The church and social entrepreneurship

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Innovators in Social and Political Thought: Saint Basil the Great

The Church and Social Entrepreneurship

Fr Timothy CurtisSenior Lecturer, Community Development,

The University of Northampton

Founding Director and Professor Department of Lived Theology, Social Work, and Community

Development, Saint Gregory Institute, Universidad Rural de Guatemala.

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Think Rich: How to Unleash Your “Inner Trump”

• Rich people think differently than poor people…I’m talking about earning money joyfully. Wouldn’t that be wonderful, living a life that joyfully creates wealth?... •By my definition, anyone who isn’t earning a million dollars a year joyfully is a pauper. If hearing that makes you uneasy, or even angry, I’m glad. That reaction may push you

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Strands of theory

1. Protestant Work ethic created capitalism2. Religious minorities are excluded from

mainstream employment and therefore are required to become entrepreneurs

3. Lifting controls on usury allowed capital to flourish

OR• A deeper strand of ethical capitalism exemplified

in the work and teaching of Basil the Great• Perhaps a personal theology of social entrepreneurship

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Weber- Protestant Work Ethic & Capitalism

• Lost assurance of salvation through the church

• Self-assurance as a sign of grace• Work and success a sign of grace

– No donations to church finery– No ‘dependency culture’ for poor & beggary

• Investment instead of philanthropy• Somehow, religion (or a significant

moment in religion, in a specific place) had a significant effect on the success of a capitalism

• Counterpoint to Marx’s economic rationalism

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Religious minorities & EO

• Labour market disadvantages faced by immigrant populations in many developed economies have inadvertently triggered a more aggressive pursuit of enterprise opportunities.

• Black Majority churches “There is nowhere in the Bible that says one must be poor to serve God” (Nwankwo et al 2011, p158)

• Quakers and Unitarians in Britain after c. 1700, Island Greeks (those from Chios, the Ionians, etc.), Overseas Chinese, Germans in eastern Europe from c. 1750–1939, Armenians, Parsees, and Jews throughout all of modern history (Rubinstein 2000)

• But surely this religious influence would have made ‘social entrepreneurship’ more successful?

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Usury & Investment• The First Council of Nicaea, in 325,

forbade clergy from engaging in usury (canon 17).

• Forbade the clergy to lend money on interest above 1 percent per month (12.7% APR).

• Later ecumenical councils applied this regulation to the laity

• Jews (economically oppressed) were able to lend to non-Jews

• Aquinas-in order for the investor to share in the profit he must share the risk or activity. In short he must be a joint-venturer.

• 1462, Monte di Pietà – a low interest credit union/pawn broker

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Basil of Caesarea• Saint Basil the Great, (329 or 330 –

January 1, 379)• Basil, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Gregory

of Nyssa : Cappadocian Fathers.• Large wealthy family, 4 of 9 become

saints• father of Eastern communal monasticism• personally organized a soup kitchen and

distributed food to the poor during a famine following a drought.

• gave away his personal family inheritance to benefit the poor of his diocese.

• letters show that he actively worked to reform thieves and prostitutes.

• Influenced by the zealot Eustathius of Sebaste known for his works of charity

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Context

Byzantium• Crippling taxation of the lower classes to support the military• Increased concentration of land in the hands of wealthy absentee

landlords sharpens the distinction between rich & poor, who are alienated from subsistence production

• Conversion to Christ on one hand (the contemplative life); conversion to the world on the other (the activist life)

• St Basil remained committed to the ideal of a community of shared life & resources (the voluntary poor) but was determined that this should not be confined to the monastic context, but lived in the wider society among the involuntary poor

• St Basil envisioned a new social order based on simplicity and sharing rather than competition and private ownership

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Basiliad

• In the 4th century, established an ecclesiastical centre on the plain, about one mile to the northeast of Caesarea Cappadocia, which gradually supplanted the old town.

• included a system of almshouses, an orphanage, old peoples' homes and a leprosarium, a leprosy hospital.

• A portion of Basil's new city was surrounded with strong walls and turned into a fortress by Justinian.

