Abstract
Kevin Hargaden proposes a disability theology for the rich: wealth weakens the vision of those who possess it. In the current age, people are too distracted by the maintenance of their convenience, by the demands of competition, or by the obligations of debt to perceive reality as it truly is. The task of worship is to break through this distraction by listening to God, becoming unsettled, and finding ways to imagine reality anew. For Hargaden, theological ethics begins not with principles or practices but with the act of worship: preaching and eucharist train us to see reality.
An admirable feature of Hargaden’s approach to the perennial Christian problem of wealth is that he is willing to face up to what is intractable. The option of activist reform, seeking to save the world, is set aside as a foundation for theological ethics: all human endeavours, institutions, and narratives of progress are condemned as imperfect. The option of secession in purity from a corrupt world, seeking to save ourselves, is likewise set aside: there is nowhere immune to corrupting influence. Neoliberalism, for all its inherent diversity, is envisaged here as a totalising framework delimiting what is counted as real, how people think, and what they can do. Nevertheless, the experience of being challenged by the word of God may break through this frame: it becomes possible to see things on a human scale, to offer hospitality to strangers beyond bonds of affinity and contract, and to commit to tell the truth. As a result, Hargaden can re-tell the story of globalisation and financialisation through the lens of specific institutions and individuals in Ireland. In place of paeans to free trade, one encounters a continuation of imperialism advanced by favourable tax policy; in place of market competition, one finds deals between tight circles of journalists, property developers, bankers and politicians; in place of productive growth, one finds an incestuous world of credit creation built on the collateral of assets acquired with former credit. In this light, the recent boom and austerity in Ireland have very little to do with either markets or capitalism.
Hargaden draws on Barth’s reading of the parables, placing the emphasis on divine freedom over any human principles or practices. Corrupt orders of society are both tolerated and challenged without annihilating them. This sovereign freedom may be repeated in the outcome of worship: the construction of domains of human engagement not ordered by profit or efficiency. Yet the point is less to change the world than to see it as it truly is. Hargaden draws attention away from economic and theological abstractions by juxtaposing the parables with narratives of Irish economic life. This fruitful procedure could be carried further: perhaps too much emphasis on sovereign freedom can mitigate against drawing out all the lineaments of economic reality as seen through this theological lens.