In October 2017, in the aftermath of the deadliest mass shooting in US history, Bishop Ian Douglas of the Episcopal Church in Connecticut took part in a panel interview as a member of Bishops Against Gun Violence. There, Douglas spoke frankly of the troubling financial connections between the Episcopal Church in Connecticut and the arms industry. He remarked, “Connecticut is the birthplace of the majority of arms manufacturing in the United States, and the Connecticut River Valley was the primary transportation and innovation route in the manufacturing of guns. I would go even further to say we as Episcopalians have been caught up deeply in the manufacturing of guns and firearms since the beginning of this nation.”[1]
Douglas particularly highlighted the Church of the Good Shepherd in Hartford, Connecticut, a parish founded by the Colt family, the original manufacturers of the semiautomatic revolver and the creators of Colt’s Patent Fire Arms Manufacturing Company. The relationship between the arms industry and this Episcopal parish is carved in stone. The church, consecrated on January 28, 1869, was designed by Edward T. Potter and features an “armorer’s porch” at the southwest entrance.[2] Potter honored his wealthy patrons by adorning this entrance with stone carvings of gun barrels, pistol handles, and botanical patterns, with flowers whose centers recall the Colt revolver’s cylindrical chamber. The Colt revolver’s chamber was an engineering feat that was “effective against Indians in Texas” and that gave Americans a tactical advantage during the Mexican-American War.[3]
In the wake of the Nevada shooting, a shocking act of violence that left 60 people dead and over 850 injured, Douglas became impassioned as he described the depth of the diocese’s financial entanglements: “It was the Colt family that brought us—and they were a deep and committed Episcopal family—that brought us the automatic weapon as a handgun. Episcopalians invented the automatic firearm handgun at Colt manufacturing—the Colt .45—and we as a church continue to profit from the Colt legacy, from endowments held with money that was made by the Colt firearms (not directly within our diocesan resources but one of our parishes). One of our churches was the Colt family church where there are guns literally carved into the lintels over the door.”[4]
I begin my essay with Douglas’s remarks not only because they reveal the deep entanglement of the Episcopal Church with the arms industry but also because they present a complex example for thinking through the connection between faith and the church’s sources of wealth. The situation Douglas describes is not unique to Connecticut. Across the Episcopal Church, dioceses and congregations have benefited from wealth derived from morally dubious trades, with slavery being the most obvious. In recent years, there have been efforts to scrutinize the church’s institutional sources of wealth and to explore ways to offer reparations for the ways the Episcopal Church has provided a sacred canopy for unjust and violent industries.
However, although these practical efforts are crucial, here my aim is to engage the scriptural and theological issues that lie behind our thinking about these kind of entanglements. Indeed, when we start to reflect theologically on these matters, a whole constellation of moral, theological, and scriptural questions emerge that we need to wrestle with. Is money, including the wealth of patrons, a temptation? Is it, like Judas’s thirty pieces of silver, what leads the church to betray Christ? Or is wealth morally neutral and, once given, can wealthy patrons’ gifts then be redirected toward holy purposes, thereby transforming their moral value?
My personal interest in writing about the theology of faith and money stems from the twofold fact that (1) there aren’t clear or easy answers to these questions and yet (2) how one addresses these questions has immediate, practical implications. The case of the Episcopal Church in Connecticut and its connection to the arms industry underscores that these are not abstract questions but pressing, real-world issues requiring careful, considered deliberation. And although I don’t believe there are clear-cut, easy answers, I do believe that the church has an obligation to take these questions seriously and to try to think clearly about what our Scriptures and theological tradition have to say about such matters.
