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(2015)

Consumerism is the worldview that teaches us that meaning and identity are to be found through what we consume: the products we buy, the brands we adopt and the media we view, amongst other things. Choice is fundamental to consumerism, because the greater choice we have the more able we are to tailor our consumption to our personal desires. Through choice and consumption, we are told that we can express ourselves and be whoever we want to be.
Like choice, change is also essential to consumerism, and therefore so is dissatisfaction. If we are satisfied, we need no longer make new choices. Consumerism encourages us to choose, use up, discard and choose again.
In the absence of other ways to find our place in the world, consumerism is the chief means by which our culture searches for identity and meaning. This new pamphlet in our TBA (Thinking Biblically About...) series explores a biblical approach to identity and the way that consumerism encourages us to shape our faith, along with everything else, around ourselves. It suggests that simplicity, faithfulness and community are appropriate Christian responses to a culture that emphasises infinite choice and change.

(2015)

When we talk about caring for the environment, the context for people in higher-income countries is almost always our own wellbeing. Generally speaking, the environment is a means to an ends for us.
However, the Bible looks at the environment in a very different way to our self-focused mind-sets conditioned by consumerism. In that respect, the Bible offers a completely different way of understanding our relationship with the environment, and the reasons we should look after our planet.
This pamphlet explores the impact of industrial growth and typical consumer lifestyles not only on the earth which God has entrusted to us as stewards, but also on the lives of the poorest people. It then introduces some key biblical insights, contrasting the two common views - anthropocentric and ecocentric - with a theocentric understanding of the environment. The conclusion underscores how each one of us has a part to play in stewarding the earth - through our choices, behaviour and relationships.

(2015)

This guide explores why one day in seven was designed to be special, and the consequences of departing from this biblical norm. The Jubilee Centre was at the forefront of the Keep Sunday Special Campaign in the 1980s. We believe that Sunday should be a time for family, friends and community. We believe in time to rest and enjoy ourselves. We believe in working hard and living life to the full. And we believe in keeping just one day a week a bit special. We don't want to tell people how to live their lives, but we do believe there is a need to protect the things that matter most. In brief, we believe that there are five main ways to keep Sunday special: Protecting Relationships, Preserving Community, Saving Local Business, Respecting Faith and Getting Rest.
Read more about the five ways to keep Sunday special and other materials on the KSS (Keep Sunday Special) website here.

(2015)

Debt and interest lie at the heart of the Bible's teaching about money. This is because finance is not primarily about pounds, dollars and euros, it's about relationships. This pamphlet gives an overview of biblical teaching about debt at the personal level, and explores how what we see as a lifestyle convenience (debt is rebranded as credit) is really a form of slavery which can draw people unwittingly into a spiral of poverty and fear.
If you are looking for general advice about handling money, then visit The Money Charity (which was originally a Jubilee Centre project). If you are anxious about debt, then we recommend you contact a local debt advice service which you can find through Community Money Advice or the Money Advice Service.

(2015)

Poverty is a serious global problem. Something approaching a billion people are hungry worldwide. One in six people have inadequate access to water and a quarter live without electricity. Global inequality is increasing. The richest one percent of people in the world own nearly half of the world’s wealth, and the proportion is expected to grow in the coming years. In the UK, poverty is still a feature of life for many. Many now rely on Charity foodbanks for their daily meals.
The Bible has much to say about poverty. How should we understand and apply its teachings today? This guide explores the idea that financial poverty almost always has relational causes. It is those who are most marginalised, who do not have close networks of relationships, who also lack opportunities for employment and support. How we understand poverty influences how we address it effectively. In the Bible, charity was an important part of the Israelites' worship and a form of welfare, but the measures to limit and address poverty were far broader, affecting every area of life and every level of society.

