A new book by Guy Shrubsole Who Owns England? sheds some light on this longstanding question. There is a familiar assumption that floats around in the cultural ether, that the C of E is a massive landowner. But it turns out not to be totally true. Roughly, the Church of England owns 0.5% of England. And given that, through the parish system, the church has a presence in every community in this country, this doesn’t sound a lot to me. Especially when compared to the aristocracy, which owns a whopping 30% of it, for instance.

What fascinated me about Shrubsole’s findings was not how much land the church owns, but how much land it has lost – and relatively recently. According to his figures, the church owned some two million acres of glebe land (an area of land within an ecclesiastical parish used to support a parish priest) in 1873. By 1976, this figure had plummeted to 111,628 acres. And Shrubsole does his best to make this sound suspicious. “The mystery of who stole the church’s land is a whodunnit worthy of a Brother Cadfael novel,” he writes.

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It’s an interesting approach. For if there is a question of theft here, it is how the church came by its land in the first place. Glebe was given to the Church of England by Henry VIII as a sort of baptism present at the Reformation. It became the principal endowment of the church. This was mostly land, perhaps four million acres, that was stolen – and I don’t think that is too strong a word – from the Roman Catholic church, along with the dissolution of the monasteries in the 16th century. Forget Henry’s headline sexual peccadilloes, this theft of land is the really dirty stuff – the original sin of the Church of England.

And this theft shaped our society in many and unexpected ways. For as well as giving millions of acres to the church, a great deal of stolen land was sold off cheap by the crown to aristocrats as a bribe for their support. Little wonder there was no enthusiasm amongst the establishment for the return of the Roman church under, say, Bonnie Prince Charlie: the return of the Roman church would have meant a return of stolen land.

After much digging and a certain amount of guess work, Shrubsole calculates that about 70,000 acres of glebe land are now left in the church’s ownership. So where did the rest of it go? Well, according to Savills, the estate agents, “glebe land is usually situated within a settlement, with a high chance of it being zoned for development”. And this “can make the land very valuable”. Surely there’s our answer.

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Consider St Paul’s cathedral. Just outside there is large statue of Queen Anne, given pride of place in memory of her programme of adding to the church’s glebe land – called Queen Anne’s Bounty. It was around her statue that the Occupy protesters set up their tents in October 2011, barricaded from what was their original target of protest, the London Stock Exchange based in the nearby Paternoster Square

Paternoster Square was private land, and so could be fenced off from protestors. But what many Occupiers didn’t know was that Paternoster Square had been sold to property developers by the church in 1986 on a 250-year lease, the freehold being retained by the Church Commissioners. It says something about the cloud of mystery that hangs over church property deals that even I didn’t know that the Church of England held the freehold to this land – and I was chair of the Cathedral’s finance committee.

The role of the Church Commissioners is to support the clergy, their stipends and pensions. And balancing God and Mammon is an unenviable task. So what happened to the land? Most probably the church diversified its investment. It moved out of land and into other assets.

In purely financial terms, the Church Commissioners have certainly managed their assets well in recent years. The Commissioners have an £8.3 billion portfolio. And in a poorer parish like mine, I probably wouldn’t get paid without it. As a charity, the Church Commissioners are limited by their charitable objectives, and thus are required by law to obtain best value for their assets.

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It is true that the Church of England has not covered itself in glory in the way it has balanced this objective with the management of its land for the greater good of society as a whole. An example of this that still makes most south London clergy froth at the mouth in indignation is the Octavia Hill estates story.

Originally set up out of a sense of Christian duty to provide social housing for the inner city poor, the commissioners decided to sell off the Octavia Hill estates to private landlords, with the inevitable rise in rents and abandonment of their original purpose. That it was the Church Commissioners who trashed an important part of the Christian story in south London is not something easily forgotten or forgiven. Local MP’s Kate Hoey and Simon Hughes called the sale “the end of affordable housing in Waterloo”. And they were right.

Can the church do something to restore its damaged reputation? Last month, it established a commission to address its response to the housing crisis, promising “surplus church land for affordable housing”. And there are already developments underway. At present the commissioners are seeking planning permission for 9,200 new dwellings, 2,500 of them so-called “affordable”.

The Chair of the commission, Bishop Graham Tomlin argues that developers talk too much in terms of building units and not in terms of communities. “As a church we know a bit about how communities work,” he told me. “So the key question is how we build not just how much we build.” That’s true. Which is what made the Octavia Hill decision such a betrayal.

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But it is not just through development that church land can serve the public good. Right by the busy Elephant and Castle roundabout, there is an acre or so of land called St Mary’s Churchyard where the church used to be. Technically it is owned by my parish but maintained by the council. Ringed with gravestones, it can’t ever be sold off or developed.

So it remains as open public space for public benefit; a little patch of green amid a forest of glass and concrete, the dead standing sentinel against the encroachments of high-rise developments that now ring this part of South London. In the age of the Church Commissioners and their set rules on asset management, this is probably the nearest the church will ever get to Winstanley’s famous declaration of the earth as a common treasury for all.

