Money and Soul explores our troubled relationship with money, with finance, and with the economic system in which we are all entangled. It invites readers to consider how childhood experiences with money can shape attitudes, and how attention to individual conscience and shared Quaker values can illuminate big finance and economics questions that lie in the shadows, but cry out for more light. The pamphlet offers a brief sketch of how our political economy has shifted since the late 1970s from a concern for common welfare to a focus on private gain, and offers suggestions, using the framework of the testimonies, for ways that Friends can bring personal practices around money and personal witness around the economy into closer alignment with faith values. This is an invitation to those for whom finance and economics may seem like a closed book to find new openings for discernment and action. Discussion questions included.

Money and Soul explores our troubled relationship with money, with finance, and with the economic system in which we are all entangled. It invites readers to consider how childhood experiences with money can shape attitudes, and how attention to individual conscience and shared Quaker values can illuminate big finance and economics questions that lie in the shadows, but cry out for more light. The pamphlet offers a brief sketch of how our political economy has shifted since the late 1970s from a concern for common welfare to a focus on private gain, and offers suggestions, using the framework of the testimonies, for ways that Friends can bring personal practices around money and personal witness around the economy into closer alignment with faith values. This is an invitation to those for whom finance and economics may seem like a closed book to find new openings for discernment and action. Discussion questions included.

This pamphlet is about the economy and soul (money is only one aspect of the economy). It is a welcome and mobilizing addition to the long Quaker work of discernment on economic activity, dating back to the earliest Friends' testimony on fixed pricing, for example, and John Woolman's Plea for the Poor, and more recently Kenneth Boulding and others' work on an economy for a whole healthy Earth, or George Lakey on the Nordic economies. The work is both to envision a human economy that would embody spiritual reality, that would build the Blessed Community, and also to discern how to live toward such an economy in the practice of our lives.
Haines uses Friends' testimonies as a very helpful guide for her discussion. She addresses both the challenge to rethink some aspects of the economic system and to find specific helpful actions in our lives. While readers might tweak some of her assertions or emphasize other important aspects of economic relations, this is a wonderful, encouraging, and stimulating contribution to the critical challenge before us.
Haines concludes with a foundational reminder that to reclaim our economy's divine vocation will require us to exercise our spiritual muscles, our faithfulness to hope, courage, and connection. Then as we walk together, we will make the path. ( )

This short pamphlet challenges us to deeply introspective and 'extrospective' question about our relationship to money and our economic/financial systems and their effect on our conduct of life. It's based on a talk that the author gave in 2017 to Friends at Intermountain Yearly Meeting of Friends, a transcript of which is at https://westernfriend.org/media/money-and-soul-unabridged. I would urge you to share your thoughts in response to this pamphlet with others in a group. ( )