Over at Ekklesia, staff writers, Jonathan Bartley and Simon Barrow have written a major paper designed to stimulate discussion on church investment policy. They write in the wake of the loss of a cool £1.3 billion the Church of England had invested in shares and property. The Church still has significant assets and therefore large responsibilities.
Their paper looks at some of the difficulties and contradictions of the Church's investment and finance policy, particularly the dislocation of decision making about money from integral mission and economic justice, which is both practically and theologically deficient. Acknowledging both the good intentions towards ethical practice and the constraints imposed by the legal and Established framework of the C of E, the paper argues that for Christian churches, economics needs to be re-located in the subversive and alternative calling of a Gospel community in an unjust world. It suggests there are many positive ways forward.
Introduction: dualism and mixed messages
The first half of May 2009 signalled mixed financial news for the Church of England. On the one hand, it proudly announced that public donations for the joint Zimbabwe emergency and development appeal launched by the Anglican Archbishops of Canterbury and York had reached £292,330 [1]. On the other, it also admitted that it had lost a sum almost 4,500 times as much - £1.3 billion – through its investments in shares and property. [2] That amounts to around a fifth of its investment wealth.
But the Church still has £4.4 billion. [3] To put that it in context, Christian Aid Week [4] with its national programme of events, high profile media campaign, and backing from churches and campaigners up and down the country aims to raise just £15 million or so for the world’s poor. The C of E, by contrast, has a huge commitment to the chunk of its assets tied up in pensions and buildings.
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