Money as Temptation
If one tends toward the money-friendly view that wealth is a morally neutral tool, we will have to contend with the fact that Jesus and the New Testament fairly consistently present wealth and the wealthy in negative terms. The poor and the hungry are understood to be the blessed of God (see Luke 6:20–21), and the rich young ruler is told to give up everything to the poor (see Matt. 19:21, Mark 10:21, and Luke 18:22). Jesus teaches that one cannot serve both God and wealth (see Matt. 6:24 and Luke 16:13) and questions why it is that the rich are storing up their wealth in barns (see Luke 12:16–21). As W. R. F. Browning puts it, “While the New Testatment also accepted that riches are given in order to assist the poor (2 Cor. 8: 8–10), the possession of wealth is viewed more negatively, especially in the gospel of Luke (6: 20–21, 24–9).”[5]
Bruce Malina and Richard Rohrbaugh, in their Social Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels, note that the New Testament reflects the ancient Mediterranean worldview of the poor toward the rich. In this view, the amassing of wealth was considered a form of stealing. The belief was that all rich individuals were either unjust or heirs of unjust persons, and wealth was assumed to result from extortion or fraud. Therefore, being labeled rich suggested that one was greedy and had made one’s wealth by stealing from or exploiting the poor, whereas being poor signified being defenseless and unable to protect what was yours.[6]
In addition, Christians ought to pay particular attention to the role of money during Jesus’s last week of life. The Holy Week money story gets underway when Jesus calls the temple a “den of robbers”—that is, a site storing stolen wealth (Matt. 21:13, Mark 11:17, and Luke 19:46)—and denounces it as having become a marketplace (see John 2:14–16). Judas’s betrayal of Jesus for a mere thirty pieces of silver (see Matt. 26:14–16), the refusal to add the “blood money” to the temple (Matt. 27:3–7) and a second bribe to the Roman soldiers to spread “false witness” of what happened to Jesus’s body (Matt. 28:12–15) all served to inform early Christian attitudes toward money. When we read in the First Letter to Timothy that “love of money is the root of all evil” (1 Tim. 6:10), we ought to interpret that evil to include the significant role money played in the betrayal and crucifixion of Jesus.
Ascetic tradition expanded the critique of the role of money in the church. Evagrius was a desert father who saw the demon Love of Money lurking behind every corner, a constant source of distraction for monastic life and temptation toward ecclesiastical entanglements in the principalities and powers of his time. Better, he believed, to withdraw to the desert than become ensnared by the demon of money. There, Evagrius advocated for extreme economic vulnerability among monks, rejecting any form of accumulation of wealth and financial security, insisting on complete dependence on God and others. His teachings warned against both the anxiety caused by money and the desire to acquire and protect wealth. He likened property owners trying to protect what they owned to rabid dogs, and he saw the demon Love of Money as leading monks to exploit each other for greater returns and away from their core spiritual practices and communal responsibilities.[7]
Therefore, to me, the teachings and events surrounding Jesus’s life, particularly the role of money in his crucifixion and the early monastic responses to wealth, support a faithful suspicion of the kind of entanglements with money and power that Douglas condemned in his interview. Both Jesus and Evagrius warn against the dangers of the love of money—including attachment to higher investment returns—a love that can tempt individuals and communities away from our core values and responsibilities to the marginalized in society, the “least of these” (Matt. 25:40), whom Jesus identifies with and who bear the consequences of our financial decisions. Although this suspicion of wealth is a minority view within the historically pro-wealth Episcopal Church, it is deeply rooted in scriptural, spiritual, and theological tradition.
A Question of Sources
Not surprisingly, this more critical view is leery of accepting unclean money—money gained from crimes, exploitation, or injustice—as a gift to the church. Hebrew Scripture precedents warn against such offerings: “If one sacrifices ill-gotten goods, the offering is blemished,” and “Like one who kills a son before his father’s eyes is the person who offers a sacrifice from the property of the poor” (Ecclus. 34:21 and 34:24). Similarly, there are prohibitions against contributing money earned through prostitution (Deut. 23:18–19). In the Gospel of Matthew, the chief priests reject Judas’s offered coins, declaring, “It is not lawful to put them into the treasury, since it is blood money” (Matthew 27:6–7), a decision likely based on the teaching, “Cursed be anyone who takes a bribe to shed innocent blood” (Deut. 27:25). The sources of wealth—especially when tied to the exploitation of the poor or the shedding of innocent blood—are deemed unfit for contribution.
