Listening to Symbols That Describe the Idolatry of Multi Earth Economics

After making the connection between “functional religion” and economics, I decided to continue working on a description of the Multi Earth economy’s deities, how that worldview understands salvation, sin, and human nature; who its priests, teachers, and evangelists are; what its rituals are and where to find its holy places.

I had handed out an abbreviated version of this “overview of Multi Earth theology” when I presented my paper at the Nurturing the Prophetic Imagination conference. But following the conference, I fleshed these out in more detail, again grateful for the introductory start given by Barry Shelley back in 2004, when he created a quick and dirty chart on newsprint, identifying components of religious function in the economy. That chart was my launch pad for what will follow in several subsequent blog entries as I give an overview of the economic religion that shapes Multi Earth living. 

Quotes from French philosopher Paul Ricoeur and the Hebrew seer Isaiah, though separated by 2800 years, add dimension to Cavanaugh’s “functional religion.” I use them here to preface my introduction to the economic religion and theology of Multi Earth living.

In our time we have not finished doing away with idols and we have barely begun to listen to symbols. 

— Paul Ricoeur, French philosopher (1913-2005)

Their land is filled with silver and gold, and there is no end to their treasures; … their land is filled with idols. 

— Isaiah, Hebrew seer, 8th century B.C.E.

William Cavanaugh Says "Functional Religion" Replaced "Idolatry," But ...

At the same conference, where I went public with my conviction that there is such a thing as God’s Economy or the Great Economy after all, I met up with the phrase “functional religion. I attended a session in which William Cavanaugh, from the faculty of St. Thomas University, St. Paul, MN, (since then moved to De Paul, Chicago) spoke about it. In his remarks he said that in a past era he most likely would have used the word “idolatry,” but at the moment the preferred phrase was “functional religion.”

Idolatry sounds just to primitive for us. We flatter ourselves into believing we’ve long ago left behind a culture of idols. Still, “functional religon,” clicked for me. Cavanaugh spoke about how the state engages in functional religion, performing acts ritually and liturgically.

As I heard him describe state religion, my mind was simultaneously translating his words to economic religion. His phrase “functional religion” stamped “Approval” on my belief that going deeper into how the economy functioned religiously was necessary for us to see how to leave behind Multi Earth living. 

Backstage at the One Earth Project

Phew! It’s been three weeks since any new entries have appeared here. Travel, illness, and family visitors filled those weeks. Let me take you backstage at the One Earth Project for a moment as I take up some blogging again. 

Judging from this website so far, the One Earth Project is primarily a blog. Hints appear from time to time that a book is somewhere in a publishing process.

But backstage, Michael Johnson and I talk almost weekly about this project which is close to our hearts because, among other reasons, we’re egging each other on in how to get our own lives to fit inside of our one planet. Those conversations have continued as one long manuscript has been recast, with the help of various readers, into a trilogy. Book I of the trilogy benefited from having nearly 50 people, including some readers of this blog, help create our current working title: Blinded by Progress. The subtitle will appear in smaller font and lower on the page: Lenses to See Five Earth Destroyers We Can Change.

Book I has been turned down by both Berrett-Koehler and Beacon Press. Both offered affirmative words about the manuscript and both encouraged us to submit it to other publishers.

Michael and I have decided that our next step is to self-publish 50 copies and invite readers who may be willing to give us endorsements. We’re zeroing in on a copy editor now that we have to do that ourselves instead of relying on a publisher to do it. She’s asked for an outline of Books I, II, and III so she can get the full overview of our concept. I’ve now submitted the outline to her. Book II is coming along well. It focuses on the greater consciousness we need to keep up with where Earth is evolving given her own evolutionary path plus the influences of our dominating human species. The working title is Epoch Change. 

In case you’ve forgotten, Michael is an Emmy award winning filmmaker. He and I are planning a short promotional film for Book I. Long term, Michael would love to produce a documentary as part of the One Earth Project.

All of this takes money, of course, and we began with zero revenue sources. So far we’re grateful beyond words for a memorial gift of $1K and a Mennonite family foundation gift of $3K. Michael and I have also invested some of our personal finances. Perhaps you know of other sources. Donations are all tax deductible through our fiscal sponsor, Jubilee Economics Ministries.

So that’s a peek backstage at the One Earth Project. Hope you enjoyed it.

