454 - Reformed Faith and Economics

Reformed Faith and Economics
Edited by Robert L. Stivers
Lanham, Md., University Press of America, 244 pp. $14.75 pb.

Far from the factories and farms, the banks and markets and international airports that testify to the economic prowess of America, fourteen Presbyterians gathered on a scenic oasis in the New Mexico desert for three summers to assess their religious heritage and its implications for wealth and poverty. The result of their seminars at Ghost Ranch is a set of essays of more-than-passing interest to more than Presbyterian readers.

Edited by Robert L. Stivers (Professor of Religion and Ethics at Pacific Lutheran University), this volume offers biblical themes (as appropriated by Presbyterians), revisitations of Calvin and Calvinism, polemics on contemporary issues, and an inventory of official Presbyterian pronouncements on economic matters. The contributors are ten ethicists, a church historian, a biblical scholar, an economist, and a political scientist. Their volume is a sequel to the 1983 study, Reformed Faith and Politics, edited by Ronald Stone of Pittsburgh Seminary.

The most provocative contribution comes from William E. Gibson of Cornell University's Center for Religion, Ethics, and Social Policy in a chapter titled "An Order in Crisis, and the Declaration of New Things." Gibson confronts Presbyterians with an either/or choice: affirm the existing economic order, or help shape a radically different order. He clearly opts for the latter, indicting the United States and world economies for the inordinate power of corporations, the sins of greed and materialism, the prevalence of poverty and hunger, and increasing environmental degradation and exhaustion. While celebrating the visions of E. F. Schumacher and Barry Commoner for decentralization and democratization of economic life, Gibson avoids heavy ideology and the S-word in his harsh judgments of capitalism. Declaring that global economic justice requires "de-development" and "abandonment of affluence" by the rich countries, he appeals to the Reformed tradition's emphasis on righteousness in vocations and commercial life.

A discriminating historical essay by Ronald Stone focuses on the economic ethics of Calvin in Geneva, a topic which Stone is anxious to disentangle from the influence of later Calvinist thought upon the capitalist ethos (as portrayed by Max Weber, Ernst Troeltsch, and R. H.

456 - Reformed Faith and Economics

Tawney). While acknowledging that Calvin himself legitimized banking, usury, and the whole arena of urban commerce, Stone insists that "the advocacy of driving, anxious labor that a simple reading of Max Weber might lead the student to expect" is not to be found in Calvin. What Stone does find is a Christian life of "self-denial and the seeking of righteousness pleasing to God," an economic ethic subordinated to the Kingdom of God, and a "high view of government" in which church and state cooperate to strengthen the common life and promote the welfare of the poor. Perhaps the ambiguity of Calvin's legacy is a bit more to be found in Calvin himself than Stone allows.

Three chapters discuss the timely but taboo T-word (taxation). David Little of the University of Virginia argues (somewhat underwhelmingly) that Calvin's thought offers an implicit basis for progressive taxation. Editor Stivers sharply notes that the inequalities of income and wealth in the United States have been aggravated by the taxing and spending priorities of the 1980s. He traces the vicious circle in which tax cuts reduced revenue and cut social programs-but also produced unprecedented deficits, which then rationalized further cuts in social programs. Stivers concludes with a useful list of nine policy questions for evaluating tax policies, according to the three basic norms of justice, sustainable efficiency, and participation. Tax economist William L. Raby scores the 1986 Tax Reform as too complex, too full of favors for the rich, too burdensome for the middle class and the aged, and too irrelevant to high budget deficits. In a rousing call for Presbyterians to lead a campaign for "massive change" in tax policy, Raby brazenly urges the church to "abandon its institutional vested interests" such as housing allowances for clergy, deductions for charitable contributions, and the exemption of investment income.

This collection is further spiced by essays on racism, sexism, and "capitalist virtues." There is a concluding chart of directions for the future of economic ethics, with emphases on economic democracy, an "eco-industrial policy" to integrate economic and environmental policies, and the church's own models of alternative community with cooperative and egalitarian practices.

It is the very concept of economic democracy, however, that is too lightly treated in these essays-which is to say that the basic issues of political economy and of inescapable ideology in America today did not quite get their due in this otherwise illuminating volume.

Alan Geyer
Wesley Theological Seminary
Washington, D.C.