In addition to these scriptural examples, I will add a sixteenth-century voice that’s especially important to those of us living in the Americas. The origin story of the Americas is one of European colonization, wherein brutal violence and slave labor was used to extract resources for the enrichment of the colonizers. As an American seeking to be faithful in this context, it is inspiring to know that the Dominican missionary Bartolomé de las Casas found the origins of his prophetic witness against the violence of the Spanish conquest while reflecting on the church’s sources of wealth. Upon reading some of the above scriptural passages, las Casas realized that his act of offering bread and wine made by his own Indigenous slaves was a form of idolatry, one that supported violence and exploitation.[8]
When Douglas spoke out against the financial entanglements of the Episcopal Church in Connecticut with the arms industry, he was therefore drawing on a long scriptural and historical tradition that warns against accepting financial contributions made from the blood and suffering of the innocent.
Money as Tool
Despite the way the New Testament portrays money as a form of temptation, the prevailing view in the church of today is that of money as a tool whose moral value depends on how it is used. An early proponent of this view is Clement, a pre-Constantinian figure who hailed from a wealthy family and whose theological concerns reflect a ministry among elite families of Alexandria. In his writings, Clement works to smooth over the difficult teachings of Jesus on money. Historian Justo L. González summarizes Clement’s project as offering a defense “that the way of salvation is not entirely closed to the rich, and that what really counts is one’s love of God above anything else.”[9] Clement argues for an allegorical—as opposed to literal—reading of Jesus’s telling the rich man to give his possessions to the poor, and he defends those who (perhaps like himself) inherited wealth, releasing them from guilt, for what moral choice did they make in the matter?
At times, Clement appears exasperated by his fellow Christians’ suspicion of money, and he makes a full-throated defense of money as just another tool: “An instrument, used with skill, produces a work of art, but it is not the instrument’s fault if it is used wrongly. Wealth is such an instrument. It can be used rightly to produce righteousness. If it is used wrongly, it is not the fault of wealth itself but of the user. Wealth is the tool, not the craftsman.”[10] Like a paintbrush, a hammer, or for that matter, a gun, these tools can be used for righteousness or destruction, and moral culpability lies with the person rather than with the instrument when it is used wrongly.
Like Clement, Augustine “found himself preaching to the rich (who enjoyed the leisure to take religion seriously) and to the upper layers of the populus—to artisans, to members of the guilds, to small landowners, and to minor town councillors.” From this place, he also argues that money is an instrument intended for proper use. Augustine holds that “virtue consists in enjoying (frui) proper objects of love for their sake and using (uti) proper objects of instruments well without loving them, whereas vice involves mixing up and reversing the order.” Money is used properly when given for the building up of righteousness, but loving money as an end in and of itself is abuse.[11]
Returning to my example of the Colt family’s wealth, Clement and Augustine appear to argue that the moral value of wealth doesn’t cling to the money itself. A tool like any other, money is like a crowbar, and no one really cares about the history of a crowbar. Rather, wealth’s moral value—including wealth made from a morally dubious industry—is ultimately determined by how the money gets used once received.
One could make an argument that as stewards, church leaders are similar to the inheritors of wealth that Clement speaks of. Church leaders did not choose or intentionally seek out these windfalls—major donor fundraising efforts aside, I suppose—but God saw fit to make the church the stewards of this wealth, and now it is incumbent upon the church to faithfully put it to proper use.[12]
If this argument strikes you as self-serving and obsequious to the rich, let me offer some scriptural support. In Jesus’s parable of the unjust steward (Luke 16:1–13), a steward who previously did his master’s bidding and squeezed wealth from his laborers finds his salvation by using his master’s wealth to halve the debts of those he formerly harmed. Paraphrasing Basil’s take on this parable, this individual transforms from being an immoral steward of his master’s wealth (perhaps overly concerned with increasing those quarterly returns) to using his master’s wealth to be a faithful steward of humanity.[13] Doesn’t Jesus call us to do the same?