Going Public with a New Conviction

When I presented the paper on God’s economy at the Nurturing the Prophetic Imagination conference, I arrived at an important moment for me because I was going public with new thinking for me. I was testing on others what I had come to believe about how economics and religion mixed. I was rejecting the idea that religion’s contribution to business was confined to instilling ethics and morality. I was advocating that religion has a point of view about which business model and which model of economics we choose. It was the most forceful, public declaration that I had made on such issues up to that point. 

I felt sweaty and excited. I was animated and anxious. When my 20 min. timeslot was up, I yielded the mic to the next related presenter, a professor from a business department, and benefitted from his presentation on entrepreneurs as prophets. A new thought.

A few weeks following the conference I was pleased that Jamie Gates and Mark Mann, two who produced that conference, selected my paper to be included in a book they planned, entitled Nurturing the Prophetic Imaginagion. That book is now being published and will be available soon at the 2012 American Academy of Religion conference in Chicago. 

When did you go public the first time with something you held deeply?

Jerry Mander on What Happens When We Live in the Absence of the Sacred

Another important voice, one that I encountered earlier than any I have mentioned so far, spoke to me through a book that my son, Lane, wisely passed along to me. He sensed that I’d find it helpful. Interestingly, he was ahead of me in knowing how much I’d like it. His gift was another example of how a book or article came to my attention during this process of remixing economics and religion. The frequency of such occurrences punctures any delusion that might creep into me suggesting that I alone am writing this. Instead, these repeated occurrences have increased in me the feeling of solidarity with the growing crowd who want to live One Earth ways as much as I do.

It was the title of the book Lane gave me that especially grabbed me — In the Absence of the Sacred. It spoke to what I’d been wondering about: “How does having a sense of the sacred make a difference?” I’d long sensed that it did. I even suspected that the essence is lost when we live in the absence of “the sacred.” But I had little ability to put my intuition into words. 

Eagerly I read what the author, Jerry Mander, said. His subtitle, The Failure of Technology and the Survival of the Indian Nations, telegraphs how he contrasts the worldview of what he calls the technological peoples with the worldview of Indigenous peoples. Essentially these two contrasting paradigms parallel the Multi Earth and One Earth worldviews.

Mander spells out the role of the sacred in the Indigenous peoples’ worldview (One Earthers) and then shows how much technological peoples (Multi Earthers) lost as we increasingly pruned the sacred out of our worldview. Though economics among Indigenous peoples is infused with the sacred, among technological peoples, economics lost religion. The resulting irony is how within the technological worldview, economics has become its religious cornerstone — an irony I am eager to talk about next in this blog.

It's Not "If" an Economy Is Religious, But "How?"

Once I began to see that “economics as religion” was more than being clever, I searched for all it could reveal. Finally, I exclaimed, “Oh my god! Economic religion is essential to understanding the devotion of people and their systems to Multi Earth ways. I never knew so many people are writing about it.”

I no longer wonder “if” an economy is religious, but “how.” Does its theology produce healthy ecology, people, and societies, or unhealthy ones? Does it call forth the best in us, or appeal to our dysfunctional tendencies? Is it true or false? Does it value and imitate the structures of Creation, or does it innovate structures to “improve nature”?

My quest to be released from Multi Earth living has become simultaneously economic and religious.

Have you recently connected an economic choice you make with your spiritual practice? I’d like to read your comment if you have such.

Deepest Energies, Not Abstract Reasoning, Will Change Our Economy

One of my economic “textbooks” for a One Earth economy is, For the Common Good: Redirecting the Economy toward Community, the Environment, and a Sustainable Future. Written over twenty years ago (1989) its authors, Herman Daly, an economist formerly with the World Bank, and John Cobb, a theologian who taught many years at Claremont School of Theology, were early voices urging deep, systemic economic changes. But, they said, such structural redirection of the economy requires the inherent interplay between economics and spirituality. One of their statements in particular has stayed with me: 

The changes that are now needed in society are at a level that stirs religious passions. The debate will be a religious one whether that is made explicitly of not. The whole understanding of reality and the orientation to it are at stake. We think that, to treat the issues as if they could be settled by abstract reason, is misleading. The victory will go to those who can draw forth these deepest energies of the centered self and give them shape and direction. Getting there, if it happens at all, will be a religious event, just as getting to where we are now was a religious event. Idolatry in the guise of misplaced concreteness and disciplinolatry have brought us to the present crisis. Overcoming these is a religious task (p. 381).

Their word “disciplinolatry” refers to the effort among many economists to turn economics into a hard science in order to elevate its authority. Daly and Cobb see that as idolatry.