For those who already have it in for the church, reference to its financial arrangements are always going to offer a rich seam of critical material. God is an absentee landlord. The clergy are maintaining their material standing at the expense of the poor – it’s a familiar and longstanding trope.

My own assessment – and yes, my own bias as a clergyman duly acknowledged – is that this picture is not as true as the church’s critics maintain, and not as untrue as the church’s defenders would wish it to be.

“War on Christmas” stories of this type are an annual staple — even in secular Britain — providing an opportunity for humourless humanists and pious Christians to engage in a seasonal outrage dance. However, while it is true (as many Glaswegians pointed out) that the original decision was Grinch-like and petty, claims from the Church of Scotland about the “true meaning of Christmas” inhering in a nativity display are also off the mark.

Christmas is related to Christianity in the same limited way as Caesar’s wife is to history: only by marriage. Christ was never really in Christmas. In fact, when you celebrate Christmas by eating too much, drinking too much, misbehaving at the office party, and lavishing a fortune on entirely inappropriate presents, you come rather closer to the real spirit of Christmas.

In the early days of the Church, Jesus Christ got along fine without a birthday. The Gospel writers were as unsure about his birth date as we are now. Matthew tells us that Herod the Great was on the Judæan throne when He was born, and then proceeds to narrate Herod’s massacre of the innocents.

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Luke, by contrast, times Christ’s birth to coincide with a Roman census. Herod died in 4 BC. Governor Quirinius carried out his census of Judæa in AD 6. Considerable interpretive latitude was thus already present in the narrative. No doubt early Christians knew it and chose to leave well alone.

In any case, birthday parties were worldly, pagan affairs, and Christians did not want to associate the good name of their saviour with any of them. But when Christianity became a faith with claims to universality, the official religion of Constantine’s Empire, this lack of a birthday became something of an embarrassment.

At first, Jesus was simply bolted on to the existing festival, where He rubbed shoulders not only with Saturn but also Sol Invictus (the ‘Unconquered Sun’) and various local deities around the Empire. However, in the period between Constantine’s Edict of Toleration in AD 313 and Theodosius’s criminalisation of all forms of paganism in AD 391, He gradually muscled out the divine competition. In the process, Christmas was coloured permanently by Saturnalia’s existing structure.

And besides, people still expected their 12 days off in December.

Saturn, slip your fetters and come hither,
December tipsy with much wine,
Laughing Mirth and Wanton Wit;
While I tell the glad festival of our merry
Caesar and the banquet’s drunken revel…[1.  Free translations from Statius’ Silvae i.vi by me, from text as established in the Loeb Classical Library]

Rome’s Saturnalia was a curious mixture of ancient fertility rite and social event. It celebrated the winter solstice, a time when people believed, perhaps, that they needed to make themselves a warm place. It also recalled — for all Romans — a mythical golden age in the distant past when the world was truly merry, a world without war, slavery, or hunger.

Romans decorated their doorposts with holly and kissed under the mistletoe. They shed formal business attire (the toga) and ‘dressed down’ in garments modern scholars say resembled pyjamas. Shops and businesses closed and people greeted one another in the street with shouts of Io Saturnalia!

On one day of the 12, masters waited on their slaves at table while, in the legions, officers served the ranks. A rose was hung from the ceiling in banqueting rooms, and anything said or done sub rosa went no further than the front door.

Seneca attests that banqueting could get out of hand: he tells of slaves detailed especially to clean up the vomit. The government — in both Rome and the provinces — often put on free public feasts. In the poem by Statius running through this piece, we’re told how the emperor Domitian held one such feast in the colosseum, somehow combining (and the organisation can only be marvelled at) vast quantities of food with entertainment. The Romans, I should add, had no weekend, no useless and unproductive Saturdays and Sundays, so they looked forward to their sanguinary feriae with relish.

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And, of course, the Romans also did something for which the proprietors of department stores the world over should be grateful. They exchanged gifts. Originally (before Rome’s citizens acquired great wealth) these were small earthenware statuettes known as sigillaria. By the end of the first century, however, Martial provides a list of such gifts — with accompanying decorations in verse — that reads like the John Lewis Christmas catalogue: backscratchers, socks, medicine chests, comforters, woolly slippers, board-games, gold-inlaid dishes, jewellery — among other things.

That the commercial aspects of Christmas are Roman in origin should not cause surprise. “No one in Gaul ever does business without the involvement of a Roman citizen,” boasts Cicero the lawyer in one of his trial addresses, “there is not a denarius jingling in Gaul which has not been recorded in the account books of Roman citizens”. Set into the mosaic floors of several homes in Pompeii is the phrase Hello Profit! or Profit is Happiness! The Romans were probably history’s first unreconstructed capitalists.

Now, as the shade of night steals on
What song heralds the scattering of largess!
Here are young women stirred to lust, easily bought;
Here is all that wins favour with skill and beauty
Buxom Lydians, cymbals of Cádiz, shouting Syrians…

Statius’ picture is a beguiling one, and it is easy to forget Romans could also be rather correct, formal people, militaristic and bloody-minded all at once. Saturnalia was a time of licence, when people would wink indulgently at each other’s foibles or look the other way. It looks a lot like our Christmas today.