According to this view, Douglas’s ethical concerns about the diocese’s historic entanglement with the arms industry miss the point. So what if the church received Elizabeth Colt’s generous gift? To be a faithful steward means using even wealth rooted in injustice and turning it toward the purposes of God’s mission. This money, once rooted in violence, can now be used for the healing of the world.
Using the Tool Well
One of the reasons I wanted to frame this discussion of money in the church in relation to the financial entanglements of the Episcopal Church in Diocese of Connecticut—and the Church of the Good Shepherd, specifically—with the arms industry, is because that actual examples resist easy, black-and-white conclusions, and putting an idea through the wringer of context is an approach that I’ve come to appreciate. By seeking to balance moral principles with the complex realities of a particular situation, we can frequently find more creative, pastoral ways to address the ethical concerns presented.[14]
With this in mind, here are some additional pieces of information that I think merit consideration about this situation. The first thing to know is that the Church of the Good Shepherd Church was founded and is sustained by funds from the Colt Family, yes, but specifically by the widow of Samuel Colt, Elizabeth Colt, who in 1868 dreamed of “a church where the owners, management and laborers at the Colt Armory could worship together.”[15] When she died in 1905, she left a trust fund for the maintenance of the parish and a community center which had been built in 1895 to serve the needs of the parish and its neighborhood. In the century since, the mission of the Church of the Good Shepherd has evolved significantly, becoming more racially diverse in the 1950s and 1960s through active recruitment of African Americans families living in the housing projects nearby, and today the church has an expansive bilingual, Spanish-speaking ministry.
And although the guns are still carved onto the lintels, today there is also a peace pole on the lawn that says “May Peace Prevail on Earth” in four languages. Ministries there include a community garden and an active food-sharing program. The Church of the Good Shepherd of today is a highly diverse congregation led by the wonderful Rev. Loyda Morales, whom I’ve had the pleasure of meeting, as well as Rebecca Batista de Almeida, a native of Rio de Janeiro who serves as its Director of Music. I’ll admit here, then—rather awkwardly—that it is exactly the sort of Episcopal parish I’d love to be a member of.
It is much easier to come to black-and-white conclusions when dealing in the abstract. In this case, however, we are going to have to wrestle with the fact that the Colt family’s wealth, which is interwoven with the arms industry and is rooted in violence against the Indigenous people and Mexicans, today supports what can only be described as a vibrant, diverse, bilingual, community-focused parish that that offers a prayers for peace in English, Spanish, Swahili, and Arabic.
So, again, I ask: Is money a temptation to betray Christian values or is it a tool for ministry?
Finding a Middle Way
As useful as it may be to think of money as just one more tool among others, a major problem with Clement and Augustine’s argument is that our brains have a distinct psychological response to money. When speaking with groups, I frequently conduct the following simple thought experiment: Imagine how you would feel if this evening you walked into your home and discovered a pile of paintbrushes on your dining room table. Now imagine if, instead, you walked into your home and discovered a duffel bag full of cash. Most groups I’ve spoken to nervously laugh at this point and are willing to admit that these two tools are somehow not the same, that just the idea of a duffel bag of cash evokes a more complex emotional response—a thrill of pleasure, perhaps—than would a pile of crowbars, paintbrushes, or pens.
