 There are three different babies from which to choose. We will actually clear the room this afternoon or this evening actually after the panel discussion of all personal learning, otherwise they'll be put in, lost, and found. So I just wanted to let you know that. And I think those are my only announcements. So with that, I turn it over to Chaplain Brian Conkel, who will introduce our third speaker of the day. So what does Jesus have to do with Wall Street? What does religion have to do with economics? What does Christianity have to do with capitalism? Or to ask a question that rests underneath such questions, where is God in all of this? In what has become a distinctive feature at various Nobel Conferences throughout the decades together, we ask, where is God in all of this? Our next speaker will push us and prod us in an attempt to persuade us to ponder the importance and implications of such a question. Our next speaker will reveal the ways in which religion informs economics, and economics informs religion, because in both religion and economics, action informs belief. And belief does indeed inform action. Furthermore, our next speaker will show us that while the positive and negative consequences of personal and public belief are well documented in the study of religion, we rarely use comparable standards to critique the religious-like faith that is often present in the realm of economics. And more specifically, we rarely critique, let alone even notice, the religious-like devotion that is so often bestowed upon the creeds, the congregations, and even the high holy priests of the marketplace. Today we recognize the importance of posing such questions. As our dominant fiscal cycle seems to impose repeated tragic failures around the world, because it seems to legitimize inequality and destruction of the earth, and because profit so often seems to be placed as a higher priority than people. Whether or not you believe in a Jewish carpenter from Nazareth who ministered 2,000 years ago, and whether or not you support a Jewish senator from Vermont who spoke in Philadelphia two months ago, our next speaker will stir us to consider the beliefs and impacts surrounding our contemporary economic edifice. This among other things is why we are honored and delighted to welcome Dr. Jorg Rieger, who serves as the Cal Turner Chancellor's Chair of Wesleyan Studies and Distinguished Professor of Theology at Vanderbilt Divinity School in Nashville, Tennessee. An internationally recognized activist and scholar who engages in questions of liberation theology, economics, class, and issues of religion and organized labor. His prophetic imagination is a valuable addition to our conference proceedings. For over two decades, his visionary work has utilized tools from cultural studies, critical theory, and religious studies to examine the relationship between theology and public life. And to probe the multiple connections and conceptions of political and economic power. Author and editor of over 20 books, his work has been translated into several languages. He has lectured throughout the United States and around the world. And is viewed as one of the foremost activist intellectuals in promoting the fullness of life through both religion and economics. And so, where is God in all of this? What does religion have to do with economics? What does Christianity have to do with capitalism? What does Jesus have to do with Wall Street? Please, let us welcome Dr. Jorg Rieger. It's a pleasure to be here this afternoon as a scholar of religion and theology among economists. In the interest of full disclosure, I'm not an economist. I probably know just enough to be dangerous. But the thing here is not so much what each of us know, but how do we put things together? How do we engage in a conversation that's interdisciplinary, that's transdisciplinary, that asks questions that are not always asked? This is where I see my work, asking some questions. And then, of course, also presenting some challenges and hoping that we will come to some conclusions together. The somewhat provocative title of my talk is what does Jesus have to do with Wall Street? Let me start by turning the question around. What does Wall Street have to do with Jesus? Most people would probably assume that the answer to either question is very little. Jesus doesn't have much to do with Wall Street. Wall Street doesn't have much to do with Jesus. There's a common assumption that there is a clear division of labor between religion on one hand and economics on the other. It goes somewhat like this. Economics is about the real world, while religion is about an ideal world somewhere else. Or economists deal with reality, facts, and hard data, while religionists deal with intangible things like lofty ideas and hopes. Or another stereotype, economics is planted firmly in this world, while religion is, for the most part, floating in another world. Of course, in this case, Jesus has indeed very little to do with Wall Street, and Wall Street has little to do with Jesus. In my presentation this afternoon, however, I want to introduce a different way of looking at this relationship. Among