William is a young man who worked as a day laborer before he became part of an Agros community in El Salvador. One day he was working with his father and fell out of a tree and hurt his back. In the hospital he worried about the mounting debt, the future of his children, and […]
The mission of Pura Vida (www.puravidacoffee.com) is to harness the power of business to create good and serve the poor. We believe that, together, consumers and business leaders can join to promote a new type of capitalism – one that changes the way we think about business. In his sermon “The Strength to Love,” Martin […]
AKRON, Pa. – In Cochas, Peru, Eulogio Medina and his wife, Guillermina Salome, work with quiet dignity, creating exquisite carved gourds that reflect their country’s rich tradition. Across an ocean, men and women with that same quiet dignity volunteer their time to showcase Eulogio and Guillermina’s work, selling their crafts to help supplement their family’s […]
“Why do you labor for that which does not satisfy?” Isaiah 55:2 The noted Christian theologian Michael Novak has observed that “we are all capitalist now”[1] and as I write these words an evangelical Christian is beginning his second term in what is arguably the single most influential economic post in the world.[2] These facts should give […]
My theme for this essay is “Women and Globalization.” I wish to talk about women’s relation to globalization both in the ways that women, especially poor women, are disproportionately victims of globalization, and also the way in which women’s groups are among the important sites of critique and resistance to globalization. I also want to […]
The many different interactions between globalization and religion can be approached from a variety of theological perspectives and ethical practices. The World Council of Churches (WCC) marks one such model. The WCC constitutes the largest transnational institutional manifestation of diverse communities of Christian faith. It encompasses the denominations of Protestantism (e.g., Episcopal, Presbyterian, Methodist, Congregational, […]
There was a woman named Rosalinda with whom I attended Sunday mass when I lived in Chile in the 1980s. Rosalinda lived in a small wooden shanty with her elderly mother. Their income, which sufficed for little more than bread and tea, was derived from the potholders and other items that Rosalinda crocheted and sold […]
My quest to think about, address, and understand the relationship between theology and economics began when I found myself as an evangelical Christian, freshly out of Taylor University, armed with a Bible and desire to preach the Gospel as a local pastor in Honduras in the Caribbean Council of the Methodist Churches. I had never […]