In Depth:  Philip Sampson

Last month I suggested that the world of finance is shot through with faith. The very banknotes in our pocket or purse rely upon our faith in the Chief Cashier to ‘pay the bearer on demand…’ So what we mean by ‘faith’ matters when we go to the bank, just as it does in our personal life. Moreover, if we embrace a perverse understanding of faith, we risk shipwreck, whether as individuals or in our public life together.

Traditional banking emerged in a culture thickened by the biblical understanding that authentic faith and authenticating evidence are bedfellows. A 120% mortgage would have appeared reckless and irresponsible. But, in recent decades, the public understanding of faith has changed. A mystical ‘Dawkinsian’ view, which opposes faith to evidence, has gained ground and this understanding has come to dominate in public life. This perverse understanding of belief as irrational seals faith and evidence into separate boxes and has serious consequences for public life. Ironically, a doctrine which claimed to enlighten us actually makes us more vulnerable to delusion rather than less. Once our faith that all will be well is divorced from the evidence before our eyes, the 120% mortgage can become a selling point. Both bank and borrower lost the habit of relating faith to facts. If we refused to face facts like this in our friendships, we would rightly be called gullible. Banking became gullible and infatuated.

Of the many recent articles about the credit crunch, few have brought a biblical perspective. But if ‘everything under heaven belongs to’ God, would he have remained entirely silent on so major a human activity?

The poverty of wealth

The obvious biblical theme to consult is that of money. Scripture portrays wealth as a blessing when it is the fruit of covenant obedience, but the lust for money readily overwhelms justice and oppresses the poor, with a particular ability to inspire idolatry.

Chicken is on the menu. And not just chicken, but baby animals as well: piglets, lamb, kid goats and veal.

The celebrity chefs, Jamie Oliver and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, have both presented recent Channel 4 programmes on the cruelties of the intensive chicken industry.

When the then minister of Worthing Tabernacle, Tony Sargent, spoke out against the exportation of live animals from Shoreham in 1996, a bemused BBC interviewer asked him, 'Does the Bible actually say anything about animals and their rights?'

As the hunting debate returns to the news over the next few months, it will not only be BBC interviewers who will be asking about animals and their rights. Most of us who talk to neighbours, friends or at work about the day's headlines will have a chance to express an opinion. So we might ask, 'does the Bible say anything about hunting?'. It's a good question. Does it? If not, each of us must do what is right in our own eyes. But if it does, do we have a duty to say so?

Readers may have seen the recent T V series 'Empire', presented by the distinguished historian Niall Ferguson.

No one can doubt that this was a serious, well informed series, so I was surprised to hear the account of C.H. Spurgeon's comments on the 'Indian Mutiny' of 1857.