Vicars in the capital’s financial district have been reporting steadily swelling numbers of worshippers for months now – anecdotal proof, seemingly, that some of the bankers who contributed to the crisis of the past two years are seeking salvation or at least an understanding of their place in the world. “Most people want to do a good job,” says the Rev Oliver Ross, dean of the City of London and vicar at St Olave’s, one of the capital’s few remaining mediaeval churches. “The church is growing. There is an increased desire among a lot of City workers to look at the ethics of what they do. People want to talk about it, to question it.”

Some of those questions are purely personal – with hundreds of thousands already made redundant over the past two years, how secure is anyone’s job and will praying help to keep it? Other questions are more profound – why did financial capitalism become synonymous with crazy risk-taking, with the passing off of toxic investments to unwitting counterparties and the earning of multi-million pound bonuses, regardless of merit?

Amid all the doubt, one thing is clear: the fragility of financial capitalism, and the moral bankruptcy of some of it, have been exposed. It is striking that even big-name bankers have been looking back at the crisis through a religious prism. Stephen Green, chairman of HSBC and an ordained Church of England minister, has said there was no consideration of the “rightness of what was done”. He has charted the history of global finance and offered up a new moral code for bankers everywhere in an ambitious book, Good Value.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Stock Market • The Banking System/Sector • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • * International News & Commentary • England / UK • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology • Pastoral Theology

1. Iohannes wrote: The church building pictured at the top is St Andrew Undershaft, which is now attached to the neighboring parish church of St Helen Bishopsgate. The building is no longer used for regular worship, but rather for church programs and for St Helen’s very active outreach in central London. That makes the photo an apt choice for this article, even if the selection was probably motivated just by the contrast with the Gherkin in the background. December 24, 2:54 pm | [comment link]

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