Michael
Winship wrote a delightful piece in Bill Moyers blog on the above title. Giving
up things for Lent is more common in Roman Catholic churches that in protestant
churches but many religious folk employ this practice to make them more conscious
of God’s gifts to them during the Lenten time of reflection.
ThinkProgress.org
reports that congregations across the country are in fact, changing their
banking practices during Lent. They are also asking big banks to repent on
their wrongly foreclosing on homeowners and benefiting from others misery in
the process. Some examples: churches in San Francisco removed $10 million from
Wells Fargo and called the bank to repent. Occupy Wall Street has a
moveyourmoney.org project which lists credit unions and community banks near
your zip code so you can participate in this rather large movement.
The Los
Angeles Times have reported this dissatisfaction with big banks has resulted in
1.3 million people opening new credit union accounts last year. Credit unions
now have 91.8 million members. CNN last November reported that the nation’s 10
biggest banks stand to lose as much as $185 billion in deposits this year.
When I
was an active pastor I often asked congregational members either to give
something up or to do something new
during Lent as a faith growth activity. This seems to meet both ideas. Banks
have participated in simple greed in the hurtful practices in the past, asking
them to repent seems sensible; why not ask them to give it up for Lent. And we
can encourage those banks with where we place our money.
The push for credit unions is one effort of the OWS movement I strongly support. And it is different from their other efforts which mostly involve giving those who rule over us a lot more power and control in our lives.
ReplyDeleteAs for the banks "wrongly foreclosing" and losing the title paperwork on mortgages, I've said before and I will say it again: banks that do this should forfeit the properties to those who live there. Especially in the case where the banks have bungled and lost the evidence that they own the property at all.