In the U.S., some churches want to feed at the public trough while preaching politics from the pulpit, …
Defying a federal law that prohibits U.S. clergy from endorsing political candidates from the pulpit, an evangelical Christian minister told his congregation Sunday that voting for Sen. Barack Obama would be evidence of "severe moral schizophrenia."
…while others see seem focused on more traditional Christian principles.
Last week, the two most senior leaders of the Church of England weighed in with stinging critiques of a financial culture they said had enriched a minority at the expense of society.
In a speech to a bankers group Wednesday, John Sentamu, the archbishop of York, said: "We find ourselves in a market system which seems to have taken its rules of trade from 'Alice in Wonderland.' " He referred to traders who profit from the losses of others as "bank robbers and asset strippers."
The archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, writing in the Spectator magazine, said that while making a profit is a legitimate goal, abuses of the financial system can cause "real and crippling damage" to people and institutions. He wrote that "almost unimaginable wealth has been generated by equally unimaginable levels of fiction, paper transactions with no concrete outcome beyond profit for traders."