Psychological studies bear this distinction out. In Mind Over Money, Claudia Hammond presents findings that suggest that money functions psychologically as both a tool and a drug in our daily lives.In her discussion of the way our brains light up in MRI machines when we see money, Hammond notes, “Money is acting like a drug, not chemically but psychologically. Money hasn’t existed for long enough in evolutionary terms for humans to develop a specific neural system to deal with it. So it seems as though a system usually associated with immediate rewards has been co-opted to deal with money.”[16] Money is indeed a tool, but it is a dynamic tool, one that sends a surge of dopamine into our brains when we get it; it is a tool we easily come to desire for its own sake, a useful instrument that can become addictive. Such studies confirm what those psychologically astute ascetics have known for a long time, namely that a love for money is unique among vices in that it is rarely even temporarily satisfied. No matter how much one acquires, the desire for more grows and grows.[17]
As we’ve seen, Christians have tended to see money as either temptation or tool, but the church needs new metaphors that capture how it is both. One metaphor that I’ve found particularly helpful comes from Basil who in the fourth century described money as a form of powerful medicine that the avaricious rich withhold from the suffering.
Basil is a fascinating figure because his personal story weaves together an ascetic’s suspicion of wealth with a diocesan bishop’s appreciation for its usefulness in alleviating suffering and building institutions for God’s mission. In a period of drought and famine in 379, he preached to the city’s elite that they were withholding the medicine needed to alleviate the suffering of the hungry, and, further, “the person who can cure such an infirmity and refuses one medicine because of avarice, can with reason be condemned a murderer.”[18]
Thinking of money as powerful yet addictive medicine weaves together several important strands. First, it acknowledges the need to put money to good use in alleviating suffering. Assiduously accumulating wealth amid widespread suffering is scandalous in its own right, whereas using money as a healing agent aligns with the instances when Jesus speaks of wealth positively, seeing it as something to be given to help “the least of these.” However, by recognizing that money is an addictive form of medicine with an intoxicating quality of its own, we can learn to respect the warnings about avarice that spiritual leaders have issued for millennia. Money operates psychologically like a drug, and just as pharmacists must carefully manage their inventory, and auditors must meticulously check their books, we ought to be vigilant in monitoring our own and others’ relationship with this substance.
Expanding on the analogy, I often reflect on how money, like medicine, is appropriate only in certain doses and situations. Our money-obsessed culture overvalues money as a tool, imagining it as capable of solving all problems, when in reality, its proper use is much more limited than we realize. Moreover, like powerful medicine, introducing money into a system frequently yields unpredictable results; that means that it’s wise to place controls on our use of money and to observe how systems respond. Finally, it’s evident that, like medicine, too much money can be toxic, distorting our spiritual health and clear thinking. Although no analogy is perfect, I think this image of money offers a way between viewing it either as inherently evil or as neutral as a paintbrush.
Temptation or Tool? Or Both?
According to the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions, firearm-related deaths in the United States totaled 48,117 in 2022, with an average of one death every eleven minutes. This staggering number includes 26,993 firearm suicides, 19,592 homicides, 472 accidental deaths, and 649 fatal shootings by law enforcement. And over two hundred Americans are treated each day for nonfatal gun injuries.[19] In light of relentless gun violence, the Episcopal Church aims to advocate for common sense gun safety measures. However, our historical ties to the arms industry and our financial entanglements do not always align with these values. How are we to navigate this situation? What actions should we take?
Personally, I believe that money and power can often tempt faith leaders to betray our core values. I hope I have demonstrated that it is scripturally, theologically, and spiritually authentic to our tradition to be deeply suspect of Episcopalians’ tendency to serve as chaplains to the rich. Money is an addictive substance, something which people and institutions can come to desire in and of itself, and the Gospels tell us that even Jesus’s close followers were willing to betray Christ for just a little bit of money (Matt. 26:14–16).[20] In this example, would it not have been better to refuse the Colt family’s donation as “blood money,” or at least to accept it under specific conditions? And would it not be better to divest from any ongoing entanglements with the industry?