the many books written about Jesus, there is one with the title, Jesus CEO. Jesus CEO. It is 20 years old, and it still sells pretty well from what I understand. The author envisions Jesus according to the prefabricated image of a CEO. Now, perhaps that's not surprising. Many of our images of Jesus have been shaped by the dominant images of the times. As you all know, Jesus was once envisioned as a king on a throne, or as a ruler, as a feudal overlord, and today perhaps it's natural that Jesus is envisioned more like a business person or a CEO. Take a look at the images on the screen. What I take from this is that what happens at Wall Street somehow seems to shape our faith. What happens at Wall Street is not just number crunching, business dealing, and other important things. What happens at Wall Street shapes us all the way to the core, including our faith, except that for the most part, people of faith don't pay attention to it. But test yourself. What images come to your mind when you say the old Christian confession, Jesus is Lord. How do you envision a Lord? How do you envision power today? What kind of power do you attribute to Jesus? That is one of the questions here. So economics, as I'm arguing, is more than just number crunching. Economics shapes our imagination, shapes our religion, shapes us all the way to the core. And the dominant perspective of this economic trajectory is that there is no alternative. There's assumption this is the way it has to be. And it seems that this perspective has been successful. If I think back to my students at SMU where I taught for the past 22 years before moving on to Vanderbilt, it seemed to me that for most students it was easier to believe that the world will go up in flames than that capitalism will ever end. There is no alternative. The world may end, not capitalism. The much-discussed gospel of prosperity fits right in here. It's not just a matter of promising people fabulous wealth. As you all know, the gospel of prosperity preachers on TV do all the time. The gospel of prosperity also shapes our images of God. It shapes our belief, it shapes us to the core. And perhaps the mainline churches are not always that different. When we think of God, people of faith, we very often times think of God as at top. The gaze goes up to heaven. The gaze goes up to the corner offices of the business buildings, and the gaze goes up to the big steeples. So in this sense, there is an imagination that is shaped by what is happening in our economic lives, what is happening at Wall Street. Now it is well known that in the United States we adhere to a principle that encourages the separation of church and state. This is a lesson that we learned the hard way. You know this is a lesson perhaps that we learned also from Europe. And there is a lot of wisdom here to talk about a separation of church and state. What we're not talking about and what we might consider in the future is what about a separation of church and economics? What about a separation of church and economics? So that these boundaries are in some ways at least reflected in that things do not automatically move from one realm into the other and back. So in some my first question here, what does Wall Street have to do with Jesus? I would say a great deal. The only questions you might raise here is does this popular image of Jesus as a ruler, as a king, or as a CEO actually capture who Jesus was and who Jesus is? And are these images helpful to the majority of humanity? Now back to my original question, what does Jesus have to do with Wall Street? Or how can religion make a difference in this context? Now some of you may be pastors and preachers, some of you know pastors and preachers. And there's a great deal of frustration these days because we are figuring out that adding a few interesting ideas may not be enough to go up with Wall Street. Adding a few interesting ideas to challenge an entity as powerful as Wall Street and the economic status quo probably does not make too much of a difference. What I want to talk about this afternoon is about a religion that can be envisioned in a different way, a religion that does not have to be understood as simply a matter of great ideas and lofty ideals. I'm arguing that religion can indeed have its feet on the ground just as much as economics does, and sometimes perhaps even more so. And this is not just a theory, I'm arguing that this is at the core of our three Abrahamic traditions. Let me just talk about these three this afternoon, there's other religions we might discuss. But if you look at our Abrahamic traditions, you will realize that for Jews, for Christians, and for Muslims, our religion is not simply lofty ideas, our idea, our religion is somehow linked to what is going on on the ground. In fact, seeing religion as a matter of lofty ideas is a rather modern idea that was designed at one point to tame and to domesticate religion. Religion is up here, reality is down there. That is an idea whose time is up. So here I want to give you an example from Christianity where religion actually has its feet on the ground, and this particular example that I'm about