financial crisis

Greek Orthodox Metropolitan Nicholas of Detroit discusses Michigan’s severe economic decline — caused by the state’s close ties to the auto industry — and its effect on the state’s parishes in an interview with the Greek-American newspaper National Herald (available on the Orthodox Christian News site with free registration).

To tell you the truth, our people have been affected in some ways, but not as strongly as some other communities because the majority of our people our educated people. There are scientists working for the auto companies and also people working in the lines, but many of those people have retired so either they received a buyout or pension. Most of the young people are working as doctors, lawyers, pharmacists.

Interviewer Theodore Kalmoukos also asked Metropolitan Nicholas about the direction of the Church in America. The Metropolitan answered:

I hope we are going to God’s kingdom, but in order to get there, we have to strongly proclaim the gospel message. There was a proposition in our ballot here to increase embryonic stem cell research and I, along with Roman Catholic leadership of this area and some other Churches took a stand. We did not think it was appropriate. It was interesting because it was one of the first times where we made a short statement for the clergy to read in the parishes of Michigan and we had a number of people that came and said thank you. We wanted a statement from our Church and we had a few people asking why the Church was talking about moral issues. If we are going to be effective in this community, then we have to engage the community more strongly. I think we have to be able to witness who we are and what we are and why we have something to offer, by offering the people the words come and see.

Michigan’s Proposal 2, which voters passed 53 percent to 47 percent in November, allows the use of human embryos for research permitted under federal law.

As for the parishioners who questioned Metropolitan Nicholas about the church “talking about moral issues,” a simple reply would be — Isn’t that what churches do?

The World Council of Churches, which claims to speak for most Orthodox Churches around the globe, has formulated a number of proposals to reform the global financial system because of its inherent “injustice.” General Secretary Samuel Kobia sees the need for new transnational financial watchdog organizations that will “qualitatively regulate the growth in massive movements in capital.”

The problem here is that Kobia fails to understand that a global economy requires an international flow of capital — along with an international flow of goods and services and, very often, labor (indeed immigrant labor). In cataloging a long list of ills flowing from the current economic crisis, and the “neoliberal economic myth” of efficient markets, Kobia neglects to mention — or fails to see — how markets work to create wealth, economic growth and jobs. These are not things created by, as he would have it, “democratizing all global finance and trade institutions” across international boundaries. Nor is economic growth created by watchdog groups or ecumenical bodies. And Kobia also fails to see that in some of the most desperate regions of the developing world, including his own native Africa, more and more people are asking only for a chance to operate in a real market economy.

Here are some of Kobia’s more extreme proposals and my parenthetical responses:

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