(2015)

We have a complicated relationship with food. It’s something we either think about too much, or not enough. Almost two-thirds of Britons are overweight or obese. Almost half the world’s population are expected to be overweight by 2030. Meanwhile, around a billion people are chronically undernourished. One way or another, food is a moral issue.
This pamphlet outlines the array of forces at work which together influence our ideas and lifestyle around food in high income countries. These include advertising and marketing by food companies, our obsession with image, sedentary lifestyles, the vicious cycle around eating disorders, and the food industry's vast use of sugar and corn syrup. Does the Bible offer any helpful insights around our eating habits? We explore the way that our attitudes to debt, sex and food have much in common, and how there is a battle in our culture over all three which can be called 'the consumerisation of the sensual'.

(2022)

This report explores and celebrates the way that purpose-driven businesses and social enterprises in the UK are making this country – and the world – a better place by pioneering new and better approaches to business. Our focus is on the active role that Christians are playing within this. The research includes businesses and social enterprises of all sizes, from almost every region of the UK and across a wide range of sectors – from farms to fashion manufacturers to legal practices – making this one of the largest studies of its kind ever undertaken in the UK.

(1991)

An ageing population challenges society to review its attitudes towards old age and the relationship between elderly people and the society of which they are part so that the well-being of both can be secured. Old age is not a mistake of nature that happens to us. It is part of who we are and should be seen positively as the continuing growth towards maturity, becoming more fully human. The negative experiences of ageing must be recognised but should be seen in the context of the Christian hope of resurrection. This contrasts with the negative views of old age characterised only by loss and dependence which continue to be prevalent. A commitment to the well-being of elderly people should be informed by our understanding of what it means to be human. Participation should be more than time-filling activity. It should give meaning to life and involve the exercise of creativity and responsibility, relationships with others and self-transcendence.

(1998)

The following report comes at a time of considerable change in the National Health Service, particularly in the field of primary care. We have also become used to hearing about issues such as hospital closures, lengthy waiting lists, bed blockages and staff and services being stretched to the limit. Yet at the centre of these issues lies a dilemma: how do we deliver and provide equitable and effective care within a framework in which the health needs of the population outweigh available resources?

This report is written primarily for Christians working in the health service and its intention is to provide them with biblical insight concerning the current difficulties that they are experiencing as health care professionals. It also seeks to convey to the Church the importance, biblically, of the problems surrounding health and health care today

(2011)

The popularity of cohabitation continues to increase in the UK. Following the rapid changes of the 1960s and 1970s, in the early 1980s cohabitation overtook marriage as the most common form of first live-in relationship. Today, six out of every seven first live-in relationships is a cohabitation.

Although the rise in rates of cohabitation is now stabilising, the duration and end-point of these relationships continue to change – a dynamic that reflects still-developing attitudes and assumptions about the purpose of cohabitation for many couples. Although many of these cohabitations progress to marriage, an increasing proportion are ending in separation. Overall, lengths of cohabitation are rising, particularly in those cohabitations leading to marriage. This suggests that cohabitation is now being treated somewhat differently to the way it was in the 1960s and 70s.

(2013) - Draft Report

The application of biblical principles to the theory and practice of education is beset with difficulties. One of the most obvious of these is the problem that occurs whenever we seek to understand how the Bible speaks into present-day issues; our respective cultures – and their educational requirements – are very different, and moving from one context to the other can be challenging. Secondly, ‘education’ is a huge subject, with corresponding scope. Education takes place in a wide variety of settings, whether formally and informally, and for a vast range of purposes. Beyond this there is the curious situation that the philosophy of education is only rarely applied by the practitioners; the division between theory and practice appears more marked than in most other professions.

(2001)

In spite – or perhaps because – of a century of medical triumph health is still top of the British agenda.The NHS has become an icon of post-war Britain but seems to be in a state of perpetual crisis. Hardly a day passes without waiting lists, bed-blocking, performance league tables, or funding difficulties making the news. Is there a distinctive Christian response to these issues? Does ignorance of the biomedical basis of disease render Biblical teaching irrelevant to modern healthcare? Or are there deeper principles which can be used to inform and instruct our thinking today? Health and the Nation examines these issues and, by analysing and applying the ‘divine logic’ behind Biblical teaching, aims to offer

(2010)

The paper seeks to establish that Christians have a rich heritage in establishing financial institutions during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries which brought about many economic and social benefits to the nation. Christians today can take encouragement from such institutional entrepreneurship as a means of tackling growing economic and social tensions in twenty first century society. The economy and related social problems of today can seem massive, ingrained and ultimately unchangeable. But this paper argues that local financial institutions can be relationally enriching and an especially practical means of demonstrating the gospel.

