Jesus, Wealth, Ancient Christian Exemplars, and the Danger of Boutique Christianity
A Conversation with Miguel Escobar, author of The Unjust Steward
Do you ever have a nagging sense – maybe when you hear Jesus tell the “Rich Young Ruler” to sell everything he has and give it to the poor, or when Jesus tells his disciples that it is harder for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God– that Jesus had a different message about wealth than much of what gets said in church: “Support the stewardship campaign!” “Give generously!” “We need to be prudent stewards of the endowment!”
Miguel Escobar, after many years working as a self-described “church bureaucrat” for Episcopal institutions in New York City, had such a nagging sense; so, he researched and wrote a book exploring his questions more deeply, The Unjust Steward: Wealth, Poverty, and the Church Today. The book looks at the evolution of Christian thinking about money over the course of its first 500 years through twenty-four “snapshots” of Christian theologians and saints from that time period.
I found Miguel to be an insightful and provocative conversation partner based on his intimate knowledge of very different worlds of faith and wealth. Growing up in small-town Texas, as the grandson of Catholic migrant farm workers, Miguel appreciates how the announcement of Jesus’ birth heralds good news for the poor. Jesus’ mother Mary sings, “[God] has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty.” In contrast, as an adult, Miguel has worked for the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, the Episcopal Church Foundation, and for Episcopal Divinity School at Union. In these roles, he has worked with and for wealthy organizations and individuals. For them (and for me), Mary’s news about what Jesus’ birth means for the rich and the poor is more complicated.
Miguel and I talked about the worlds and experiences that have shaped his thinking around Christianity and wealth; the history of the church “stewardship campaign” and its ethical complexity; his advice for wealthy churches like Trinity Wall Street (Trinity has over $6 billion in its real estate portfolio); the parable of the unjust steward as an alternative ethic for “promiscuous generosity” (a phrase Miguel credits to Louie Crew); how to work through feelings of hypocrisy and shame around being wealthy and Christian toward faithful action; and the threat of middle-class churches becoming “boutique version[s] of Christianity” that don’t include the poor.
Two things stand out from reading Miguel’s book and talking to him. The first is the gift of learning about early Christians like Basil of Caesarea and Justin Martyr. It’s wonderful to be reminded of the boldness, breadth, and creativity that the tradition contains concerning how to be faithful with wealth. The second is a story Miguel relays about a tradition of reading the man in the Parable of the Pearl of Great Price as being the same person as the Rich Young Ruler, but older and wiser. From this perspective, as a young man the ruler was too scared to give up his wealth and prestige; as an older man he is willing to sell everything for the Kingdom of Heaven. What if, like for the Rich Young Ruler, the story about our relationship with wealth and faith - for you, for me, for the church - isn’t over yet?
You can listen to the podcast below or find it on your favorite app via my website:
Helpful Links
Here is a link to Miguel’s book, The Unjust Steward: Wealth, Poverty, and the Church Today.
Here is a New York Times story about Trinity Wall Street, The Church With the $6 Billion Portfolio
Miguel talks about the history of pew rentals, a common way that churches collected money prior to stewardship campaigns.
There is more here about the history of the “every member canvass” replacing pew rentals in the early 20th century.
Miguel references the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr’s critique of the stewardship model of Christian fundraising. Here is more about Reinhold Niebuhr. Miguel summarizes Niebuhr’s critique in the introduction of The Unjust Steward.