Christmas is a venerable pagan festival, on a sort of permanent loan from Ancient Rome, and is, perhaps, the antithesis of Christianity in the lines of its pagan decent. Some churches know this. Jehovah’s Witnesses, for example, do not celebrate Christmas, leaving it to the revellers, appalled as much by the Teutonic Christmas tree as by the libidinous connotations of too much wine and too little thought, and by the merry jingle of all those cash registers.

In that sense, maybe our religion — at least for the moment — is retail, with the god of markets supplanting Saturn, Sol Invictus, and Jesus alike in our affections. Adam Smith is on our money, but not yet on our Christmas trees. Maybe his time will come, as this ancient festival is handed down from age to age.

How many years shall this festival abide?
Age will not destroy so sacred a season!
While the hills of Latium remain,
While Father Tiber flows, while Rome stands
With the Capitol you have made –
It will continue.

Its demolition set the Western press, as well as Chinese news outlets, sprinting to catch up with the spread of mega-churches in China, and with the deep pockets of wealth in Chinese Christianity. Grand new churches with built-in offices, canteens and bookshops have sprung up in rich coastal areas and are now appearing inland as well.

However, the Sanjiang demolition is a stark reminder that since the 1950s, churches in China have been officially recognised only if they accept state oversight, from the Three-Self Patriotic Movement, for Protestants, or from the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association. Churches that refused such oversight were known as ‘underground’ or house churches.

Most house churches have operated in a legal grey zone, subject to state intervention at any point. Yet, despite these restrictions the number of Christians in China has grown rapidly, and today the majority of the country’s estimated 80 million Christians are believed to worship in churches operating outside state oversight.

The relationship between church and state in the city of Wenzhou, a business hub, has been something of an exception. The churches there have forged what scholar Cao Nanlai calls a “third way” as state-recognised but unregistered churches. Nicknamed ‘China’s Jerusalem’ Wenzhou boasts around 1,200 churches and almost a million Christians.[1. Wenzhou’s first Christians were converted in the nineteenth century by British missionaries who arrived after the city’s port was opened for tea exports in the 1870s.]

There has been a strong connection between the area’s church growth and its thriving economy, as scholars such as Cao have explored. Wenzhou was quick to develop private enterprise in the 1980s and 90s after Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms, and its small-scale export manufacturing model was copied elsewhere in the country.

Christians here, prominent in local society through their business leadership, have been able to circumvent the controls that are applied to the Church elsewhere in China. The concentration of Protestant Christian entrepreneurs and their financial influence in the city has also led to unusually strong house churches with good connections to local government. Here, ‘boss Christians’ preach in the factory or the office as well as at church, encourage their workers to attend prayer meetings and Bible studies on site, and use their business relationships with the party-state to smooth the way for church operations.

Yet even in Wenzhou the relationship with the state is not always easy, and present tensions in the economy find parallel tensions in the Church’s relationships with the government. The city has most recently been in the English-language press over surveillance cameras set up in its churches by provincial government authorities, and for the numbers of people and businesses stung by a clampdown on shadow banking (unofficial lending) in the city.[2. Entrepreneurs complaining of too few legitimate investment outlets have poured private capital into the city’s ‘grey’ lending sector.]

Surveillance and shadow banking together highlight the twin pressures on Christianity in China’s Economic Growth Zones: new regulations on both religion and business have been introduced. The 2018 Regulations on Religious Affairs aim to protect “legitimate” religious activities and curb “illegal and extreme”practices, potentially including all unregistered house-church activity. Meanwhile President Xi Jinping’s tightening of regulatory regimes, including his anti-corruption drive, affect all business owners.

Nonetheless, the image of a modernised, Western, successful professional, exemplified by the city’s breed of entrepreneur-pastor, has drawn many city and suburban residents to Wenzhou’s churches. Their message of faith, salvation and strong morals has resonated with the generation of Chinese who talk of experiencing a ‘spiritual vacuum’ following the demise of Maoist Marxism.

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The so-called ‘Wenzhou business model’ of the 1980s and 90s provided grist for those who saw Protestant Christianity as strengthening the nation through its Weberian work ethic. Business has also affected the nature of church in the area: as studies show, church construction, management and evangelism in Wenzhou often flow from business-sector models. Factory and business owners provide capital, sometimes through informal lending, that allows churches to be built rapidly.

These nouveaux riches entrepreneurs may also sit on the governing committees of these independent churches and of local Christian organisations, with clergy often financially dependent on their patronage.

Where there are multiple investors in churches, conflicts over control and acceptable levels of debt may ensue. The rapid growth of underground churches has created a shortage of trained pastors, so boss-Christians might preach and teach alongside the pastors in their churches with only a rudimentary knowledge of the Bible and theology.

Other business practices may have unintended outcomes: invitation-only networking lunches promote church growth and foster in-group ties, but reinforce a highly gendered brand of Christianity (boss-Christians are almost always male), while church members investing in leaders’ factories creates obvious conflicts of interest, and potential damage to relationships and trust where investments falter or fail.

