The Problem of Wealth

Overview

CATHOLIC PRESS ASSOCIATION BOOK AWARD! - CATHOLIC SOCIAL TEACHING, FIRST PLACE

"This important book comes at a time when values of economic justice and care for the vulnerable are being replaced with greed through transferal of resources from the poor to the very rich. It will serve as an indispensable resource to all scholars and a tool of resistance for practitioners working for economic justice." --Roderick R. Hewitt, University of KwaZulu-Natal

"Combining astute analyses of economics with the moral imagination of theology, this powerful book should be discussed in classrooms, church groups, NGOs, and adult forums across the United States and beyond." --Kwok Pui-lan, author, Postcolonial Imagination and Feminist Theology

"A radical vision-- morally as well as politically-- that calls on the best in the Christian tradition to challenge the idolatries of wealth and privilege." --Roger S. Gottlieb, author, Spirituality: What it Is and Why it Matters

What if we reconsidered our views on poverty and perceived it as a problem with the way we live with wealth? Approaching the issue from a theological rather than a market-driven perspective invites an alternative social logic, informed by a much richer picture of human beings and our limits as we live in symbiotic relationship with the larger delicate web of life.

In The Problem of Wealth, Elizabeth L. Hinson-Hasty reframes the current discussion of wealth inequalities, poverty, and the exploitation of our natural environment from a progressive Christian perspective. She under­scores the need for social change advocates to emerge out of every context, including the middle class, and presents alternate visions for what it means to live by "an ethic of enough."

Elizabeth L. Hinson-Hasty is professor and chair of the department of theology at Bellar­mine University, Louisville. She is the author of Beyond the Social Maze (Bloomsbury T&T Clark), and Dorothy Day for Armchair Theologians (Westminster John Knox). A 2010 Fulbright Scholar, she has also served as a research consul­tant for the World Council of Churches' hearings on Poverty, Wealth, and Ecology, and received Bellarmine's Wilson Wyatt Faculty Fellowship for excellence in teaching and scholarship.