Building a Moral Economy - by Cynthia D Moe-Lobeda (Paperback)

About the Book

Moe-Lobeda develops a groundbreaking, practical, and visionary guidebook for building a moral economy: its urgency, the life-giving role of religious networks, and the varied forms of action needed. She skillfully traces pathways to follow in the sacred journey to equitable, ecological, and democratic economies: sustainable life in community.

Book Synopsis

This introductory volume in the Building a Moral Economy series invites readers into a new vision for the future of economic life together. Ethicist Cynthia Moe-Lobeda crafts a compelling case for a new moral economy: its vital importance, the pivotal role religious networks can play, and the varied forms of action needed. Building a Moral Economy: Pathways for People of Courage is grounded in the stories of real people, with real struggles, triumphs, and creative energy. Moe-Lobeda invites readers to imagine an equitable, ecological, and democratic economy for themselves and their descendants and provides wise guidance for living into that vision.

Readers will re-see economies as webs of relationship and will root economic life in the great love story--the story of God's astounding love for all creation, and God's call to align our lives with that love. Readers will encounter the work of economic transformation as a sacred journey--a journey of healing diseased relationships with Earth, with self, with neighbors far and near, and with the Sacred Source whom many call God. Moe-Lobeda conveys this as a journey of freedom to live as beings in community--human community, planetary community, and community with God.

Moe-Lobeda's accessible prose explicitly faces the paradox of enormous moral challenges such as climate change held together with infinite hope. Welcoming readers into the vibrant global movement to build life-giving forms of economic life, she seeks to develop a sense of empowered agency. Are we the disinterested individuals motivated by material self-interest that neoclassical economics declared us to be, or are humans called to "think with" others, past, present, and future, seeking communion with all creation? Moe-Lobeda argues that our lives and Earth's well-being depend on choosing the latter path. The work is urgent; the time to embark on these pathways of restorative justice is now.

Review Quotes

Really loving one's neighbors--and constantly expanding the definition of who those neighbors are--will turn out to be the crucial practice of our overheated century, as these profound meditations make clear. --Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature

We can live in a world where everyone flourishes; it is what God intends. This life-affirming vision is at the heart of Cynthia Moe-Lobeda's book. Read this book if you find abandonment amid abundance and poverty amid plenty immoral and wrong, and to find a path that affirms that ending poverty is possible; indeed, it is what our God of justice demands. --Liz Theoharis, director of the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights, and Social Justice, and co-chair of the Poor People's Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival

Economics has famously been called "the dismal science." Who knew, then, that a book about building a moral economy could be engaging, inviting, inspiring, constructive, pastoral, prophetic, therapeutic, and rich with stories? This one is, and it's Moe-Lobeda's finest writing and most important project to date. --Larry Rasmussen, Reinhold Niebuhr Professor Emeritus of Social Ethics, Union Theological Seminary

Building a Moral Economy is both a prophetic call to reshape our collective economic life for the sake of saving the future of human life on our planet and a practical and profoundly hope-inspiring road map for how each of us can do our part to close the gap between the brokenness of the world as it is and the world as it should be. --Rev. Adam Russell Taylor, president of Sojourners and author of A More Perfect Union: A New Vision for Building the Beloved Community

Economic life as spiritual practice--this is Moe-Lobeda's holistic vision, described here with clarity and grace. --Kim Stanley Robinson, American science fiction writer

Drawing the reader through her own beautifully written expressions of beauty, joy, and clear-eyed hope, [Moe-Lobeda] helps us recognize uncomfortable truths about the current environmental crisis while providing uplifting and empowering tools and resources to move us along together in a healing journey toward a better, more life-giving future for the whole earth. --Kathryn Tanner, Frederick Marquand Professor of Systematic Theology, Yale Divinity School, and author of Christianity and the New Spirit of Capitalism

Practical, embodied, and faithful, this courageous guide by Dr. Moe-Lobeda is filled with ideas, tools, and vision for the future of the planet. --Raj Patel, research professor, Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, University of Texas at Austin

Deeply personal and political, Building a Moral Economy invites us to a sacred journey of communal healing for a world beset by the climate crisis, economic inequity, and global racism. It is a hope-filled book that motivates us to act by offering many practical examples of social change. --Kwok Pui-lan, author of Postcolonial Politics and Theology: Unraveling Empire for the Global World

Cynthia Moe-Lobeda's newest book is a healing gift for all who yearn and search for another model of meeting our socioeconomic needs that does not come at the expense of other people's rights and the health of our already beleaguered planet. . . . The book brims with so much hope! --Athena Peralta, director of the Commission on Climate Justice and Sustainable Development and leader of Living Planet--Economic and Ecological Justice Programme, World Council of Churches