The entrepreneurial ‘boss Christians’ of Wenzhou are one element in a broader tale of the relationship between church and money in China, where general attitudes towards wealth have shifted 180 degrees since the beginning of the Reform and Opening Up era that began in 1978.

In Imperial China, merchants were habitually despised by Confucian elites and debarred from government office because of their lowly occupation, while private capital became even more offensive in Maoist China. In the decades since Deng Xiaoping’s economic reforms began to bite in the 1980s, the acquisition and management of wealth have become an industry in themselves: the number of high net worth individuals with more than 100 million yuan (£11.3 million) of investable money has risen more than ten-fold since 2006.

But the coincidence of rapid growth in Chinese Christianity, especially urban house churches, including the mega-churches, and economic growth, has produced novel tensions. For many Protestants in house churches across China, their theology of wealth can encompass both charitable giving and the possession of great riches. Churches have been leaders in voluntary work (often in educational and health projects in poorer rural provinces) and providing aid after disasters, such as the 2008 Sichuan earthquake.

Christian philanthropists have been keen to sponsor Chinese theological education: I was in a church in Beijing in April when the pastor announced that the congregation had raised enough money to fund the first of a series of PhD studentships in theology, and that the first recipient had been admitted to Oxford University. Churches may also be savvy about generating income for their operating expenses and charity work: at one church I visited, instead of an offering bag being passed around, a QR code was displayed on a giant screen, and worshippers waved their phones at it to make an instant donation.

At the same time as church-goers’ giving increases, a strain of prosperity gospel theology is evident in the Christian business world. [3. Such teaching often derives from US Evangelical influence through imported materials and seminary teaching by Chinese-American Christians.] Reports abound on individuals such as Zheng Shengtao, a property developer and government committee member, who believes that he serves God by making money, or Wu Jianhua, the Beijing businessman who paid £10,000 for a number plate with four ‘7’s to demonstrate his piety and respect for the seventh day of the week, the Sabbath.

And while some recent articles in the Chinese media have challenged Chinese attitudes to wealth and philanthropy, contrasting them negatively with Euro-American Christian ones, the link between economic prosperity and blessedness is understandable in a society where greater wealth and religious freedom have emerged in tandem, and where deaths from famine remain in collective memory.

It was not always thus. Many of the greatest twentieth-century Chinese theologians preached socialist economic reform as the cornerstone of the Kingdom of God. They were influenced by the Social Gospel movement, which applied Christian ethics to social problems caused by industrialisation and capitalism, or by Catholic labour movements working to improve factory conditions and limit child labour.

Wu Leichuan, for example, in his 1936 book Christianity and Chinese Culture, argued for the equal distribution of wealth, for social justice and against the private ownership of property. Many others, like church leader Wu Yaozong, strongly supported the communist redistribution of land in 1949, while mainstream Protestant theology today in the Three-Self Patriotic Movement still aims to “align theology with socialism” under the banner of “theological reconstruction”.

Yet even as Chinese Christians debate among themselves the ethics of wealth, its acquisition presents challenges. Doing business as a Christian remains morally fraught. Despite Xi’s anti-corruption campaign, one CEO I spoke to in the north-east of China said he had had to relocate his manufacturing and export business abroad, because he couldn’t deal with the level of bribes needed to get the requisite permits from the local government offices.

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Christians stand to gain from a cleaning-up of business practice. Back in Wenzhou the question is whether the Church can withstand changes in religious regulation and continue to present an alternative model integrating business, civic and religious leadership – and if the state, and the wider Church, will support them. Can Christian business leaders and their congregations weather structural adjustments, and continue to attract new members with their message? (It’s no coincidence that Zhejiang was the test centre for a much-publicised campaign to remove crosses from church roofs: the government keeps a close eye on this exceptional province.)

At the beginning of the Reform era in the 1980s, the government found it couldn’t open up the economy and keep such a tight rein on religion and civic society. Xi’s attempts to reassert greater control amid the country’s current economic boom have thwarted foreign commentators’ and advisers’ expectations – and may yet force church leaders to rethink the prosperity gospel that has accompanied that growth.

It also offers numerous warnings about God’s judgment on those who acquire wealth through immoral means, misuse their financial resources, or use their wealth to oppress, enslave, or abuse others. In fact, the Apostle Paul warns that “the love of money is the root of all evil” [1 Timothy 6:10] and Christ explains that “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God” [Mark 10:25].

Given these warnings, American clergy certainly have plenty to preach about.

In the United States, the historic gap between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’ has recently grown much wider. According to the Pew Research Center, the wealth gap between the largely white, upper-income families and largely non-white, lower- and middle-class families grew after the Great Recession (2007-09) and is now at historic highs:

In 2016, the median wealth of white households was $171,000. That’s 10 times the wealth of black households ($17,100) – a larger gap than in 2007 – and eight times that of Hispanic households ($20,600), about the same gap as in 2007.