to give you has deep roots in the Jewish traditions. Just a situation in the Gospel of Matthew that you probably remember, this is Matthew 11, where John the Baptist who was a bit of a radical, also a religionist who had his feet on the ground, has been thrown in jail, got too dangerous, and from jail John sends his disciples to Jesus asking the famous question, are you the one who is supposed to come or should we wait for someone else? Are you the one who is supposed to come or should we wait for somebody else? And if Jesus was a man of lofty ideals, great ideas, you know, pie in the sky, he probably would have answered something like this, well go and tell John he should not lose the faith. Go and tell John to just believe, to think positively, think happy thoughts. Go and tell John to dream big and things will ultimately happen. Now the actual answer is a different one. This is what you get in Matthew 11, this should actually be Matthew 11 verses 4 and 5, not Matthew 11, 45, Matthew 11 verses 4 and 5. This is Jesus' answer back to John the Baptist. Go and tell John what you hear and see. The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised and the poor have good news brought to them. Instead of asking John to believe blindly, to have some great idea, to think positive thoughts, Jesus provides evidence. Go and tell John what you hear and see. Now regarding the evidence that's provided by Jesus here, it's not my fault if this sounds like a healthcare plan. Think about it, doesn't it sound like there is something about healing here, bodily, material things that have a lot to do with health and healthcare? If you look at the statement, sometimes I wonder if it sort of builds up, if it moves from slightly easier to more difficult things. Saying that the blind receive their sight, of course, is a belief in miracles. But you know that something you might envision, that the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, is something that you can still imagine, that the dead are being raised is perhaps more difficult. So it kind of builds this way, you know, from the easier things. Raising the dead is a fairly difficult proposition. It happens, says Jesus. But perhaps the most difficult statement here is the last one. The poor half-good news brought to them. That might be slightly more difficult than raising the dead. And I'm not just kidding about this. It builds the poor half-good news brought to them, weren't we supposed to believe that this is not possible, but somehow it is happening. Of course, what is good news to the poor? Well, pie in the sky as far as I can tell is never good news to the poor. Telling the poor, you know, that if you only believe you will go to heaven after you pass, is not good news to the poor. What is good news to the poor? The only thing I can imagine here is good news to the poor is the message that you will no longer be poor. So here you have an example of religion, not as lofty ideas, but as having its feet on the ground and providing some evidence. You might wonder, how did we get to that point? How do we ever get to that point? There's a new insight in the historical Jesus research that points out, there are several books on the topic these days, that Jesus actually was more, was not merely a radical preacher. Well, that's of course the story that we know, and I think that's pretty clear. Jesus had a few radical things to say, and people listened, came to hear him speak, like you all coming to the Nobel lectures, that's great. But what we're learning about Jesus these days is that Jesus, in addition to being a radical preacher, was also an organizer. Jesus was somebody who not only had a few words to say, a couple of ideas, but he organized people, he brought them together, and he built power. That's of course what made him dangerous to the Roman Empire, and you can see another line in that history. On the Baptist who also preached and organized, got jailed and killed, Jesus who preached and organized, got jailed and killed, the same happened by the way to the Apostle Paul. Even the Apostle Paul was not merely a radical preacher, Paul too was an organizer. So here, religion firmly has its feet planted on the ground, and it's not surprising that for that it is getting some pushback. Now I'm not recommending people to get jailed and killed, but I often tell my students that if they don't ever get any pushback at all for what they're doing, perhaps their religion is not all that it could be. With this in mind, let's take another look back at economics, which is a discipline that supposedly has its feet on the ground at all times. What's interesting to me as a scholar of religion and theology is that there is now a conversation in the field of economics whether religion, sorry, whether economics itself actually functions now more like a religion. Is it possible that there are parts of economics these days that actually function like the sort of religion that always talks about great ideas, pie in the sky, and lofty ideals? This is not an argument that I'm making easily as a theologian. This is an argument that economists have made themselves. Robert Nelson, for