book review: Faithful Exchange: The Economy As It's Meant To Be

title: Faithful Exchange: The Economy As It's Meant To Be

author: David W. Opderbeck
date: 2024
publisher: Fortress Press 

This is not the type of book I normally read. I tend to shy away from books that try to explain economics.

As someone once remarked: 

What happens when you put 10 economists in a room? 

You'll get 11 opinions

Add to this, the current economic-social-political climate, here in Canada where I live, in the USA which has a strong influence on Canadian policy and thinking, and what I know of stresses in places like Ethiopia and Uganda, and you get loud voices declaring the solution from all sides.

Into this environment, I started reading David W. Opderbeck’s “Faithful Exchange: The Economy As It's Meant To Be”. I was pleasantly surprized. 

The opening chapters (2-5) give an overview of the biblical story from creation (Genesis) through to the new creation (Revelation). His overview of scripture is excellent – the book is worth it, just for this. 

"Faithful Exchange" lays out a careful review of some of the biblical and historical materials and offers a critical appraisal of the current debate. 

Chapter 6 begins a series of chapters where Opderbeck delves into political / economic theory and how Christians have understood it, starting with Christianity being illegal before Constantine (4th century). He concludes this chapter by saying:

Like the biblical witness, Christian economic thought and practice prior to modernity left us with the unresolved aporias of a faith that valorized both renunciation and abundance.

In Chapter 7, Opderbeck digs into the European and American “age of discovery” which shaped economic theory and practice, beginning in the 15th century, up to the 19th century, specifically the US Civil Rights Act of 1866. He examines the writings of Locke, Hobbes, Smith, Hume, and Blackstone, which “provided base ingredients for the stew of the American Revolution and the US Constitution.”

Chapter 8 opens with an overview of Radical Revolution, Marxism, and Christian Socialism:

Medieval and Reformation thought already encountered moments of revolutionary fervor based at least in part on economic inequality. In the nineteenth century, while Americans fought a Civil War over slavery, the industrial revolution, among other social changes, produced unrest among the working classes throughout Europe.

Chapter 9 leads into the unanticipated coming wars or the Great Depression. He examines a number of commentators including Moody, who 

established close links between fundamentalists and capitalists. But some fundamentalists who adhered to premillennial dispensation eschatology could at times sound like nineteenth-century populists.

Post WW 1, the “New Deal” under Roosevelt as a response to the “Great Depression”. 

Communism and socialism, rather than the global concentration of capital, increasingly became the locus of the global end-times conspiracy.

Opderbeck then leads into a section he calls 

“From the Postwar Settlement to the Internet Age, the Financial Crisis, and COVID-19”

He argues that 

the Western postwar economic order was capitalist but existed within a network of treaties, laws, and institutions intended to mitigate the risks of systemic economic crises of the sort that facilitated the rise of German and Italian fascism after World War I.

Examining Liberation Theologies and developments in Catholic social teaching, Opderbeck links this with the development of critical race theory (CRT). This very full and condensed view of recent history ends with:

The Catholic Church is split between warring conservatives, who view Pope Francis as perhaps an antipope, and liberals, who find his papacy refreshing. This split mirrors that in American Protestantism between white evangelical Christians, who have doubled and tripled down on capitalism and the culture wars by allying themselves unreservedly with Donald Trump, and mainline Protestants who lean largely liberal, at least in the positions taken by their denominational bodies.

Chapter 10, Toward a Contemporary Constructive Christian Economics, begins:

Every theology of economics is a theology of history; every theology of history is an eschatology. Most economic theologies fail to express a clear eschatological vision. The result is a hidden or confused eschatology that results in an incomplete or impractical economic theology.

He critiques the narrow view of some

For many Charismatic and Pentecostal evangelicals both in the Global North and South, various kinds of prosperity gospels promise that God will reward the faithful with wealth and influence in anticipation of Jesus’s return, even as the broader world falls into chaos. For many other evangelicals, “socialism” is the form of an end-times world order in which individual freedoms become obliterated… There is a general sense of disenfranchisement and fear, or a sort of cognitive dissonance, in which strong support for capitalist markets coexists with a belief that the world is on the verge of a literal battle of Armageddon.

My thinking resonates with Opderbeck when he writes:

As is often noted, the kingdom of God inaugurated in Israel and in Jesus, but awaiting its fulfillment in Jesus’s parousia is best understood as “already/not yet.” Every ideology, every –ism, including both capitalism and socialism, is revealed as a false god, an enemy already defeated, in the light of the crucified and risen Jesus –and humanity is called and empowered to embody the new creation in present time. Followers of Jesus cannot be socialists or capitalists if that entails following an –ism... a core spiritual practice for any economic theology is discerning the times.

All of this raises theological questions connected to eschatology: the relation of the church to the world and of spiritual power to temporal power – the question of ecclesiology. 

Is the blessed community of the new creation only for the church? 

Does the church have any role in bringing the blessed community of the new creation into the world? 

More specifically in New Testament terms, what is God’s purpose for the “nations” (ethne)?

Opderbeck then in some detail, examines the approach of both capitalist and socialist thinkers. I found this helpful, if tough sledding.

Finally, he concludes by asking us to look at four (4) core focus points for the church.

1. The first concrete step is for the church to remember its true identity. The church must understand that its paideia is universal and that its practices form the space where God is present in the world.
2. (our shared life) should involve liturgy and worship that emphasizes repentance, lament, and tangible reconciliation for economic injustice. We need the words of the prophets, not least the prophetic words of Jesus, to remind us of the poor and dispossessed.
3. (understand) the place of the church’s public witness and advocacy about economic issues. Following the biblical model and the arc of the Christian tradition, the church’s witness should
     Respect but relativize private property rights
     Prioritize the poor
     Emphasize fairness, and
     Suspect the power of wealth.
4. a fourth core focus of the church’s mission concerning economics, we should cultivate a renewed expectation for the parousia, as that expectation is expressed in the narrative of scripture.

Opderbeck concludes

The church, therefore, appropriately bears witness to the cross and resurrection, proclaims the good news of the present and coming kingdom, and leavens culture.... Contrary to the –isms of both capitalism and socialism, most of these interventions, if they are faithful and effective, will be tailored, issue-driven, and specific rather than grand plans to overthrow one –ism with another.... Every –ism, including capitalism and socialism, is here exposed as unworthy of devotion. In every time and place discerning the Kairos and listening to the Spirit of Christ, we are called to act with grace and wisdom, affirming but relativizing private property rights, prioritizing the poor, emphasizing fairness, and actively waiting always for the coming of Jesus, when God will be all-in-all.

"Faithful Exchange" is not always an easy read, but if you want to understand economics as a Christian, and, I would agree with Opderbeck, this has to be understood in the context of history, this is an excellent piece. 

Recommended.

DISCLOSURE:

I received this book free through the Speakeasy blogging book review network.

I was not required to write a positive review.

The opinions I have expressed are my own.