Additionally, big business executives in the ‘Age of Trump’ seem to be doing quite well. A new regulation requiring American corporations to publicly report executive-to-median-employee pay ratios revealed that the largest companies produced the worst income inequalities. Whereas small companies reported comparatively low median pay ratios and high median employee salaries, the largest corporations reported the opposite: employee salaries were low and the CEO-to-employee pay ratio was in excess of 250:1.

Despite these concerns, the American Church has been mostly silent on economic problems, focusing instead on other social and cultural issues, such as racism, immigration, and criminal justice reform.

This lack of critique could be blamed, in part, on President Trump, who enjoys broad support from white Evangelicals. Rather than finding his predilection for opulence troubling, many of his religious advisers embrace a version of the ‘prosperity gospel’ that encourages Christians to seek out material blessings as a sign of God’s favour. One such adviser, Rodney Howard-Browne, pastor of The River at Tampa Bay, has a ministry dedicated to “raising up multi-millionaires and billionaires” for the purpose of funding its ministry programmes.

But, even among Evangelical leaders critical of President Trump, such as those who gathered at Wheaton College in April, discussions focused on systemic social ills, not economic inequalities.

This inattention could be due to a shared belief that American capitalism has done more good than harm. Akin to the aphorism that a “rising tide lifts all boats”, a free-market economy that rewards capital investors and incentivises entrepreneurial activity is thought to benefit everyone in society, not just corporate owners. Indeed, big businesses are among the largest job producers, resulting in steady, stable, and long-term growth.

Furthermore, some Christian scholars point out that this economic growth has caused domestic and international poverty rates to decline, life-expectancy rates to increase, and living conditions to substantially improve for all – not just those at the top. They argue that capitalism promotes moral behaviour by rewarding cooperation, honesty and integrity, and promotes human dignity by increasing opportunities for independence and self-reliance.

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Many Judeo-Christian teachings also challenge the notion that the causes of poverty are exclusively the fault of systemic injustices. In Bible narratives, people are presumed to have full moral agency even in unfair, restrictive, and oppressive systems; therefore, no matter the circumstances, each person is obliged to work hard and live responsibly. The co-founder of Methodism, John Wesley, admonished the pious in his sermon, On the use of money, to “gain all you can” (without sinning, of course), “save all you can”, and “give all you can”, so that they might be found to be good stewards of God’s resources.

Accordingly, most churches address poverty issues by helping individual parishioners rather than attacking the capitalist system. Many such as Financial Peace University, offer programmes to help people save and spend responsibly. Larger congregations also have coordinated assistance programmes to provide food, financial grants, and other funds to church families in need.

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Nevertheless, some church leaders have acknowledged that these efforts may not be enough. Government programmes for senior citizens, the disabled, the unemployed and the working poor are necessary even with charitable aid. Others have addressed systemic economic inequalities more directly. Sojourners, a Christian social justice advocacy organisation, has long lobbied for federal policies to better support those living in poverty.

More recently, its leaders have begun urging business executives to advance the common good, not just maximise profits. The National Latino Evangelical Coalition advocates for a federal living wage to help low-income workers. Even the more conservative-leaning National Association of Evangelicals has recently urged lawmakers to tackle the problem of ballooning national debt, so that government programmes for the poor remain solvent.

Additionally, an ecumenical ‘Circle of Protection‘ has galvanised support for policies that tackle hunger and poverty, and expressed opposition to the recent federal tax reform bill because it effectively eliminated incentives for charitable giving, which, in turn, will probably hurt the poor.

When united, the American Church can be a powerful prophetic voice for change, heard at the highest levels of government. It helped to end the slave trade, usher in the Civil Rights era, and end abusive labour practices during the Industrial Revolution. We saw the unified Church in action most recently when congregations called upon the Trump administration to stop its vile practice of separating immigrant parents and children at the border. Within days, the President signed an executive order to end the practice.

But when it comes to market distortions, many churchgoers are reluctant to support government solutions because they perceive regulatory oversight to be an encroachment on freedom in general. Therefore, economic inequalities may have to grow far worse before political solutions become more palatable. Then, and perhaps only then, we will see a united Church overcoming denominational, cultural, and partisan differences to mobilise members on behalf of the poor.

Since 2013, COOK has been certified as a B Corporation, which means that we seek to create value for everyone, not just shareholders. We are early on this journey: so far we have been able to employ more than 50 ‘returning citizens’, people on release from prison or other institutions. This saves the state substantial costs, strengthens our communities, and has a priceless effect on individual lives. We also run our business using renewable energy, support independent retailers, pay the Living Wage, and we share 5% of our annual profit with employees.

I seek – even if I’m really, really bad at it – to follow the teachings of Jesus. That means I believe in giving people like Red a second chance, in taking good care of creation, and benefiting whole communities, not just shareholders.

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Business has an extraordinary power to shape a world in which we can all thrive – but it would lack integrity for me to create wealth while stripping value from our precious communities, from our beautiful planet, or from families, the foundation of our society.