But that is not what transpired in Connecticut. Elizabeth Colt, the widow of Samuel Colt—a man whose fortune was built on a weapon first used to kill Indigenous people and Mexicans, a man whose legacy includes the development and marketing of the first semi-automatic handgun—offered a portion of her money to her Episcopal parish, and it was accepted. And in an ethical twist, her trust has been faithfully stewarded over the past century and now supports a thriving ministry, one that genuinely embodies the peaceful, compassionate, and inclusive values of Jesus and the Gospels. Could this church, one that still has guns on the lintels, exemplify Augustine’s concept of “proper use,” having successfully redirected unjust wealth to serve God and humanity? Could the origins of the fund require at least a percentage to be put to the ‘special use’ of addressing the scourge of gun violence in our world?
What Douglas decried after the Las Vegas shooting was neither the first nor the last time church leaders will face a moral challenge related to faith and money, and so we need new—or in this case, very old—ways of thinking through these issues. Writing in 1930, the American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr described mainline Christianity’s prevailing “doctrine of stewardship” as a naive approach that essentially sanctions looking the other way on matters of exploitation and injustice if a wealthy donor makes good on their pledge and keeps dropping their check into the collection basket.[21] Rather than a thinly veiled fundraising model, we should ground ourselves in catholic metaphors that capture both the peril and the promise of money in the church.[22]
To that end, I have tried to move us beyond the two extremes to demonstrate that there are multiple theological approaches interacting here. Our scriptural and theological tradition offers an equivocal perspective of money as both temptation and tool. Psychological studies and good common sense suggest money is both. As we reflect on the Episcopal Church’s response to gun violence and the ethical dilemmas of our many financial entanglements, we should adopt a nuanced approach that recognizes money’s dynamic role as both a temptation to betray our core values but also, when used correctly, a tool for healing our broken world.
[1] Kelly Brown Douglas, host, Just Conversations with Kelly Brown Douglas, podcast, episode 6, “Bishops United Against Gun Violence,” Episcopal Divinity School at Union, October 3, 2018, https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bishops-united-against-gun-violence/id1406902913?i=1000420976099.
[2] “Gun Making Craft,” Church of the Good Shepherd, https://www.goodshepherdhartford.org/gun-making-craft.html.
[3] See R. C. Rattenbury, “Samuel Colt,” in Encyclopedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Samuel-Colt
[4] Associated Press, “MGM Resorts Sells Land on Las Vegas Strip that Was Site of 2017 Massacre,” NBC News, December 30, 2022, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/mgm-resorts-sells-land-las-vegas-strip-was-site-2017-massacre-rcna63791: “Concertgoers at the Route 91 Harvest Festival gathered there on Oct. 1, 2017, when a gunman opened fire from his hotel room above. He killed 58 people. Two more died later of their injuries. More than 850 people were hurt by the time the gunfire stopped.” Also, see Douglas, “Bishops United.”
[5] W. R. F. Browning, A Dictionary of the Bible (Oxford University Press, 2009), under “wealth.”
[6] Malina and Rohrbaugh, Social Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels (Fortress, 2003), Location 703, Kindle, who suggest the following: “An honorable man would thus be interested only in what was rightfully his and would have no desire to gain anything more, that is, to take what was another’s. Acquisition was, by its very nature, understood as stealing. The ancient Mediterranean attitude was that every rich person is either unjust or the heir of an unjust person (Jerome, In Hieremiam 2.5.2; Corpus Christianorum anorum Series Latina, LXXIV, 61). Profit making and the acquisition of wealth were automatically assumed to be the result of extortion or fraud. The notion of an honest rich man was a first-century oxymoron. To be labeled ‘rich’ was therefore a social and moral statement as much as an economic one. It meant having the power or capacity to take from someone weaker what was rightfully his. Being rich was synonymous with being greedy. By the same token, being ‘poor’ was to be unable to defend what was yours. It meant falling below the status at which one was born. It was to be defenseless, without recourse.”
[7] See Miguel Escobar, “Evagrius Ponticus on Love of Money,” in The Unjust Steward: Wealth, Poverty, and the Church Today (Forward Movement, 2022), chap. 17, Kindle.