instance, has argued that important parts of economics today function indeed like a religion. By that he means that the task of certain top economists is not so much economic analysis or number crunching. The task of certain top economists, says Nelson, is keeping the big ideas before people. In other words, the role of certain top economists is to maintain the faith. You might talk about a division of labor among economists themselves. Some work with numbers and data. And others function like the high priests of old who seek to comfort their faithful flock with great ideas. Now Nelson talks about this simply as a scholar. He's not evaluating it. He's not critiquing it. But as a scholar of religion and theology, I have to express some concerns. What happens when the discipline of economics or at least some people within the field of economics lose contact with economic reality? And for me, the question is always, what happens when faith, big ideas, big ideals become blind? This is one of the genuine problems for scholars of religion and theology. Keep in mind, not all religion is necessarily helpful. The big ideas religion may not be as helpful. Is it possible that the same is true for economics? I'm concerned that blind faith is perennial and pervasive. It's not only a religious problem. It sneaks around, and sometimes it comes in through the back door. As a nation, I would argue that blind faith has become one of our key problems today once again. And perhaps it's not surprising if you see how religion, politics, and economics have sometimes worked together and reinforced each other in negative ways. Of course, that's what many people think is the basic definition of religion. Blind faith, big ideas that people hold as they please, especially in such a way that never anybody gets to ask for evidence and hard data. Tight to the assumption, of course, that if you believe long and hard enough, your beliefs will eventually come through the so-called power of positive thinking. I would argue this happens much less frequently than people think. The power of positive thinking is not as powerful as you may have been told. Now, the good news for me is that neither economics nor religion have to be built on such big ideas, positive thinking or blind faith. Of course, one could wonder about what all this does in current economic and religious debates. You all have heard the statement that a rising tide will lift all boats. This is a statement that President Kennedy made at the dedication of a dame in the state of Arkansas. A rising tide will lift all boats. And if you look at the physics of it, it actually makes sense. But one of the questions today is, is this actually happening? Or is it just one of these great ideals, big ideas and blind faith? Is it actually happening? What we can tell today is that more and more boats are not rising in the rising tide. And of course, what do you do with people who are not even in a boat when the tide rises? What we can tell from the numbers is that the gap between the rich and the poor is now greater than it ever was, even in the United States. I sometimes ask my students to tell me whether they thought wealth inequality was greater in the ancient Roman Empire or today. And I get mixed responses. Sometimes people feel it's worse now, sometimes people feel it's worse then. But the numbers are always surprising. In Rome in the year 150, the common era, it was such that 1% the top 1% controlled 16% of all wealth. That was inequality in the Roman Empire. 1% controlled 16% of all wealth. If you follow the debates, you will know that in the current situation in the United States, the top 1% controls 40% of all wealth. It's two very different situations, 1 to 16, 1 to 40. A rising tide will lift all boats? Well, if you look at the current situation of inequality, we're still waiting for that to happen. And it hasn't happened ever since President Kennedy phrased the term. On the other hand, even though this may be a somewhat simple example, you can still realize that much of our economic policy is based on this belief. That's why stimulus money spend at the top. That's why there are enormous tax cuts for corporations. And that's why bailout money went to the top rather than to the bottom in the Great Recession. Based on the belief that if the top is rising, everybody is rising. Another example for beliefs that may or may not be true anymore is this idea that the economy always goes in cycles. Now, if you look at the macroeconomy, I think this is still true enough, at least for the time being, the economy goes in cycles, it goes up, it goes down, and it goes up again. But if you look at what's happening in people's lives, that may not be the case. Our personal economies may not be rising at the same time that the other economy, the macroeconomy is rising. At the time of the Great Recession, people were telling us, economists were telling us that half of the jobs that were lost in the Great Recession would never be coming back. Well, that was true in the sense that the jobs that came back were not the same jobs. The jobs that came back after the Great Recession were usually jobs with