There are more than 2,500 B Corps around the world, [1. Well known B Corps include Ben & Jerry’s, Brazilian cosmetics company Natura, US clothing manufacturer Patagonia and university network Laureate Education, and in the UK, asset manager Generation Investment Management] and their number is increasing. To be certified as a B Corp companies have to pass a rigorous test every two years to prove they meet tough standards of social and environmental performance, accountability and transparency. [2. The standards are set by a global Standards Advisory Council run by B Corps’ governing NGO, B Lab, and I serve on B Lab’s Global Governance Council.]

B Corps are a new, superior version of the limited liability company. The limited liability company is the most powerful vehicle invented by mankind. It is how we organise the capital that shapes the world and invents the future. But the structure we use was invented to help the owners of tall ships manage risk – and their liability was unlimited. When investors wanted to limit liability, they had to apply for a licence from the government, who only granted it if they were satisfied that there was a meaningful public benefit in exchange for society taking on the liability.

Since then, limited liability became unconditional. And in the latter half of the 20th century, the notion that the limited liability company had a fiduciary duty to maximise profits for its shareholders became entrenched as a cultural norm in financial markets – and therefore business.

Sadly, the orthodoxy of ‘maximising shareholder value’ has, if inadvertently, led business – especially institutionally owned business – to do only this, on an industrial scale. As markets have become more sophisticated, too much of business is driving our world towards catastrophe. Most of us are now waking up to the reality of acute planetary distress – climate change, ocean health, ongoing rainforest destruction – and social distress, evident in the gross inequality driving mass migration, and resulting in political shocks such as Trump and Brexit.

Business (and associated capital markets) is responsible for both these forms of distress. Put simply, business has the wrong operating system. And I am not alone in my concerns. Larry Fink, head of the $6 trillion asset management firm BlackRock recently called argued that companies’ futures lie in embracing a social purpose.

While COOK operates on a smaller scale, since we certified as a B Corp in 2013, we have achieved record commercial performance each year and delivered outstanding returns to our investors. Last year our like-for-like retail sales (our key measure of brand health) were up 11%. We have done this while stating in our governing documents that the directors’ duties are to create value for all, not just shareholders.

I cannot directly attribute our B Corp model to greater sales, I can say that all of the groups that benefit from it contribute to the value chain – suppliers, customers, consumers and employees – and their excitement at what’s possible drives better commercial performance. In addition, we have worked hard to ensure that we have aligned shareholders who are ‘woke’ to our values, and who have a long-term perspective.

I cannot follow Jesus and stick with the old operating system: the two are, to me, mutually exclusive. But I love the amazing and wonderful power of business to shape our world and invent the future. Which probably explains why I devote so much of my time to seeking a superior business model that is consistent with my faith: tasking the get-shit-done-machine that is business with creating value for all of God’s incredible creation.

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Max Weber has an influential addendum to this story: that Calvinism came to think of hard work and thrift as indicators of a life that is saved by God. And as such, the characteristics of a financially successful life became fused with a particular understanding of religious piety – hence the Protestant work ethic. Others have argued that it was Catholicism, and specifically patterns of financial stewardship developed by the late medieval monasteries, that produced a concern for financial efficiency that reflected many of the later concerns of capitalism.

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But whatever the variations on this general account, the basic problem is that capitalism didn’t exist during that time period. Capitalism, both as a word and as a developed idea, is a product of the mid-nineteenth century. Even Adam Smith, writing in the eighteenth century, wasn’t really discussing capitalism as such. His concern was with markets and commercial society more generally.

If you want to understand the relationship between capitalism and Christianity, therefore, you have to look at a much shorter time frame – which also has the advantage of helping to avoid some of the soggy generalisations that characterise many of the more familiar approaches to this subject.

Capitalism, in anything like the form we now know it, is something that came into being in Britain around the 1840’s and 50’s with the introduction into law of the stock company as an independent legal personality, and with the idea of limited liability.

The idea that individuals could group together and pool their capital for common commercial enterprise was itself nothing new. The East India Company was given a Royal Charter by Elizabeth I in 1600 for this very purpose. But it was the legal protections afforded by the Joint Stock Companies Act 1844 and the Limited Liability Act 1855 that created the private company as we now know it. Coupled with the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846, this was the period when old style state mercantilism gave way to free enterprise driven by private interest.

The hostility to the Corn Laws – and to import duties more generally – was led and financed by non-conformist mill owners in the North West who attacked the established church as benefiting from corn prices kept artificially high by the imposition of duties on cheaper imports. The tithes that the clergy of the established church were able to collect from their parish were based on the average price of corn over seven years, and so they, along with the agricultural landowners, had a financial interest in maintaining import duties.

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But the Church of England was more than just a high Tory alliance between church and the landed aristocracy. For it was during this period that a theological revolution was taking place within the Church of England, namely the Oxford Movement. Originally a reaction against the growing forces of Whig secularism – the government’s decision to reduce the number of Irish bishops was the spark that ignited it – the Oxford Movement sought to re-introduce into the Church of England an emphasis on the importance of liturgy and the beauty of holiness.

This led to many being distrusted by a broadly evangelical church leadership, with the consequence that Oxford Movement clergy were denied the best livings and forced to work in the slums. And it was as a result of this association that the Oxford Movement came to develop a particular concern for social justice, having a ring side view of the impact that industrialisation was having on mid-nineteenth century Britain.

