1. Innovators in Social and Political Thought:
Saint Basil the Great
The Church and Social Entrepreneurship
Fr Timothy Curtis
Senior Lecturer, Community Development,
The University of Northampton
Founding Director and Professor
Department of Lived Theology, Social Work, and Community
Development, Saint Gregory Institute, Universidad Rural de
Guatemala.
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2. Think Rich: How to Unleash Your “Inner
Trump”
• Rich people think differently than poor
people…I’m talking about earning money
joyfully. Wouldn’t that be wonderful, living a
life that joyfully creates wealth?...
•By my definition, anyone who
isn’t earning a million dollars a
year joyfully is a pauper. If
hearing that makes you
uneasy, or even angry, I’m
glad. That reaction may push
you
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3. Strands of theory
1. Protestant Work ethic created capitalism
2. Religious minorities are excluded from
mainstream employment and therefore are
required to become entrepreneurs
3. Lifting controls on usury allowed capital to
flourish
OR
• A deeper strand of ethical capitalism exemplified
in the work and teaching of Basil the Great
• Perhaps a personal theology of social entrepreneurship
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4. Weber- Protestant Work Ethic &
Capitalism
• Lost assurance of salvation through the
church
• Self-assurance as a sign of grace
• Work and success a sign of grace
– No donations to church finery
– No ‘dependency culture’ for poor &
beggary
• Investment instead of philanthropy
• Somehow, religion (or a significant
moment in religion, in a specific place)
had a significant effect on the success of
a capitalism
• Counterpoint to Marx’s economic
rationalism
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5. Religious minorities & EO
• Labour market disadvantages faced by immigrant
populations in many developed economies have
inadvertently triggered a more aggressive pursuit of
enterprise opportunities.
• Black Majority churches “There is nowhere in the Bible that
says one must be poor to serve God” (Nwankwo et al 2011,
p158)
• Quakers and Unitarians in Britain after c. 1700, Island
Greeks (those from Chios, the Ionians, etc.), Overseas
Chinese, Germans in eastern Europe from c. 1750–1939,
Armenians, Parsees, and Jews throughout all of modern
history (Rubinstein 2000)
• But surely this religious influence would have made ‘social
entrepreneurship’ more successful?
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6. Usury & Investment
• The First Council of Nicaea, in 325,
forbade clergy from engaging in
usury (canon 17).
• Forbade the clergy to lend money
on interest above 1 percent per
month (12.7% APR).
• Later ecumenical councils applied
this regulation to the laity
• Jews (economically oppressed)
were able to lend to non-Jews
• Aquinas-in order for the investor to
share in the profit he must share
the risk or activity. In short he must
be a joint-venturer.
• 1462, Monte di Pietà – a low
interest credit union/pawn broker
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7. Basil of Caesarea
• Saint Basil the Great, (329 or 330 –
January 1, 379)
• Basil, Gregory of Nazianzus, and
Gregory of Nyssa : Cappadocian
Fathers.
• Large wealthy family, 4 of 9 become
saints
• father of Eastern communal
monasticism
• personally organized a soup kitchen
and distributed food to the poor during
a famine following a drought.
• gave away his personal family
inheritance to benefit the poor of his
diocese.
• letters show that he actively worked to
reform thieves and prostitutes.
• Influenced by the zealot Eustathius of
Sebaste known for his works of charity
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8. Context
Byzantium
• Crippling taxation of the lower classes to support the military
• Increased concentration of land in the hands of wealthy absentee
landlords sharpens the distinction between rich & poor, who are
alienated from subsistence production
• Conversion to Christ on one hand (the contemplative life);
conversion to the world on the other (the activist life)
• St Basil remained committed to the ideal of a community of shared
life & resources (the voluntary poor) but was determined that this
should not be confined to the monastic context, but lived in the
wider society among the involuntary poor
• St Basil envisioned a new social order based on simplicity and
sharing rather than competition and private ownership
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9. Basiliad
• In the 4th century, established an ecclesiastical
centre on the plain, about one mile to the
northeast of Caesarea Cappadocia, which
gradually supplanted the old town.
• included a system of almshouses, an orphanage,
old peoples' homes and a leprosarium, a leprosy
hospital.
• A portion of Basil's new city was surrounded with
strong walls and turned into a fortress by
Justinian.