fewer benefits, jobs that were either temp or had other sort of limitations, jobs that were not of the same quality. So here, the idea that the economy always goes in cycles may be true to some degree, but it's less and less true for the rest of us. For most of us, it seems that the tide is not rising for us while it is rising for others. If the goldfish on the cover of this book could be looking worried, I think, probably it would. No rising tide. This is not to contradict the fact that the economy goes in cycles, but it is to remind us that this may not be the case for more and more of us. So what do we do when economics becomes a bad kind of religion? Like the Gospel of Prosperity, blind faith always helps a few. There's always some people that get wealthy through the schemes of the Gospel of Prosperity, but it is never the masses. Blind faith helps a few, but not the masses. The antidote that I will suggest this afternoon is that we need to pay attention to where it hurts. Pay attention to the masses. Pay attention to where the pain is. Pay attention not only to the big ideas and perhaps not even the common market indicators tell the whole story. Pay attention to those who get hurt in the current situation. During the right recession, we had a situation where more and more people were losing their homes, their jobs, their livelihoods, and their retirement funds. People were losing things, not only in terms of property, but also in terms of the options they had, in terms of the possibilities they had to make a decent life. I once called this the logic of downturn, not in a negative way, but simply to remind us that we have to look at things from this perspective. We can no longer ignore that there is downturn happening and that even as the recession seemed to be lessening, downturn was not completely gone. So here I'm suggesting that we might look at things from the underside, looking at things from the perspective of the least of these, which are not just a few people, but very many of our contemporaries. In many of our large cities, a third of all children live below the line of poverty. In the city of Dallas, where we lived for 22 years, it was 38 or 39% children in the United States that lived below the level of poverty. In these cases, blind faith is not helping. The gospel of prosperity does not work. It cannot produce fabulous wealth for more than just a few individuals. And even mainline religion, it seems to me, may not be able to help unless we pay attention to what's happening all around us. So what does Jesus have to do with Wall Street? Go and tell John what you hear and see. Here's the challenge. Let's look again at our big ideas at the performance indicators from the perspective of those who are not benefiting from the system. Let's look at economics from the perspective of the poor, women, racial, and ethnic minorities. And let's look at economics from the perspective of the 99% of us who have to work for a living. That includes the middle class, which has come under a great deal of pressure in recent decades as well. In the rest of my time, I want to give you one example of how religion might actually help to reshape Wall Street. There are other examples, but here I want to focus on the notion of desire. This is one of the things that connects religion and economics, the notion of desire. It plays a key role in both realms. Now, one shallow way of addressing desire is by moralizing about it. It is common to blame desire in the form of consumerism, greed, envy, and jealousy. And perhaps that's what you would expect of somebody speaking from a religious perspective. But I'm going to argue that this kind of moralizing is not very helpful because it barely scratches the surface of our problems. What is the problem with consumerism? Most people seem to assume that the problem is desire for more and more stuff, and somehow that we can control it. But what if consumerism is not merely about stuff and what if it is beyond our control? What is consumerism is about desire for happiness, meaning, love, and freedom? Buying a new cell phone is not just about having a little computer in your pocket. It's about feeling connected. It's about feeling appreciated. It's about feeling loved. Can you hear me now? What's the old Verizon slogan? The reformer, Martin Luther, and of course this is the place to talk about Luther here at Gustavus Adolphus. Luther understood this deeper level of desire. In his greater catechism, he said, God is that to which your heart clings and entrusts itself. God is that to which your heart clings and entrusts itself. In other words, what we desire points to God or perhaps becomes our God. That's a reminder for me that desire goes very deep and merely moralizing about it does not help. Surprisingly, even though desire is such a crucial part of our lives, economics and religion often take it for granted, assuming that it is natural. But here's another look at desire. In the world of economics, there's a principle called the falling rate of profit, which is to say that over time, profit margins go down. As a result, production needs to increase if you want to make a profit. Adds