Conservative in nature, the Oxford Movement looked back to local forms of association that were thriving in the middle ages – the parish, the guilds, the historic connection between people and place – and contrasted this with the dark satanic mills of industrialisation, and particularly the free movement of labour which created social dislocation.

Those broadly of this group all had things to say about the so-called ‘Condition of England’ problem, and were generally highly scathing in their condemnations of industrial capitalism as creating a new form of urban poverty, with the poor cut off from their traditional forms of support. In other words, the earliest Christian critique of Capitalism originated from a broadly conservative, not progressive, perspective.

One such was John Ruskin who in 1860 published Unto This Last, a reference to the “Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard” from Matthew’s Gospel. It was perhaps the first ever specific attack upon capitalist economics from a Christian perspective and generated much outright hostility from the general public.

Ruskin argued that all deserve a basic level of pay irrespective of their contribution to the economy. Credited with anticipating the welfare state, Ruskin was also developing ones of the earliest critiques of the labour market from a Christian perspective. The capitalist economics of his day was “the most cretinous, speechless, paralysing plague that has yet touched the brains of mankind” wrote Ruskin. And Adam Smith was a “half-bred and half-witted Scotchman” who had taught the “deliberate blasphemy” that “thou shalt hate the Lord thy God, damn His laws, and covet thy neighbour’s goods”.

Among the various criticisms Ruskin had of the economic practices of his day, one of his most serious charges was that the division of labour inherent in the basic efficiency gains of the capitalist working model led to the worker being distanced and thus alienated from the overall purpose of his task.

On this, Smith and Ruskin agree. Where they differ, however, is on the whole subject of human motivation. Adam Smith may only have used the phrase once in The Wealth of Nations, but his “invisible hand” is the holy ghost of capitalism.

Self regard – or “self love” as Smith prefers – is the animating spirit that benefits all through the beneficial effects of trade. The idea that “self-love” can be a powerful force for good is at the heart of the moral defence of capitalism. Christians, however, will always be suspicious, pointing out, as Ruskin does, that it can produce as much “ilth” (Ruskin’s invented word for the opposite of wealth) as it does wealth. And those who maintain a robust commitment to original sin and human depravity will always be suspicious of a system driven along by so corrupted an engine. Capitalism, in contrast, is confident that it can harness the energy of selfishness for public benefit.

There is much more to say about all of this. Churches like the Church of England are generally in no position to mount an all out attack on capitalism, benefiting as they do from substantial investment portfolios. Oxford Movement radicalism has given way to an acceptance of the broad principles of the capitalist project. At most, the churches seek to moderate the worst excesses of greed and injustice – but have little to say about the nature of capitalism per se. And here, it seems, the Church has surrendered its principles too quickly.

Because Christianity and capitalism differ very substantially when it comes to their respective attitudes towards human motivation. For Christianity, “self-love” is dangerous stuff. Indeed, for many theologians, it is precisely that from which we need saving. The great aim of Christianity is to transfer the centre of interest from self to others.

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The experience of the 2008 banking crisis and the fact that the state had to spend hundreds of billions of pounds of public money to bail out reckless corporations that had been driven to excess by private greed suggests, at the very least, that the confidence that capitalism has in the moral safety of Smith’s “self love” ought to be thought through once again.

Capitalism has continued to change since it was invented not yet two centuries ago. But the human beings that power it remain very much the same. And when it comes to human beings themselves, Christianity may have the more realistic appraisal. Are they compatible? I fear not. For I suspect that the dangers of “self-love” will one day overpower all the undoubted good that capitalism does in bringing many out of poverty. Smith thought the market could be held in check by the exercise of his very residual Presbyterian values. In reality, however, he contributed to their erosion. And a market without values, driven by “self-love”, will eventually destroy itself.

Western liberal market democracy, especially in its Anglo-Saxon variety, maintains the illusion of open, competitive markets that generate prosperity for the people, yet it enforces cartels and enriches a new professional class of tech experts and financiers.

State corporations in the East and tech platforms in the West extract rents on account of their hegemonic position. For all their innovation, Silicon Valley and Wall Street are the symbols of a new oligarchy that celebrates greed and practices usury.

The Protestant tradition is often portrayed as the handmaiden of the capitalist system. Lutheranism’s separation of faith from work appears to inform the Protestant work ethic, which seeks material prosperity in this life while hoping for spiritual salvation in the next. Calvinist doctrine seems to take this further by suggesting that wealth is a sign of divine favour whereas poverty reflects sinfulness. Accordingly, the wealthy are predestined for redemption while the poor will receive eternal damnation for their sins.

However, both Luther and Calvin believed everyday work was imbued with spiritual significance. They saw each economic activity as a vocation through which God works to distribute his gifts, including individual talents and other ways of contributing to the common good. Far from merely chasing worldly riches, their Protestantism viewed the earthly economy as embedded in the divine economy, in which the commandment to love God coincided with the commandment to love your neighbour as yourself.

