Abstract
THE purpose of Lord Stamp's book is “to review the contacts between the ideals of Christianity and the working of the economic machine”. He begins with a chapter on the economic condition of Palestine at the time of Christ, and draws a far from idyllic picture “of over-population, intense industry to keep going, heavy taxation and much discontent”. From a careful examination of His recorded teaching, Lord Stamp establishes the conclusion that “Christ did not condemn the institutions and relationships of His day”. His teaching is thus for the modern no “ready-made guide, with easy application to the economic life of his own age”. The vital link between Christianity and economic life is rather to be found “in the logical extension or consequence of certain germinal, and even explosive, ideas of conduct and interrelationship which Christ taught”; and the essence of those ideas is that they are “personal and voluntary, and not prescribed by any external system or laws”.
Christianity and Economics
By Lord Stamp. Pp. xii + 194. (London; Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1939.) 5s. net.
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H., J. Christianity and Economics. Nature 143, 779–780 (1939). https://doi.org/10.1038/143779b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/143779b0
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