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“Against Those Who Lend at Interest’

• For in truth it is the height of inhumanity that those who do not have enough even for basic necessities should be compelled to seek a loan in order to survive, while others, not being satisfied with the return of the principal, should turn the misfortune of the poor to their own advantage and reap a bountiful harvest.

• If you knock at his door, the debtor is underneath the bed in a flash. His heart pounds if someone enters the room suddenly. If a dog barks, he breaks out in a sweat, seized with terror, and looks for someplace to hide.

• Human emotions rather than abstract poverty

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• ‘it is not those who are truly deprived who come to procure a loan’, but ‘rather people who devote themselves to unconstrained expenditures and useless luxuries’

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‘To the Rich’

• Thus, those who love their neighbour as themselves possess nothing more than their neighbour; yet surely, you seem to have great possessions! How else can this be, but that you have preferred your own enjoyment to the consolation of many? For the more you abound in wealth, the more you lack in love. [3]

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To the Rich

• “You gorgeously array your walls, but do not clothe your fellow human being; you adorn horses, but turn away f rom the shameful plight of your brother or sister; you allow grain to rot in your barns, but do not feed those who are starving; you hide gold in the earth, but ignore the oppressed!”

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‘I Will Tear down My Barns’

• How can I bring the sufferings of the poverty-stricken to your attention? When they look around inside their hovels, . . . [and] find only clothes and furnishings so miserable that, if all their belongings were reckoned together, they would be worth only a few cents.

• [If you scatter your wealth,] God will receive you, angels extol you, all people from the creation of the world will bless you.....

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‘In Time of Famine & Drought’

• [T]he reason why our needs are not provided for as usual is plain and obvious: we do not share what we receive with others. We praise beneficence, while we deprive the needy of it.

• ‘Tear up the unjust contract, so that sin might also be loosed. Wipe away the debt that bears high rates of interest, so that the earth may bear its usual fruits.’ [16]

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On Mercy & Justice’

• Acts of charity made from unjust gains are not acceptable to God, nor are those who refrain from injustice praiseworthy if they do not share what they have.’

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I will tear down my barns

• ‘Tell me, what is your own? What did you bring into this life? From where did you receive it?’

• ‘so that one person alone enjoys what is offered for the benefit of all in common –this is what the rich do. They seize common goods before others have the opportunity, then claim them as their own by right of preemption.’

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Basiliad

• poorhouse, hospice, and hospital, • The monks would practice the practical trades

like carpentry and blacksmithing and the money generated from those trades would be used to support the work of the Basiliad.

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John of Kronstadt 1829-1908In 1868 he conceived the idea of founding a House of Industry, comprising a number of workshops, a dormitory, a refectory, a dispensary, and a primary school.

25,000 people a year picked hemp

Unlike Evangelical Houses, did not focus on re-education of the morally defective poor

By 1895 there were 40 Houses

Wealthy donors, private membership fees, state subsidy and earned income

Adele Lindenmeyr (1996)Poverty Is Not a Vice: Charity, Society, and the State in Imperial Russia. Princeton University Press

No ‘undeserving poor’, begging was not shameful or a grave sin.

Unemployment emerges in urban poor

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New Martyr Elizabeth 1864 – 1918

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José María Arizmendiarrieta

• “Arizmendi”, whew• Capitalist society did not guarantee

human dignity • Mondragon was a social project, not a

business or economic project, to enable citizens (consciously) organise their own lives

• Not just a company, but to change the company’s behaviour and social function

Nerea Agirre, Joseba Azkarraga, Eunate Elio, Oihana García, Jon Sarasua, Ainara Udaondo. (2000) Lankidetza. Arizmendiarrietaren eraldaketa proiektua Lankidetza. Transformation Project

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Catholic Social Teaching

• personalism which upholds the value and inalienable dignity of the individual who is the subject never the object for family, society, etc, or state.

• common good-“Solidarity helps us to see the other - whether a person, people, or nation …….as our neighbour and helper…”– (Pope John Paul, II Sollicitudo rei scoialis, Catholic

Truth Society, London, 1987, p76)

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Catholic Social Teaching

• subsidiarity or civil society-– “The supreme authority of the state ought, therefore, to let

subordinate groups handle matters and concerns of lesser importance…in observance of the principle of subsidiary function the stronger social authority and effectiveness will be…” (Claudia Carlen, Ed. The Papal Encyclicals, 1903-1939, McGrath Publishing Company, USA, p 28, para 80.)

