I was a founder member of the Quakers & Business Group and am still a member. It issued the following press release yesterday and I am pleased to share it:
The Quakers & Business Group stands alongside people of all religions and none who are resisting economic injustice with peaceable action. We recognise the concerns of those engaged in the occupation of financial centres throughout the world. We support this movement that highlights the failures of the current structures and systems, leading to behaviours that exploit people and oppress their fellow human beings.
We are concerned about aspects of the global economic system that divide people from the environment and from one another. Q&B has worked, and continues to work, towards new systems of economic activity that relieve the current oppressive nature of many of our business practices.
Our understanding is that the Occupy movement's aims reflect the views of many of the people around the world, who seek fairness and right ordering in financial affairs. Quakers began as a grassroots protest movement. We know from our history that peaceful direct action plays an important and ethical role in resisting injustice and achieving change.
-ENDS-
The Quakers & Business Group is both a listed informal group within Britain Yearly Meeting and a registered charity whose purpose is ‘to promote Quaker principles particularly in the context of business and the workplace'.
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Richard
I think this is profoundly helpful following on from the fairly unequivocal stance of the Romans & the (less us say) rather more equivocal tone of the CofE.
I hope all the main Christian demoninations are onside saying that while it is possible to be a businessman buying & selling for a profit & still be a good Christian it is doubtful if you can be a businessman that lives up to the current free market ethos & still be a good Christian.
I think this will prove the biggest stumbling block to the ‘laissez faire’ right. They can dismiss Occupy protesters as ‘dirty dope-smoking hippies’ but they know their own core electorate are going to baulk at any suggestion that right-wing principles are at odds with the teaching of the church.
I have a different code of ethics. Land and capital (goods) should be owned by those that use them, not those who want to extract the publicly created rent of land or the profit created by workers.