to that what economist John Kenneth Galbraith has called the diminishing urgency of wants and consumption and you get another picture. Desire here has to be produced constantly and reproduced because desire and wants diminish at a certain point. Galbraith has pointed out people only need so many things or as I sometimes say to my students, you only need so many candy bars. The comes upon when your desire for candy bars is satisfied and you're not gonna buy anymore. People only need so many cars, so many houses or cell phones. So here in economics, it's pretty obvious that desires have to be produced in order to keep the economy humming. Whatever natural level of desire people bring is not enough. Desires of consumers have to be created. So desire here has become a battleground. The average person is exposed to somewhere between 300 and 3000 advertisements every day. In other words, the buck does not release stock with the consumer. Blaming the consumer for consumerism does not go deep enough. The consumer is not really in charge. The common talk about a consumer-driven economy misrepresents the issue. Consumers, I would say, are not so much driving their subjects to be driven. As a footnote here, this has deep implications for democracy. Who is actually driving what? The desire that is produced here reaches into the deepest levels of our desire. This is something that commercial advertisers have always known. Their primary task is not to provide information about stuff. Their primary task is about linking stuff with deeper desires for happiness, meaning, love, and freedom, with the ultimate goal, of course, of imprinting people for life. Unfortunately, people of faith and of good will often fail to deal with these deeper levels of desire. Many of our indictments of consumerism, therefore, are not really helpful. Moralizing about desire will not do it. So here, I want to suggest an alternative strategy for shaping desire. And I would start this by pointing out that desire is always shaped in relation to material things, whether we like it or not. The deal here is not that we have to play off material things and spiritual things. The point is not that we have to become more spiritual as a lot of religious people are arguing. The point is we have to become aware of material reality in a different perspective. Recall that Jesus is not fleeing material reality either. In fact, Jesus, instead of leaving material reality behind, deals with it, addresses it, changes it, transforms it. So spiritual and material are here not disconnected in two different realms. They belong together and they always shape up and get reshaped together. So you won't get out of this by simply leaving the material realm and economics behind. The problem is not that there's a concern for material things. The problem is what kind of material reality is promised here. There's one material reality that's tied to the idea of limitless wealth for individuals and the fulfillment of all our desires for more and more stuff. That's one material reality. There's however another kind of material reality that we're not always talking about. Material reality can also be seen in terms of the needs of people. And I'm arguing that desire can be reshaped as you connect it to real needs of real people. By reconnecting with real needs, you don't have to moralize about desire. You can actually develop a therapy where desire is gradually reshaped. Now some of these real needs I need to point out are very tangible things. First of course, food, shelter, and clothing. This is what all of us are aware as the basic needs. But second here, you have sanitation, education, and healthcare. I think this can also be listed as part of the needs of people. The third one is the one that we're usually not discussing. I would argue that another basic need for human beings is the need for work, the needs to be productive, and the need to have opportunities to be creative in your world. Too often, economists are measuring economic progress by the number of things that people own. More and more stuff here is not on this list of needs. Acquiring more and more stuff is not one of the basic human needs. And it's not a good measurement, I would argue, of economic progress. Historian Peter Stearns has noted that for the poor, consumerism is never the question. Seeking adequate subsistence is. I would add, the poor also need the opportunity to work, which means to contribute to a good life and to employ their productive and creative capacities. So here we have two very different material realities. One is acquiring more and more things, limited wealth, unlimited desire. The other one is paying attention to basic human needs. And here, the poor are not unique. If the poor are seeking adequate subsistence rather than consumerism, they simply reveal what at the bottom of it is true for all of us. For those college students in philosophy classes studying epistemology, my advice would be sometimes you see things better from the bottom than from the top. Back to religion. There is something we can learn from the Abrahamic traditions and again, that's Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The