(1994)

Relational Justice is a new approach to the reform of the criminal justice system that highlights a neglected theme in penal theory and practice: the importance of interpersonal relationships. Like a stone falling through a spider’s web, crime destroys the intricate nexus of human relationships which hold society together. Since crime damages relationships, justice and the process of punishing offenders must involve repair of the damage and a restoration of relationship. Relational Justice places in creative tension the concept of justice, often considered a static ‘cold’ or ‘antiseptic’ construct with the ‘warm’ personal and dynamic notion of human beings in relationship. Both qualify the other. Justice gives content to the nature of relationship. The relational dimension gives to justice a sense of purpose and a vision for the values and behaviours which should characterise a just society.

(2004)

On 11 February 2004 I took part in a demonstration in London’s Trafalgar Square organised by the Coalition Against the Destitution of Asylum Seekers. We were all going to spend the night sleeping rough, to highlight the injustice being done by Section 55 of the 2002 Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act.1 It was a symbolic protest. I can vouch for the fact that it was a bitterly cold night, and the press got some good shots of bin-liner-wrapped celebrities, but the next night I slept in my own bed again – unlike many of the estimated 10,000 asylum seekers forced into destitution by the legislation.

(1991)

This survey began its life as a study of the church's teaching on land ownership and distribution, in the context of the work of the Jubilee Centre in Cambridge on Jubilee Ethics; the application of Old Testament principles to contemporary society. This ideal firstly required some narrowing down, so that it is in fact largely a study in English history; and secondly some broadening out, because once land and property became an issue of any significance, the church owned such vast tracts of it that it was hardly likely to apply Old Testament principles of family landholding.

(2004)

This paper explores the relationship between Personalist and Relationist thought in three parts. In the first part after some brief historical background, issues of definition are addressed. In Part 2 some of the main principles of Relational thought are set out. Part 3 consists of a comparison between Personalism and Relationism with special reference to how Relationism, as defined in the paper, adds value to a Personalist perspective.

(2014)

It is often said that Christianity is the source of conflict. The Wars of Religion in the 17th Century laid the foundations for the scepticism of the Eighteenth Century Enlightenment, which in turn has tended to shape the largely secular outlook of contemporary Western Europe. Indeed, even today Christianity has been used as a rallying cry for conflicts.

(1993)

This paper considers the relevance of Relational thinking to an understanding of the causes of crime. Relationships are regarded as a distinct category of social analysis and the natural forum within which societies and individuals strike the balance between choice and obligation. Relational proximity, it is argued, is essential to the good self-order of society. A decline in encounter relationships and a rise in contringent relationships depletes social resources of commitment and constraint, leading to dysfunction at both the micro and the macro-social level.

(2013)

It is becoming widely recognized that the quality of relationships make a significant contribution to the overall well-being of individuals and of wider society. Nevertheless, little attention has been paid to this fact in discussions regarding economic failure and recovery since the global financial crisis began in 2008. This snapshot seeks to provide a general overview of the quality of community, workplace and family relationships across Europe within this context.

(2009)

For some years, the Jubilee Centre has suggested the emphasis of development should be on the quality of social, political, and economic relationships – something we have summarised as ‘relational well‐being’ (RWB). We have previously proposed that a number of possible indicators could be used to measure RWB, including the marriage rate, the percentage of people who feel lonely, and the extent of pay differentials within organisations.