[8] See Roberto S. Goizueta, “Liberation Theology 1: Gustavo Gutiérrez,” in The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Political Theology, 2nd ed., ed. William T. Cavanaugh and Peter Manley Scott (John Wiley and Sons, 2019), 287. Note that las Casas had just read Ecclesiasticus 34:21–24 and saw himself reflected there.
[9] González, Faith and Wealth: A History of Early Christian Ideas on the Origin, Significance, and Use of Money (Harper and Row, 1990), 112.
[10] Clement quoted in “Clement of Alexandria, the Rich Young Ruler,” in Wealth and Poverty in Early Christianity, ed. Helen Rhee (Fortress, 2017), loc. 793, Kindle.
[11] Peter Brown, Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350–550 AD (Princeton University Press, 2012), 345; and Rhee, Wealth and Poverty, loc. 508. Also, see González, Faith and Wealth, 216: “Although things are intended to be used, not every use is appropriate to them. Improper use Augustine calls ‘abuse.’ . . . Therefore, those who abuse, or do not use well, do not really use at all.”
[12] One of the many problems with this viewpoint is that such gifts can be used to launder reputations. Would, for instance, Episcopalians be comfortable accepting a non-anonymous gift from the Sackler family at this point? Faith leaders should consider both how money is to be used and also the extent to which the church is being used in the process.
[13] Basil, “Homily 6,” in Wealth and Poverty.
[14] See Stephen Holmgren, S. (2000). Ethics after Easter (Cowley, 2000), chap. 1book 9, Kindle, who writes, New Church’s Teaching Series, Book 9) [Kindle edition]. Cowley Publications. “Moral theology and pastoral care are interdependent and should never be separated, even while we try to distinguish between them. Moral theology begins with general and given principles and goes on to apply them to the specific and particular; pastoral care begins with the here and now of particular situations and moves from there toward generic principles as we seek insight and guidance. Our moral theology and pastoral care, when we do them well, should encircle one another like the two curving strands of the DNA helix, yet each having its own integrity and direction.”
[15] “Our History,” The Church of the Good Shepherd, . (n.d.). History of The Church of the Good Shepherd. https://www.goodshepherdhartford.org/history.html
.
[16] Hammond, Mind over Money: The Psychology of Money and How to Use It Better (HarperCollins, 2016), pages 9–11, Kindle.
[17] Thomas Aquinas makes this observation in his Summa Theologiae.
[18] Basil, “Homily 8,” in Wealth and Poverty.
[19] Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions, “Firearm Violence in the United States,” Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, https://publichealth.jhu.edu/center-for-gun-violence-solutions/research-reports/firearm-violence-in-the-united-states.
[20] One fascinating aspect of this passage is that it comes directly after the scandalously generous gift of the woman with the alabaster jar. The contrast in amounts really underscores the relatively small amount Judas was willing to betray Jesus for.
[21] See Niebuhr, “Is Stewardship Ethical?” Christian Century, April 30, 1930, 555, which includes this passage: “There is not one church in a thousand where the moral problems of our industrial civilization are discussed with sufficient realism from the pulpit to prompt the owner to think of his stewardship in terms of these legitimate rights of the workers.”
[22] See The Concise Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd ed., ed. E. A. Livingstone (Oxford University Press, 2006), under “stewardship,” notes that the 19th-century “Stewardship Awakening” in the U.S. emerged from the need to fund missionaries, emphasizing that all believers, not just the wealthy, could support the Church. Protestant denominations developed systematic giving programs, including the “Every Member Canvass.” The Chicago-based Wells Organization (1946) refined these efforts, introducing triennial stewardship campaigns with promotional materials, parish dinners, and peer-driven fundraising. While effective, churches later sought to reduce costs and avoid pressure tactics by establishing their own stewardship departments. From the 1920s, stewardship theology expanded to encompass time, talents, and treasure, applying financial responsibility to all aspects of Christian life.