lesson here is easily summarized. God is not always found and sometimes not at all found on the mountaintops, but God is always found in situations of real life needs. I'll give you two examples. The first one is the example of Moses. This is a figure that you all have heard of and it's a figure that the three religions share in common, Christians, Jews and Muslims. All have this figure of Moses and all have the ancient stories of the Exodus. Remember Moses being raised at the Pharaoh's court as a prince. You can imagine that he had some fairly large desires, perhaps limitless. You can imagine how he was looking at things, acquiring more and more stuff, more and more happiness. Yet in Moses' case, you have a great example for how desire is reshaped in relation with basic human needs. The book of Exodus, we read this passage. One day after Moses had grown up, he went out to his people and saw their forced labor. He saw an Egyptian beating one of his kin's folk. The story continues. You see Moses siding with the Hebrews. Moses' desire being reshaped. All the way to the fact that Moses becomes one of these early labor leaders, organizing the Hebrew slaves, leading them out of Egypt. And if you look at the old story of the burning bush that Jews and Christians share, Muslims have a story about God talking out of fire. What really matters is what God is saying here. The old story tells us that God says, God has observed the misery of the people and has heard their crying. Perhaps there is a sense that even God wakes up in this situation of suffering. Even God's desires get shaped in such a way that liberation eventually occurs. By the way, in the bottom left-hand side of this slide, you see a picture of Harriet Tubman, who was one of the leaders of the Underground Railroad. And I put her there because she was oftentimes called an American Moses. So this is not just the story of an ancient person named Moses. This is a story of many leaders that have had their desires reshaped in the struggle so that they made a difference. For Christians, I think this is what the Jesus story also reminds us of. The Jesus traditions really make no sense without siding with the real needs of people. Seems that Moses learned a few things when he joined the labor movement in Egypt, but Jesus might have also learned a few things by working in construction with his father, Joseph. If you ever wondered why God in the Christian traditions does not become human in an upper-class family, especially since this would have had all sorts of advantages, all other things being equal, as economists say. So here you have the Jesus traditions that also show how desire is reshaped in relation with the real needs of people. I wanna tell you quickly a story that very well demonstrates what I'm talking about. This is a parable that Jesus tells in the Gospel of Matthew. You know it by the name of the parable of the unforgiving servant. In this parable you have a boss who forgives an enormous amount of debt for his worker. And then the worker goes out and he does not forgive his fellow worker a little debt. The way this story is usually preached is that you must be like the boss, you must forgive. Now for a lot of people, what is the reason? You know, why would you worry about forgiving debt to your fellow human beings? I talked about two material realities a moment ago. One material reality of course suggests that having a few bucks in your pocket is always better. The other material reality, and I think this is what Jesus is talking about in that parable, is thinking differently. Now think of it from the perspective of the workers. The one worker doesn't get it. The other workers actually get it. They complained, I think this was stupid. This was a bad move on the side of that one worker. What was wrong? Well, if you're a worker, the boss forgives you all the debt and you cannot afford to forgive your fellow worker some of his debt. Why wouldn't you do it? Why would you not do that? Especially if you think about the two material realities. In one picture, you have a few more bucks in your pocket. In the other picture, by forgiving the debt with your fellow worker, you now have solidarity. You now have a friend. You now have the beginning of what might turn into a labor movement. If all the workers were to forgive each other, they now had a bond of solidarity. That's a lot more valuable than having a few extra bucks in your pocket. And if one point down the road, the boss ever changes his mind and starts writing on debt again, well, you're prepared. So here, this is a story that might actually have some interesting economic implications. Think about if this story had guided us during the Great Recession. What was the logic for bailing out the big banks? Well, we talked about that a minute ago. But there's an equal logic that we didn't ever really discuss that would have argued it makes a lot of sense to bail out working people who are struggling. What if this bailout for working people might have led to wealth trickling up? Well, one thing we know for sure is that the bailout of the banks has not led to wealth trickling down. So