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10. “Against Those Who Lend at Interest’
• For in truth it is the height of inhumanity that those
who do not have enough even for basic necessities
should be compelled to seek a loan in order to survive,
while others, not being satisfied with the return of the
principal, should turn the misfortune of the poor to
their own advantage and reap a bountiful harvest.
• If you knock at his door, the debtor is underneath the
bed in a flash. His heart pounds if someone enters the
room suddenly. If a dog barks, he breaks out in a sweat,
seized with terror, and looks for someplace to hide.
• Human emotions rather than abstract poverty
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11. • ‘it is not those who are truly deprived who
come to procure a loan’, but ‘rather people
who devote themselves to unconstrained
expenditures and useless luxuries’
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12. ‘To the Rich’
• Thus, those who love their neighbour as
themselves possess nothing more than their
neighbour; yet surely, you seem to have great
possessions! How else can this be, but that
you have preferred your own enjoyment to
the consolation of many? For the more you
abound in wealth, the more you lack in love.
[3]
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13. To the Rich
• “You gorgeously array your walls, but do not
clothe your fellow human being; you adorn
horses, but turn away f rom the shameful
plight of your brother or sister; you allow grain
to rot in your barns, but do not feed those
who are starving; you hide gold in the earth,
but ignore the oppressed!”
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14. ‘I Will Tear down My Barns’
• How can I bring the sufferings of the poverty-
stricken to your attention? When they look
around inside their hovels, . . . [and] find only
clothes and furnishings so miserable that, if all
their belongings were reckoned together, they
would be worth only a few cents.
• [If you scatter your wealth,] God will receive
you, angels extol you, all people from the
creation of the world will bless you.....
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15. ‘In Time of Famine & Drought’
• [T]he reason why our needs are not provided
for as usual is plain and obvious: we do not
share what we receive with others. We praise
beneficence, while we deprive the needy of it.
• ‘Tear up the unjust contract, so that sin might
also be loosed. Wipe away the debt that bears
high rates of interest, so that the earth may
bear its usual fruits.’ *16+
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16. On Mercy & Justice’
• Acts of charity made from unjust gains are not
acceptable to God, nor are those who refrain
from injustice praiseworthy if they do not
share what they have.’
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17. I will tear down my barns
• ‘Tell me, what is your own? What did you
bring into this life? From where did you
receive it?’
• ‘so that one person alone enjoys what is
offered for the benefit of all in common –this
is what the rich do. They seize common goods
before others have the opportunity, then
claim them as their own by right of
preemption.’
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18. Basiliad
• poorhouse, hospice, and hospital,
• The monks would practice the practical trades
like carpentry and blacksmithing and the
money generated from those trades would be
used to support the work of the Basiliad.
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19. John of Kronstadt 1829-1908
In 1868 he conceived the idea of founding a
House of Industry, comprising a number of
workshops, a dormitory, a refectory, a 25,000 people a year picked
dispensary, and a primary school. hemp
Unlike Evangelical
Houses, did not focus
on re-education of
By 1895 there were 40 the morally defective
Houses poor
No ‘undeserving poor’,
begging was not shameful
or a grave sin.
Wealthy donors, private
membership fees, state Unemployment
subsidy and earned emerges in urban poor
income
Adele Lindenmeyr (1996) 19
Poverty Is Not a Vice: Charity, Society, and the State in Imperial Russia. Princeton University Press
21. José María Arizmendiarrieta
• “Arizmendi”, whew
• Capitalist society did not guarantee
human dignity
• Mondragon was a social project, not
a business or economic project, to
enable citizens (consciously) organise
their own lives
• Not just a company, but to change
the company’s behaviour and social
function
Nerea Agirre, Joseba Azkarraga, Eunate Elio, Oihana García, Jon Sarasua, Ainara Udaondo. (2000)
Lankidetza. Arizmendiarrietaren eraldaketa proiektua Lankidetza. Transformation Project 21
22. Catholic Social Teaching
• personalism which upholds the value and
inalienable dignity of the individual who is the
subject never the object for family, society,
etc, or state.
• common good-“Solidarity helps us to see the
other - whether a person, people, or nation
…….as our neighbour and helper…”
– (Pope John Paul, II Sollicitudo rei scoialis, Catholic
Truth Society, London, 1987, p76)
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23. Catholic Social Teaching
• subsidiarity or civil society-
– “The supreme authority of the state ought, therefore,
to let subordinate groups handle matters and
concerns of lesser importance…in observance of the
principle of subsidiary function the stronger social
authority and effectiveness will be…” (Claudia Carlen,
Ed. The Papal Encyclicals, 1903-1939, McGrath
Publishing Company, USA, p 28, para 80.)