• solidarity or civic friendship -Relationships are not based solely on formal contracts but on informal ties of kinship, friendship and of loyalty arising from our sense of belonging.

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Catholic Social Teaching

• “The weakest members of society should be helped to defend themselves against usury, just as poor peoples should be helped to derive real benefit from microcredit…” (Caritas in Veritate - “Charity in Truth” (2009), paragraph 65)

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Liberation theology• Gutierrez, and for most liberationists, there are three levels of

liberation: first, liberation from unjust social situations; second, personal transformation; third, and "finally," liberation means liberation from sin.

• 1991, Jon Sobrino defined sin as unjust social structure, or "that which deals death." Examples of sinners for him were oligarchies, multi-national corporations, various armed forces and "virtually every government.“

• JPII: fuller liberation is liberation from everything that oppresses human beings, but especially liberation from sin and the evil one (Quade, 1982: 66-67).

• "Justice" must give way to caritas, a far more challenging goal (John Paul II, 1987: para. 40)- Reconciliation Theology

http://www.ewtn.com/library/ISSUES/LIBERATE.TXT

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Bases of the Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church

August 13-16, 2000• Labour and its fruits• VI. 3. The improvement of the tools and methods of labour, its division

into professions and move to more complex forms contributes to better material living standards. However, people's enticement with the achievements of the civilisation moves them away from the Creator and leads to an imaginary triumph of reason seeking to arrange earthly life without God.

• VI. 4. From a Christian perspective, labour in itself is not an absolute value. It is blessed when it represents co-working with the Lord and contribution to the realisation of His design for the world and man

• two moral motives of labour: work to sustain oneself without being a burden for others and work to give to the needy.

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Basilian principles• Predistribution• ‘love your neighbour as yourself’, which Basil

calls ‘the mother of all commandments’, • real spiritual malady not as over-attachment to

worldly things, but rather the violation of the commandment ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself’ after St. Clement of Alexandria.

• Basil understood human need primarily in social, rather than individual terms.

• “How can I bring the sufferings of the poor to your attention?’”is a constant theme in his public discourse

• “If we all took only what was necessary to satisfy our own needs, giving the rest to those who lack, no one would be rich”

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Basilian principles

• Redistribution• Recognised that the distributive mandate was

complicated by the tendency to adjust the definition of ‘my need’. Those who have more will use more, becoming predatory in the process.

• Basil’s answer? Practice radical generosity!

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Basilian principles

• Sociability• Not focussing on ‘poor’ in the abstract or

redistribution as a social good for individuals per se, but in communion.

• Monastic poverty for Basil is a social, communal act, not solitary (like St Anthony)

• Basil describes those who live by the rule of competition and private ownership as άκoιvώvητoι,[akoivovitoi] meaning “unsocial” or “unsociable.”

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Legacy of Basil

• Starts a wealthy distributionist• Humanises the inhuman effects of poverty• Communalises monastic poverty• Basiliad, once established with rich money becomes

autonomous• Also a ‘new city’- cf Danwei/Mondragon• Influence of CST, Liberation theology and Russian church• CST stops at living wage for workers• Basil further insists on living wage FOR ALL, limiting greed

for need

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the shoes that are rotting away with disuse arefor those who have none

It’s a small step from this……..

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the shoes that are rotting away with disuse arefor those who have none

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• Rubinstein, W. D. (2000) Entrepreneurial Minorities: A Typology Cultural Factors in Economic Growth Studies in Economic Ethics and Philosophy, pp 111-124

• Waldinger, R., Aldrich, H. and Ward, R. (1990), Ethnic Entrepreneurs: Immigrant Businesses in Industrial Societies, Sage, London.

• Sonny Nwankwo, Ayantunji Gbadamosi, Sanya Ojo, (2012) "Religion, spirituality and entrepreneurship: The church as entrepreneurial space among British Africans", Society and Business Review, Vol. 7 Iss: 2, pp.149 - 167