Religion Wealth And Poverty

An ecumenical roster of leading specialists approach wealth and poverty through the theology, social practices, and institutions of early Christianity.

Cover title: Religion, wealth & poverty. Includes bibliographical references (p. [193]-202).

This book gathers scholars from the three major monotheistic religions to discuss the issue of poverty and wealth from the varied perspectives of each tradition. It provides a cadre of values inherent to the sacred texts of Jews, Christians, and Muslims and illustrates how these values may be used to deal with current economic inequalities. Contributors use the methodologies of religious studies to provide descriptions and comparisons of perspectives from Judaism, Christianity, and Islam on poverty and wealth. The book presents citations from the sacred texts of all three religions. The contributors discuss the interpretations of these texts and the necessary contexts, both past and present, for deciphering the stances found there. Poverty and Wealth in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam identifies and details a foundation of common values upon which individual and institutional decisions may be made.

The issue of wealth and poverty and its relationship to Christian faith is as ancient as the New Testament and reaches even further back to the Hebrew Scriptures. From the beginnings of the Christian movement, the issue of how to deal with riches and care for the poor formed an important aspect of Christian discipleship. This careful study shows how early Christians adopted, appropriated, and transformed the Jewish and Greco-Roman moral teachings and practices of giving and patronage. As Helen Rhee illuminates the early Christian understanding of wealth and poverty, she shows how it impacted the formation of Christian identity. She also demonstrates the ongoing relevance of early Christian thought and practice for the contemporary church.

For those who own it, wealth can have extraordinary advantages. High levels of wealth can enhance educational attainment, create occupational opportunities, generate social influence and provide a buffer against financial emergencies. Even a small amount of savings can improve security, mitigate the effects of job loss and other financial setbacks and improve well-being dramatically. Although the benefits of wealth are significant, they are not enjoyed uniformly throughout the United States. In the United States, because religion is an important part of cultural orientation, religious beliefs should affect material well-being. This book explores the way religious orientations and beliefs affect Americans' incomes, savings and net worth.

This study examines a collection of sermons about poverty, starvation, and disease written by three leading Christian bishops of late antiquity: Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nyssa.

Wealth and Poverty in Early Christianity is part of Ad Fontes: Early Christian Sources, a series designed to present ancient Christian texts essential to an understanding of Christian theology, ecclesiology, and practice. This volume is designed to introduce the reader to the broad range of texts that reflect early Christian thoughts and practices on the topic of wealth and poverty. Developed in light of recent Patristic scholarship, the volumes will provide a representative sampling of theological contributions from both East and West. The series aims to provide volumes that are relevant for a variety of courses: from introduction to theology to classes on doctrine and the development of Christian thought. The goal of each volume is not to be exhaustive, but rather representative enough to denote for a non-specialist audience the multivalent character of early Christian thought, allowing readers to see how and why early Christian doctrine and practice developed the way it did.

This great orator addresses the question of wealth and poverty in the lives of people of his day. Yet Chrysostom's words proclaim the truth of the Gospel to all people of all times.

A sociological reading of the New Testament texts continues to gain momentum. Maynard-Reid has now added an important contribution to that growing corpus which amounts to a re-reading of the text. The author is aware of the methodological problems of relating sociological theory to detailed exegesis. While the author is attentive to and knowledgeable about such theory, the book consists primarily in four careful, disciplined, tightly reasoned, fully documented exegeses. The case is carefully built to evidence a community summoned to an ethic that had dangerous public, economic implications. It is obvious that a new set of questions permits the text to have a new voice, one we must learn to hear and heed. Walter Brueggemann, Professor Emeritus, Columbia Theological Seminary By holding the biblical text within a clear social focus, the author is able to assess soberly the merits and limitations of previous exegetical treatments of the Epistle of James. By a thoroughgoing practice of grammatical criticism, Maynard-Reid sharply illuminates the class option of this epistle on behalf of suffering Palestinian poor in the period before the fall of Jerusalem in 70 C.E. Norman K. Gottwald, Professor of Old Testament, Pacific School of Religion Pedrito U. Maynard-Reid gives us a superb introduction both to the book of James and to the sociological study of the New Testament. He argues convincingly that James comes to us from a situation of oppression and thus is united as a theology of suffering ('heidensteologie') - specifically the suffering of the poor and oppressed. Thomas Hanks, Professor of Old Testament, Seminario Biblico Latinoamericana, San Jose, Costa Rica Maynard-Reid has treated the subject thoroughly. Readers of this book will stop pushing camels through the eye of the needle. Abraham Terian, Professor of Armenian Patristics, St. Nersess Armenian Seminary, New Rochelle, New York