here's the lesson that I'm pushing. Desire can indeed be reshaped, not by dreaming about it, not by moralizing about it, but by putting into touch with real life needs. Today, most of the economy is based on unlimited desire for more and more stuff and the production of more and more stuff. The stated goal, of course, is the infinite maximization of profit for stockholders. I think Luther was right. Troubled desire will lead to troubled gods. The alternative would be an economy based on desire shaped in relation to real life needs. Here, you could look at the production of desire, not in terms of this unlimited desire, but in terms of the needs of people who have to work for a living. Here, the goal is different. It's not the infinite maximization of profit, but it is work with dignity. It is work that lets you be productive. It's work that lets you use your abilities. It's work that lets you be creative. And this might be another yardstick for the economy. The old yardstick that we have been using is how much stuff people have. And economists always remind us that people now have more stuff than they ever had before. That's true enough. I'm not disputing that. I'm suggesting a different yardstick, however, that might be more helpful, namely whether people's work is valued, whether they're able to contribute to the economy, whether they're able to make a difference, employ their ability, and whether they work and live with dignity as human beings. In conjunction with this, the question is whether all of the other needs are made as well, food, shelter, clothing, sanitation, education, and healthcare. I'm not trying to romanticize working people. I know that working people's desire is also a major battleground. But it seems to me that there is a desire here in our society that cannot be as easily co-opted as we think. I would argue that working people cannot ultimately be controlled by unlimited desire because they do not ultimately benefit from it. Working people cannot be ultimately controlled by unlimited desire because they do not ultimately benefit. Now, keep in mind, working people are not a minority in America. We're not just talking about fast workers, Walmart workers, and other low-wage workers. There are estimates that two thirds of all Americans are part of the working class. This is argued by economists. And one thing we know coming out of the Occupy movement, the 99% of us are the ones who have to work for a living. So here, when I say working people, ultimately I'm wondering if there's something in all of us that can help us look at shaping desire in different ways in different perspectives. So in conclusion, I think it is pretty obvious that inequality is one of the great challenges of our own time. It's worse than it was in many periods in history. And we're not observing only inequality, we're observing inequality that keeps growing. No one knows where it will lead and no one knows where it will end. It may take us all down. Why are things out of whack? Let me skip forward to my final slide here. One reason I have discussed is that we value unlimited desire over desire grounded in real life needs. Inequality is rising because our economy is built on the manipulation of desire that follows the interests of the elites. An alternative would be an economy built on desire that respects the true needs of people. As I argued in my talk, many of the Abrahamic traditions point in this direction as well. So this is not just an idea, this is a time-honored tradition that we might have to discuss, that we may have to take seriously again in one way or another. The good news is that these things have been going on throughout history. In our own history here in the United States, we have seen decisive transformations not only of the economy, but also of culture and of religion that have for the most part moved from the bottom up. Abolition is in the end of slavery. The women's movement, women's suffrage, the civil rights movement, the labor movement. If you appreciate the end of slavery, thank the abolitionists. If you appreciate women's right to vote, thank the suffragists, all movements from the bottom, from the people. If you enjoy weekends of work, thank the labor movement. Today, it seems to me, as we discuss economic balance in the future, we also have to talk about social movements that are budding once again. We have to talk about what all of this means in reshaping our desires, in reshaping the sort of common assumptions that all of us thought were solid, and the assumption especially that there is no alternative. Seems to me there is alternatives, and it seems to me that religious traditions have a place at the table, not in terms of telling others what to do, but in terms of being debated, in terms of being taken seriously, and in terms of being weighed as to its pros and its cons. That's all I'm asking for here, and I'm confident that we'll have a good discussion. Thank you. Thank you, Professor Rigger. Again, we will be gathering your questions throughout the arena. We invite our panelists to come up and join us, and as soon as we get hooked up, we will begin the discussion. Thank you.