White Paper

By Frank L. Cocozzelli, IPC Associate Director

The Issue

Is it possible to support a market-based economic model while being a progressive Christian? The answer is yes, because economics is as moral or immoral as anything else.

Addressing matters of morality and the marketplace is a rich tradition that stands at the center of how Americans have resolved -- and sought to prevent -- the problems wrought by reckless profit-driven factions. Indeed, significant portions of New Deal economics coming out of the Great Depression were influenced by the then-ascendant Social Gospel of mainline Protestantism; Catholic notions of Distributive Justice; and religious Jewish intellectuals inspired by the tradition of tikkun olam –making the world whole.

It is important for religious progressives therefore, to reconnect with our tradition and accomplishments in the arena of economic justice: in order to rebut the neoconservative argument that economics is inherently amoral, and to contend with the economic challenges of our time, that are in many ways analogous to those of the 1930s.

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