sermon resources pt.2

Here are the quotes I mentioned:

“The obeisance that our whole culture pays to the financial markets, to their 'self-regulating' wisdom and beneficence, bespeaks a kind of mass enchantment or mass superstition….There is more than free market ideology in play here. I name it religiously, as market idolatry.” -Peter Laarman, Executive Director of Progressive Christians Uniting, September 29, 2008

“Behind all this, though, is the deeper moral issue. We find ourselves talking about capital or the market almost as if they were individuals, with purposes and strategies…We lose sight of the fact that they are things that we make…And ascribing independent reality to what you have in fact made yourself is a perfect definition of what the Jewish and Christian Scriptures call idolatry.” -Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams on the financial crisis, September 27, 2008

“…credit and debt are religious issues. Jesus plainly thought so, to the point where he physically disrupted the largest national bank in Israel during the height of its Passover practices of ripping off poor and even more affluent pilgrims. Temple practices that hooked the poor on high interest credit and drove them into debt were the target of Jesus' anger.” -Susan Thistlethwaite, Professor at Chicago Theological Seminary in the Washington Post On Faith Blog, September 16, 2008

And finally, I would be remiss to not post the Gordon Gekko clip: