Religious Futures Network

Greetings all,
The WTF website referred to earlier is:
www.wtf.org.uk/ReligionandCapitalismNetwork.php
Please have a look at this and join in if you wish to contribute!

Religious Futures Network

Religious Futures Network is the title chosen by ourselves at the William Temple Foundation to our web-based resource on the global financial crisis, which will be available at www.wtf.org.uk
We share a concern that current political responses in the UK to the above are in danger of being complacent and inadequate and hope to stimulate further debate about how the future of market capitalism might be re-shaped building upon the initial article by Robert Peston, the BBC Business Editor. Issues not being addressed include: how ethical positions should be introduced into the debate; the need to reform the banking system in ways that create greater transparency and deconstruct banks that are "too big to fail"; the impact of environmental issues and policies; the need to reformulate the discipline of economics itself along the lines of the work of Steve Keen from Australia; how to link micro, macro and global levels of response. A critical question now is how the UK is to continue to fund "the good life" that people have taken for granted in recent years, and of course the possibilities of social unrest if unemployment and the impact of cuts in public spending and tax cuts last longer than anticipated. Also the role of China and ways in which this could change in the future create a huge uncertainty about the shape of the global economy. We invite others to engage with this debate.

Circulating references

I note that my last blog was on April 15th so I could be accused of not circulating at all in the last few weeks! I now wish to "circulate" the idea that circulation itself is at the heart of much that we do and of many of our current problems. For instance, lack of circulation of credit appears to be one of the major blocks in the global financial system. There are many who advise slowing the circulation down and/or controlling it in the ways that used to happen in order to prevent economies overheating or levels of debt getting out of control. Is it possible then to predict what levels of circulation are required for a vibrant but not overheated economy? Will a more restricted circulation lead to an even deeper depression or a stagnant, deflationary economy? Can the "experts" answer those question for us mere mortals? Then I am interested in how ideas circulate in such a way that people learn and develop, or else cross over thresholds into new ways of thinking or believing. What is required for genuine learning? Is it that we encounter new ideas and new people or experiences through a process of circulation, or do we have to be capable of responding to these through the circulation of our own emotions or curiosity? We talk about the "hardening of the arteries" and use this analogy to describe the intransigence often encountered in a faith context. Are people of faith capable of "learning" at all, and under what conditions? One of my favourite philosophers (Habermas) talks about the need for those of faith to learn through the encounter with those in the secular world but questions whether they can do this as rapidly or readily as their non-religious counterparts. Is there something then about religion that restricts circulation and "hardens the arteries"? Are other sets of beliefs and their institutions equally susceptible to the ossification and inertia that besets churches and congregations? So the trick is to keep the ideas circulating - or as my cricketing friend would say "keep those arms swinging"! Truth as "circulating reference" as Bruno Latour says - and there is another strange idea to feed into the conversation. When the music stops playing and we freeze on the dance floor - that is the time to quit and start all over again!

Public Theology or Private Language?

I have just received an email from a colleague suggesting that the type of approach used by the William Temple Foundation in the earlier blogs referencing comments on the global financial crisis is too academic and analytical to constitute a "public theology" that ordinary folk can understand and access. Is this type of public theology then in danger of becoming a "private language" spoken only by academics to other academics? I think this polarization of the debate is dangerous and misleading and damages both sides in the end. Are "ordinary folk",whoever they are, not capable of reading, absorbing and interpreting quite complex material from within their own tradition? Is there not a danger of "dumbing down" the levels of analysis required to come to grips with what are complex issues within current economic and political thought? All too often church leaders and local church commentaries resort to the glib and easy responses to issues that fail to do justice either to their own tradition or to the secular world which they claim to criticize. On the other hand, there is no doubt that public theology runs the risk of being absorbed into the academic industry and thereby losing its cutting edge or engagement with the outside world. People are needed who span this divide and wander back and forth in an annoying manner between the worlds of front-line practice and more distanced reflection - the sort of blurred encounter that I am advocating of late. If "public theology" fails to capture this essential activity then lets call it something else - but let us not underestimate the scale and nature of the challenge we face in attempting critical engagement between the tradition and the rest of the world!

John Reader's Publications

Just to add that one can find and access some of the other publications on the William Temple Foundation website. Read here

The New Capitalism debate

For a series of papers from research associates from the William Temple Foundation in Manchester UK here is the link to their website.
My own paper is entitled "Authoritarian Capitalism" and offers some detailed economic analysis and a fairly pessimistic view of future prospects! Read it here...