God or Mammon, by David Smith  

'Anyone seeking to dwell upon the roots of our culture and needing resources for an alternative vision, particularly those involved in church leadership, should read it, and act'

God or Mammon - The Critical Issue Confronting World Christianity
By David Smith
Langham Global Library
ISBN: 978-1786410580
Reviewer: Michael Manning 

'How to live without grace and justice?' This is the extraordinary question — a quote from Albert Camus — that stands at the head of David Smith's new book, God or Mammon: The Critical Issue Confronting World Christianity.

There is no easy response. Smith cites Max Weber's 'iron cage' of modernity and the conditions that make it almost impossible for us to see, question and, vitally, forge alternatives to, the reality of our oppressive status quo.

Smith has spent a lifetime exploring radical forms of mission and he brings together fields as various as theology, urban studies, post-colonialism and sociology as he traces his themes. His past books have dwelt on hope and mission (Moving toward Emmaus); urban theology (Seeking a City with Foundations); globalisation (Liberating the Gospel); and lament (Stumbling Toward Zion). In many ways God or Mammon sums up decades of learning, experience, struggle and questioning.

In navigating both the ways of God and the persistent siren call of Mammon Smith first turns to scripture. The cataclysmic changes wrought by religious renewal movements are explored, from the earliest Hebrew narratives to the monarchy, wisdom literature and the holy rage of the prophets.

Jesus' story is situated within the devastating and all-encompassing imperial reality of Rome, culminating in the early church's courageous witness to an alternative society undergirded by radical economic sharing as exemplified in Paul's colossal and theologically-significant project of the Collection. These biblical chapters are framed by two laments, from Isaiah and Paul, that mourn the broken reality and failures of covenant faith whilst they hope for a more peaceful and just world.

The second section of the book, titled Historical Struggles, takes up the theme following the scriptural age. The early church and the rise of monasticism lead us to the Middle Ages and the Reformation, then on through the age of expanding European dominance and the ever-increasing power of the capitalist economic system that becomes divorced from social goods.

We find ourselves in the modern world, back with Camus and the absurdity of an economic system that sacralises consumer life while devastating both creation and the poor. Smith is unflinching in his confrontation with a Euro-centric global system that has overseen multiple genocides, the systematic dispossession of indigenous people and the polycrisis that now engulfs us. He is honest about the ways the church has too often been co-opted by empire and deeply complicit in evil.

Smith ends the book with the provocative invitation to join God in the 'Great Unravelling'. In unmasking the pervasive culture of 'economism' he wonders whether it is still possible to hear the cry of our poor brothers and sisters in the Global South, and what it might mean to renounce domination and power.

This could so easily be a volume that feeds the despair of the current moment. The evidence of our chronic vulnerability to the acquisitive and oppressive powers of Mammon stretches through the ages, impervious to the solidarity, equality and grace of a gospel always pointing to justice and peace.

Smith, however, refuses the easy route of dejection. He finds threads of hope in every age, from the lonely prophets to the Humiliati of the Middle Ages, from the brave and fiery denunciations of the Victorian Edward Miall to the vitality and resilience of the church in the Majority World. Indeed, it is precisely in the shanties of the Global South and the theological reflections arising from the poor where Smith finds both hope and the future of Christianity: 'the new heartlands of this liberating religion'.

Smith ends with another question: 'what does it look like when the decision is made to worship God alone and his kindness becomes the foundation for life?' The holistic treatment of faith throughout the volume means we cannot ignore the social, political and, above all, economic aspects of Christianity. While Smith does point us in the direction of the Global South and those unmasking the economic powers of our age I would have liked more provocations to action: where are the contemporary renewal movements of the margins, the communities of economic solidarity, the proponents of de-growth and a financial system turned to grace and gift?

I live on an island that euphemistically calls itself 'an international business centre' (the latest in a long line of absurd epithets attempting to avoid the term 'tax haven'). If anywhere worships at the altar of Mammon it is the Isle of Man: politically, culturally and spiritually subservient to the demands of accumulative capital.

Instead of creative resistance and engagement with such a culture our church tradition desires to break down the scared-secular divide and makes the opposite error: everything is sacralised. We baptise the status quo. The vast socio-economic structures that govern our lives are relegated to the never-considered backdrop of our days. The market is like the weather: beyond us and out of our control. I am encouraged to be a good worker on my 'frontline' ('salt and light' indeed) in the capitalist system that has led to appalling destruction, systematic dehumanisation and ecological devastation.

God or Mammon? In a tired and decadent West, cosseted by a sterile and individualistic spirituality, hand-wringing as our creaking democracies lapse further into violence and genocide, complicit in and impotent before blasphemous poverty and pollution, it seems that we may have made our choice.

This book is a masterpiece: a rare and deep theological reflection that exhibits great moral courage and an uncompromising prophetic voice. Anyone seeking to dwell upon the roots of our culture and needing resources for an alternative vision, particularly those involved in church leadership, should read it, and act.
 

Michael Manning lives on the Isle of Man and is a member at Broadway Baptist Church. He is the author of No King but God (Resource Publications, 2015) and as the Eighth Manx Bard the forthcoming Graih: Prophetic-Utopian poems.