This is a blog from the inspirational Sarah Edwards who was part of SPEAK as student in Cambridge and ran the SPEAK London network in the early 2000 now she works for an NGO called Just Money Movement speaking up for issues that have been close to the heart of the SPEAK Movement for years now:
A more just use of money
“Money makes the world go round”, so the old song goes, but people don’t actually like talking about money very much! JustMoney Movement (www.justmoney.org.uk) wants to change that – money is intimately connected to our daily lives, and the way our economy and society works. So we must do some serious thinking and start acting very differently with regards to money if we’re to deal with some of the complex and interconnected challenges facing our world.
JustMoney Movement works with individuals and churches across the UK equipping them to connect their faith, values and financial choices. We educate and advocate for a just use of money by banks, businesses and in the tax system. Our vision is one where money is used to shape a fairer, greener future.
About me
I’m Sarah and I’ve been the Director of JustMoney Movement for almost four years now. I’ve spent my career over nearly 25 years working in advocacy and campaigning for social and economic justice. I connected with SPEAK in the early days as a student at Cambridge in the late 90s/ 2000 and then coordinated the London Network of SPEAK for a few years after graduating. I have worked in a range of secular international NGOs on human rights, anti-slavery, debt cancellation, tax justice and access to medicines, from 2002 to 2016, alongside training and equipping advocacy activists across Sub-Saharan Africa and South/ Southeast Asia. I then campaigned on climate, sustainability and global poverty at Christian development agency Tearfund for 5 years, before moving to JustMoney Movement in 2021.
Faith and money
At JustMoney Movement we seek to be part of a broad-based movement of people of all faiths and none, seeking transformation of our financial and economic system so that it serves, rather than harms, all people and the planet. Our particular contribution is to equip churches and Christians to play their part in this work. We start from a faith perspective: connecting people’s faith, our ways of understanding God, with our values and ethics, and our understanding of money, wealth and poverty. This should mean we make different choices with our own and our churches’ money. It should also motivate us to campaign for a fairer, greener financial system and economy. Most of us don’t feel we understand finance and economics, and often we don’t connect these issues to our Christian faith. And yet surely how we see money and how we use it – including how that shapes the economy around us – should be part of a full expression of faith, a way of living and bearing witness to the God of love across the whole of our lives.
Our first aim then is to start the conversation and see where it leads us. If we look at Christian ethics, at Scripture, at the life and words of Jesus, money is talked about a lot! Many of Jesus’ parables and encounters relate to money – including its dangers, the problems of wealth, and the possibilities of living differently. Think for example of the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14-30), the rich fool (Luke 12:13-21) and the unjust steward (Luke 16:1-13), and Jesus’ encounters with the rich young man (Matthew 19:16–30) and with Zacchaeus the tax collector (Luke 19:1-10). There are huge amounts to unpack in even one of these passages. Often, especially in the Global North, Christians have been taught a ‘spiritualised’ version of these teachings, or that they aren’t really as radical as they sound and are more about our attitudes. Whichever way we interpret these passages – let alone all the teaching in the Old Testament and the rest of the New – it’s clear that money, poverty and economics are absolutely central to Christian teaching, which is why we encourage Christians and churches to talk about money, to connect it to our faith.
Putting it into practice
How then might we put these principles into practice, applying them to our own and our churches’ money, and to speaking up for a just use of money in the world? Following our organisation’s foundational verse, Micah 6:8, how can we act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with our God, with regards to money?
Our Money Makes Change hub has loads of resources on our website, and we offer online and face-to-face workshops, webinars and trainings, for individuals, small groups and churches to look at how our thinking about money works out in terms of our decisions about banking, pensions, saving, investing, and spending.
Banking
Just to take banking as an example, billions of pounds move between bank accounts every day, and banks lend to businesses around the world. Banks shape and sustain the economy and its dysfunctions. The major banks are not always ‘good news’ and often have poor ethical ratings. The world’s 60 biggest banks committed $6.9 trillion over 8 years to the fossil fuel industry, driving climate chaos and causing deadly local community impacts. While many banks have made commitments to change this, research shows that the vast majority of them are not on track to deliver the necessary ratio of green investments to fossil fuels. We urgently need banks to stop driving the climate crisis and instead to fund a just transition to clean energy and a climate-safe future.
We equip individuals and churches to find out about their own bank and its ethical stance, including its fossil fuel investments. They can choose to switch to a greener alternative – through our Greener, Fairer Banking Guide for Churches while individuals can join our Big Bank Switch campaign, run jointly with Operation Noah and Just Love, amplifying their individual choice as part of a collective switching moment which helps us put pressure on the banks to change.
Banks must become fairer too: 20.3 million people can now be considered ‘financially vulnerable’ in the UK alone. The consequences of financial exclusion have significant negative impacts on wellbeing, mental health and the ability to participate fully in society. We champion and support the work of credit unions and other purpose-driven financial institutions, who offer fair, ethical access to finance and help to build financial resilience amongst their members, as well as not being invested in fossil fuels.
Speaking up for a just use of money
All of the choices that individuals and churches make with their money equate to actions that contribute to a movement. As well as encouraging and equipping action with our money, we campaign and advocate for change.
SPEAK’s founding verse is Proverbs 31:8 where we are called to speak up for the rights of all who are destitute. This verse has been very influential on me, calling me to take seriously the command for Christians to advocate and campaign for justice for the marginalised and those experiencing poverty. At the same time we have a strong mandate to care for creation and those who are poor and marginalised are particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change and depletion of nature.
For the JustMoney Movement this motivation is behind our campaign for banks to stop investing in fossil fuels. We have recently convened over 70 churches and charities who have signed a Statement of concern urging banks to shift their investments out of fossil fuels, which we worked on with partners including the World Council of Churches, Churches Together in Britain & Ireland, and Laudato Si’ Movement. We are also part of a coalition campaign for a Fair Banking Act in the UK that would support stronger credit unions and other purpose-driven financial institutions, tackling financial exclusion and making the banking sector fairer.
In acting with our own and our churches’ money, as well as rediscovering the church’s prophetic voice to call for how money is used and shared, the JustMoney Movement seeks to build a movement of people creating space for transformation to happen – so we can see a fairer, greener future. If you would like to get involved or find out more visit www.justmoney.org.uk.