Binding them together is the idea of shared flourishing within the order of creation. This means that well-being has both an economic and an ethical dimension. Conversely, property and profit can contribute to the common good through the creation of value. Enterprise and employment provide people not just with an income but also with meaning – a recognition of their role in the economy and their contribution to society.

At the same time, the Protestant tradition contained the seeds of division between commerce and social morality. Its emphasis on the individual encouraged the idea that, after the Fall, humanity was so depraved as to be incapable of pursuing goodness without divine intervention. So God’s providence was seen as operating through the market to make vice balance vice and produce a simulation of economic harmony. One influential example of this thinking is the book The Fable of the Bees by the exiled Huguenot Bernard Mandeville, with its subtitle “Private vice, publick benefits”.

Within this thinking lay the foundation for Adam Smith’s Calvinist-influenced idea of the “invisible hand”. There is a tension at the heart of Smith’s thought between the exchange of mutual regard or esteem in society (the focus of his Theory of Moral Sentiment) and the exchange of goods and services (the focus in his Wealth of Nations). The tension arises from Smith’s conception of the market as a morally neutral space in which the balance of individual self-interest with other individual self-interest leads to a mutually beneficial outcome.

But the early twentieth-century Anglican historian R.H. Tawney argued that individual interest unchecked by a strong culture of virtue risked turning the sin of greed into an engine of insatiable acquisitiveness – a prophetic warning we would do well to heed.

Protestantism has rich resources to defend the market against excesses. In the past, as today, Protestant practices of virtue in the economy abound. At the time of the Industrial Revolution, Methodism inspired thrift, sobriety, hard work, education and a determination to delay gratification in favour of investment. These Methodist values attracted the working and middle classes, including artisans and entrepreneurs who viewed the Anglican establishment with suspicion and preferred the building of free, democratic self-organisation in small groups or mutual aid societies.

Believing in proper stewardship, Methodists rejected any opposition between rich and poor in favour of a responsible sharing of risks, rewards and resources. This ethical vision inspired many Methodists to set up their own banks and insurance companies. Going back to the late nineteenth century, a network of Methodist hospitals emerged that until today serves the community regardless of colour, class or creed.

Similarly, Quakers have nurtured apprentices and helped them set up their own businesses. Famous Quaker businesses, such as Barclays and Lloyds banks, Clarks shoes and Bryant & May matches, have a proud history of caring about their employees and establishing new schemes for housing, health and education.

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But their ethical record has been tainted by recent scandals, as with Barclays’ involvement in manipulating the inter-bank lending rate Libor or Lloyds mis-selling of payment protection insurance. Such scandals suggest a hollowing out of their ethos, turning these businesses from being a force for social good founded upon Quaker ideals of restraint into an example of corporate greed.

Being part of the temperance movement, Quakers and other non-conformists pioneered new business models that continue to be relevant today. Instead of competing in price, they worked as part of fraternities to raise the quality of products such as confectionary – a sector which for over 100 years in Britain was in the hands of three Quaker businesses: Cadbury of Birmingham, Fry’s of Bristol and Rowntree’s and Terry’s of York.

Key to their ethical business was a commitment to fair prices. That was as much to do with transparency, which had been missing from barter trade, as with the commitment to good quality rather than cut-throat competition in a race to the bottom. Quakers were renowned for their pursuit of shared prosperity that benefited both the business and its employees. Customers knew they were not being ripped off and suppliers did not have to haggle over prices.

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Of equal importance was the approach to workers. The Cadbury brothers, for example, built the village of Bournville on the south side of Birmingham for their employees. This model of urban development came with schools, parks and leisure facilities for workers and their families. The Cadbury firm was also one of the pioneers of pension provisions and new initiatives such as providing a staff canteen.

Knowing that a healthy workforce would be more productive and stable, Cadbury employed company dentists and doctors before the creation of the NHS. “The welfare of employer and employed is not antagonistic, but complementary and inclusive,” so said Cadbury in 1912. “Each position brings its duties and its rights.” Rather than a collection of individuals focused on their separate advancement, companies like Cadbury were more like corporate bodies committed to the mutual flourishing of their members.

There are many lessons for today’s economy. One is the importance of balancing individual responsibility with a sense of fraternity. The ethos of self-reliance among Methodists and Quakers is bound up with the emphasis on fraternal help. As Danny Kruger, government adviser and founder of the rehabilitation charity Only Connect, wrote in 2006, “Fraternity is the sphere of belonging, of membership, the sphere of identity and particularity”. Ethical enterprise is just as much a space for fraternal relations as friendly societies in the past or charities nowadays.

Another lesson is the provision of services that help people to combine their work with family life. This includes more generous arrangements for maternity and paternity leave, support for childcare as well as flexible working hours. Instead of waiting for the state to legislate, businesses could and should increase the ways they support working families.

Globalisation and the digital age are changing the context, but the fundamental task is to build a just economic and social settlement that combines new sources of prosperity with the protection of people in their families, communities and workplaces. There is much to learn from Protestant practices anchored in the dignity of labour and the sacred character of both land and life.