality, it asks too little…
Frankly, many churches
have
dumbed down church until
it
has no meaning at all. We
are
afraid to ask men for a
great
119
“While many Americans are no doubt
‘overspent,’ the possibility of most people
drowning in credit card debt as an
explanation for lack of generous religious
and charitable financial giving lacks
empirical support…One commonly cited
statistic in the media is that the average
American owes more than $8,000 in credit
card debt. Numbers like that are inflated
by a relatively small number of people in
huge debt. The median balance was
$2,200.* That itself represents only three
percent of all debts held by Americans.”
*Federal Reserve Board’s
Survey
120
“The steady drop in donations, volunteering, and
personal involvement is a direct result of a spiritual
crisis -- a crisis caused in large part by the clergy’s
failure to address the vital relationships between
faith and money… the solution is not simply to talk
more about the financial needs of the church -- 30
percent said they would actually give less money if
churches talked more about finances than they do
now. The answer is to talk about the broader
relationships between faith, work, money, giving,
the poor, and economic
justice.”
Robert Wuthnow
The Crisis In The
Churches: Spiritual
Malaise, Fiscal Woe
121
Part Three:
Atheistic Challenges to Our WellBeing
122
America’s New Secular, Economic
Religion
“We will give people a faith--a positive, clear
and consistent system of belief.”
123
124
“Ayn Rand--the heroine of America’s libertarian
right--described her philosophy as ‘the concept
of man as a noble being, with his own happiness
as the moral purpose of his life, with productive
achievement as his noblest activity, and reason
as his only absolute.’ The Reagan presidency
provided opportunities for a few objectivists to
try their hand at their most hated institution:
government. The most celebrated Randist even
survived the passing of the Reagan years. Alan
Greenspan was an acolyte of Rand’s in the
1960’s.”
The Economist
January 1994
125