• solidarity or civic friendship -Relationships are
not based solely on formal contracts but on
informal ties of kinship, friendship and of loyalty
arising from our sense of belonging.
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24. Catholic Social Teaching
• “The weakest members of society should be
helped to defend themselves against usury,
just as poor peoples should be helped to
derive real benefit from microcredit…” (Caritas
in Veritate - “Charity in Truth” (2009),
paragraph 65)
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25. Liberation theology
• Gutierrez, and for most liberationists, there are three levels
of liberation: first, liberation from unjust social situations;
second, personal transformation; third, and "finally,"
liberation means liberation from sin.
• 1991, Jon Sobrino defined sin as unjust social structure, or
"that which deals death." Examples of sinners for him were
oligarchies, multi-national corporations, various armed
forces and "virtually every government.“
• JPII: fuller liberation is liberation from everything that
oppresses human beings, but especially liberation from sin
and the evil one (Quade, 1982: 66-67).
• "Justice" must give way to caritas, a far more challenging
goal (John Paul II, 1987: para. 40)- Reconciliation Theology
http://www.ewtn.com/library/ISSUES/LIBERATE.TXT 25
26. Bases of the Social Concept of the
Russian Orthodox Church
August 13-16, 2000
• Labour and its fruits
• VI. 3. The improvement of the tools and methods of labour, its
division into professions and move to more complex forms
contributes to better material living standards. However, people's
enticement with the achievements of the civilisation moves them
away from the Creator and leads to an imaginary triumph of reason
seeking to arrange earthly life without God.
• VI. 4. From a Christian perspective, labour in itself is not an
absolute value. It is blessed when it represents co-working with
the Lord and contribution to the realisation of His design for the
world and man
• two moral motives of labour: work to sustain oneself without
being a burden for others and work to give to the needy.
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27. Basilian principles
• Predistribution
• ‘love your neighbour as yourself’, which
Basil calls ‘the mother of all
commandments’,
• real spiritual malady not as over-attachment
to worldly things, but rather the violation of
the commandment ‘You shall love your
neighbour as yourself’ after St. Clement of
Alexandria.
• Basil understood human need primarily in
social, rather than individual terms.
• “How can I bring the sufferings of the poor
to your attention?’”is a constant theme in
his public discourse
• “If we all took only what was necessary to
satisfy our own needs, giving the rest to
those who lack, no one would be rich” 27
28. Basilian principles
• Redistribution
• Recognised that the distributive mandate was
complicated by the tendency to adjust the
definition of ‘my need’. Those who have more
will use more, becoming predatory in the
process.
• Basil’s answer? Practice radical generosity!
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29. Basilian principles
• Sociability
• Not focussing on ‘poor’ in the abstract or
redistribution as a social good for individuals per
se, but in communion.
• Monastic poverty for Basil is a social, communal
act, not solitary (like St Anthony)
• Basil describes those who live by the rule of
competition and private ownership as
άκoιvώvητoι,[akoivovitoi+ meaning “unsocial” or
“unsociable.”
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30. Legacy of Basil
• Starts a wealthy distributionist
• Humanises the inhuman effects of poverty
• Communalises monastic poverty
• Basiliad, once established with rich money becomes
autonomous
• Also a ‘new city’- cf Danwei/Mondragon
• Influence of CST, Liberation theology and Russian
church
• CST stops at living wage for workers
• Basil further insists on living wage FOR ALL, limiting
greed for need
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31. the shoes that are rotting away with disuse are
for those who have none
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It’s a small step from this……..
32. the shoes that are rotting away with disuse are
for those who have none
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33. • Rubinstein, W. D. (2000) Entrepreneurial Minorities: A
Typology Cultural Factors in Economic Growth Studies
in Economic Ethics and Philosophy, pp 111-124
• Waldinger, R., Aldrich, H. and Ward, R. (1990), Ethnic
Entrepreneurs: Immigrant Businesses in Industrial
Societies, Sage, London.
• Sonny Nwankwo, Ayantunji Gbadamosi, Sanya Ojo,
(2012) "Religion, spirituality and entrepreneurship: The
church as entrepreneurial space among British
Africans", Society and Business Review, Vol. 7 Iss: 2,
pp.149 - 167
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