About Us
What do we mean by “Sabbath Economics”?
We use this phrase as shorthand for the contention that economics for Jews and Christians must be understood in the light of the central biblical tradition of keeping Sabbath. Conversely, we believe that Sabbath is at its core an economic ethic, not just a spiritual one.
A. Sabbath
In the Bible, sabbath has three essential connotations. First, it is a communal discipline of suspending work in order to remind us that human doing is subordinate to being. According to the primeval Garden story, the original vocation of the human (‘adam) was to nurture intimate, symbiotic relationships with God, with other humans and with an abundant and delightful Creation (Gen 1-2). Instead, as the Fall story contends (Gen 3), the human succumbed to a fatal temptation: to try to re-engineer or “improve” upon the Creation. Life outside the Garden thus became characterized by alienation from all three aspects of the original symbiosis, symbolized by difficult and exhausting work in a world that was now not quite as abundant. The Sabbath feast, however, reminds us of the original symbiosis, and calls us to restore relationships with God, each other and the earth.
Second, Sabbath discipline sets limits, particularly on our “economic” activity of production and distribution of goods. This is grounded in the belief that God is self-limiting, having created and then rested (Gen 2:1ff). Sabbath means to constrain our Fallen human impulse to work compulsively, to consume addictively, and to use and exploit resources and labor mercilessly. Thus Sabbath represents an ancient vision whose time has come again: for the central question of the 21st century will be whether or not we can set and maintain limits on our plundering of the planet, on our increasingly Promethean technologies, and on our spiraling violence toward the biosphere and each other. If we cannot, we will perish—which is precisely what the scripture cautions (see e.g. Ex 31:14-17; Lev 26:2-39).
Third, the Sabbath is a tradition of economic justice, which is introduced in the context of the manna story in Exodus 16. In that archetypal tale, the newly liberated Hebrew slaves are tutored in the old ways of sharing material sustenance, which is a gift from God (Ex 16:4). Everyone must gather “enough” and no one must accumulate “too much” (16:6), a vision of economic sufficiency for all. This tradition is further developed in the Jubilee debt-release tradition of Lev 25 and elsewhere. We believe these traditions deeply shaped the consciousness and practice of the Hebrew prophetic tradition, including that of Jesus and his early followers. And we think they should be brought back to the center, rather than the margins, of Jewish and Christian identity today.
B. Economics
In capitalist culture we usually identify economics with profit, accumulation, markets, development and trade. The word, however, comes from the Greek oikonomia, which in antiquity, as SEC member Jorge Pixley writes, connoted "the distribution of needs, especially food needs, to the household. Thus, etymologically, 'economy' ought to mean the distribution of goods so that the household can maintain itself."
Ironically, today the household is the last remaining space in our hyper-market society in which the traditional “gift economy” still obtains. That is, relatively speaking, labor is cooperative, and assets, possessions and consumption are distributed equitably among all household members. Anthropologists call this economic model of kin-group sharing “generalized reciprocity.” It is not utopian, but ancient, having been practiced by all human communities for 99% of our history on the planet.
This traditional model was predicated upon an old cosmology that considered everyone to be related, the creation as a commonwealth to be shared and stewarded, and the Spirit world as the origin of the great Gift. This is the worldview that is reflected in the Biblical writings—which is why those stories often seem so strange to our modern capitalist ears! The Bible teaches that the natural abundance of God's creation will last as long as human communities limit their consumption to need rather than greed, and commit themselves to distributing the fruits of creation justly--in other words, as long as we practice Sabbath! Conversely, the tradition warns sternly against the lethal consequences of all presumptions and practices that seek to own, hoard or use up the gifts of creation (see e.g. Numbers 11:31-34).
Tragically, throughout the history of civilization these warnings have been ignored--from the domestication of animals and plants to centralized city states to regional and eventually global empires. The original lifeways of shared abundance have thus been steadily eroded and replaced by a growing gulf between haves and have-nots, and an increasingly urgent environmental crisis. This process has accelerated in modernity, particularly with the global spread of capitalism and the ideology of "Progress." Thus a third of the world's population today suggers from extreme poverty, while "developed" societies are afflicted by "affluenza" and private and public addictions.
C. Sabbath Economics
In light of this global crisis, therefore, we believe that economics should be restored to a focus on how communities of production and consumption can steward, share and distribute the gifts of Creation equitably and sustainably.
Sabbath Economics, then, concerns the theoretical, spiritual and practical tasks of imagining how we might limit and shape our economic activity in order to keep the gifts of creation circulating justly among all living communities.
