A spiritual perspective for men playing God

Should we even be listening to religious leaders when they opine on the financial crisis? Ted Sorensen, in his marvellous new book Counsellor: A Life at the Edge of History, is absolutely right to assert that, in the US at least, 'the wall between church and state ... has served both church and state so well for so long ...' As a very close adviser to both current presidential candidates and former adviser to president John F. Kennedy, this gifted speechwriter and consultant helped JFK deflect concern back when people thought that a Catholic could not govern America impartially - on the spurious grounds that he'd be taking backstage orders from the Pope.

That fear was absurd, and worries about a Catholic candidate perished forever in the wake of JFK's inspiring performance as president. But the residual distrust of any clerical comment on contemporary policy issues will often trigger knee-jerk suspicion rather than careful attention in this political culture.

The other day, for instance, Pope Benedict spoke out in Rome about the current global financial crisis. At a time when governments are - quite understandably - seeking to quantify the dimension of the problem, the Pope suggested that the problem is in the very definition of the crisis: 'We are now seeing, in the collapse of major banks, that money vanishes, it is nothing. All these things that appear to be real are in fact secondary ...'

The primary reality of life, he preaches, is the individual's relationship with God and with spiritual growth: 'We must ask ourselves, what does 'progress' really mean; what does it promise and what does it not promise?' Quoting philosopher Theodor W. Adorno, he said: 'Progress, seen accurately, is progress from the sling to the atom bomb.' The global financial system is built on a similar illusion, argued the Pope: 'Whoever builds his life on this reality, on material things, on success ... builds [his house] on sand.'

Pope Benedict is by no means the lone religious authority offering an entirely different take on the financial crisis. Recently, two Church of England leaders offered parallel perspectives. Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, said 'unimaginable wealth has been generated by equally unimaginable levels of fiction, paper transactions with no concrete outcome beyond profit for traders'. And John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York, likened the illusions of the stock market to 'Alice in Wonderland' and speculators who peddled short-sold shares to 'bank robbers and asset strippers'.

One needn't undergo an epiphany to accept a measure of value in such Christian perspectives. They are undoubtedly shared by Islamic and other religious leaders, as well. Karl Marx made an obvious point when he dismissed religion as 'the opiate of the masses'. It is sheer fantasy to dismiss the realities of economics in everyday life.