Christian morality

I put it out that the Roman Empire was steeped in inequality and decadence, somewhat like today. Somehow a minor poverty cult spread that promised a wonderful afterlife so long as you stayed skint. Christianity spread across the world. As Tuchman explained: "The Christian attitude towards commerce....held that money was evil, that according to st Augustine 'business is in itself evil,' that no profit beyond a minimum necessary to support the dealer was avarice, that to make money out of money by charging interest on a loan was the sin of usury, that buying goods wholesale and selling them unchanged at a higher retail price was immoral and condemned by cannon law, that, in short, st Jeromes dictum was final; 'A man who is a merchant can seldom if ever please god.' Jews were brought in, reluctantly as moneylenders and treated badly for doing this dirty work. In a cultural sense I admit to a degree of Christian morality here. I could never get used to barter while in morocco and would struggle with the concept of products having a variable price dependent on the customers gullibility. Something the morrocans saw no wrong in. My father had many sayings, one was 'Never a borrower nor a lender be'. Something he stuck to. It has crossed my mind, in the light of the collapse of global capitalism starting with the sub prime mortgage thing, that he may well have had it right. I can also imagine his reasoning continuing to anti semitism at this juncture. Nevertheless, it is likely, if we are to real in the worst excesses of capitalism and get over this recession that we will need a cultural shift as significant and widespread as the move toward christianity was. How this can happen now that few believe in the supernatural, the mind or soul continuing after the deth of the body, it is hard to imagine. Minor moral shifts to recycling, locally sourced food etc. is taking place in middle class circles even as the rope ladder of social mobility is being realed in. Interestingly the recent ReThink debate shown and still available on BBC I player pitched Richard Dawkins with Lord Sacks Chief Rabii. Their interaction was fascinating and bore none of the defensiveness of Dawkins usual co debaters. Sacks appears to sincerely love Dawkins and debate and reason. They came across as equals; the Rabii as a man of both reason and faith. It is not the first time it has seemed to me that Judaism is a good point of contact for people like myself and those of faith. After all the Jews were never hoodwinked by the charlatans Mohamed and Christ.