Jesus Casting Out The Money Changers At The Temple, by Carl Heinrich Bloch
A recent NY Times article on the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility raises some interesting questions to face as people of faith. Shouldn’t our religious consciences extend to our investment portfolios? ICCR executive director Laura Berry believes so and also expresses a belief in the benevolence of the market:
“I actually believe that God, whatever God is, set up the system so that it works better when we don’t cheat.”
I don’t want to seem combative to someone whose heart truly does appear to be in the right place, but I’m left pretty uncomfortable by the idea that God is somehow the Smithian “invisible hand” of the marketplace. Certainly it’s no coincidence that the United States is as tied to market capitalism as it is: both this nation and “The Wealth of Nations” were issued as first editions in the same year. Adam Smith’s language of the invisible guiding hand of market corrections fit like, well, hand-in-glove with the deist theology popular among the founders of the United States.
I am left with the question of whether it is naïve or good-hearted to believe in the beneficence of the economy. I certainly wish that the stock market was set up so that it worked better when people didn’t cheat. Unfortunately, the economic markets don’t work poorly when people cheat. Rather, they stammer and stutter only when people are caught cheating.
Is it possible to invest justly? Following the advice of the ICCR is certainly better than investing without any qualm of conscience. Conscience is inconvenient. Whether it is the quotidian act of buying a cup of coffee that doesn’t fund the oppression of finca workers in Central America or the long-term plan of retiring, conscience has a real dollars-and-cents cost associated with it. The question I can’t answer is whether “just investments” are just enough. Fiscal asceticism is not a good answer for most people, but is a program of “just investment” rigorous enough to pass muster as truly a moral act?