(2012)

‘The individual is a fact of existence in so far as he steps into a living relation with other individuals. The aggregate is a fact of existence in so far as it is built up of living units of relation … I call this sphere, which is established with the existence of man as man but which is conceptually still uncomprehended, the sphere of “between”. Though being realised in very different degrees, it is a primal category of human reality. This is where the genuine third alternative must begin.’ Martin Buber, I and Thou, T & T Clark, Edinburgh, 1937 (first British edition)

(1993)

The problem of homelessness has become significantly more severe since then, not only in the numbers of people now sleeping on our streets but in the doubling of the 'hidden' homeless figures, especially the families housed in temporary accommodation. The scale of the housing crisis has huge economic implications not simply because housing is expensive. People without a secure base are unable to play their full role in society, are often without a job and dependent on others for support. Homelessness also has social consequences the seriousness of which will be felt not only in this but future generations as the children growing up without the benefit of 'security, privacy and sufficient space' reach adulthood.

(1989)

From around 1500 onwards, the strong attack upon interest was diluted. The exceptions that the Church allowed to the rule became wider so as to fully compensate a lender for any loss incurred through the process of lending. Calvin rejected the view that interest was inherently wrong and this opinion became widespread whilst the qualifications Calvin made were forgotten. Commercial developments were combined with the weakening of influence of the Church over Western society and the dilution of antiinterest beliefs to produce financial systems that were predominantly interest-based. The subject of economic enquiry then became what determined the rate of interest and to what level should it be restricted rather than whether it should exist at all. Christians have acquiesced in this drift away from Biblical teaching and little contemporary Christian economic thought even bothers to raise the issue.

(2012)
By Dr. Paul Mills, Dr Michael Schluter

The world is set to be in financial turmoil for some years to come. Searching questions are being asked about the future of Capitalism in the light of the European debt crisis, excessive levels of executive pay, short termism in share trading, and the dominance of the financial economy over the real economy of goods and services.
The fall of Communism left Capitalism as the only show in town; as it grows increasingly unfit for purpose, where do we go next? This book (which is a collection of previously-published Cambridge Papers) seeks to rethink the foundations of a market economy and argues that the Bible’s central theme of relationships is the key to rebuilding a system that promotes economic well-being, financial stability and social cohesion.

Price (including P&P):
UK £10
EU £12
RoW £16

(2010)
By Dr. Jonathan Burnside

What is the real meaning of 'an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth'? Where did the idea for the 'Jubilee 2000' campaign come from? And what, really, are the 'Ten Commandments'? In God, Justice, and Society, Jonathan Burnside looks at aspects of law and legality in the Bible, from the patriarchal narratives in the Hebrew Bible through to the trials of Jesus in the New Testament. He explores the nature of biblical law, legal thinking, and legal institutions by setting the biblical texts in their literary, social, and theological context.
Burnside questions the biblical texts from the perspective of an academic lawyer and criminologist and asks what the biblical materials contribute to our understanding about the nature and character of law. He examines much of biblical law and narrative that has formed the basis of Western civilization, while at the same time exploring differences between biblical law and modern legal concepts and legal assumptions. The resulting book is a cross-disciplinary analysis which recognizes the integration of law and theology. God, Justice and Society seeks to understand the extent to which biblical law contributes important insights into legal dilemmas in today's world.

Hard copy price (including P&P):
UK £25
EU £30
RoW £35

By Calum Samuelson

The challenge of climate change is one of the defining issues the world is facing today. It has mobilised a whole new generation of social activists, some of whom are going to extreme lengths to confront the public and especially political leaders with the threat that climate change makes to their future and the planet as a whole.
Arguments about the causes of climate change are usually underpinned by the assumption that more human beings living on the planet are inevitably bad for the environment and climate. However, a careful biblical reflection on these issues yields a more nuanced and hopeful view, and this report seeks to stimulate fresh conversations about how best to respond to Climate Change now and in the future.

(2019)
By Hannah Eves, Katherine Martin, Andrew Phillips, Peter Redmayne

Eating is never a solitary act; each meal connects us profoundly to food chains, precious resources, human effort, a global ecology and graced provision.
How does the food we eat affect the planet? What is a biblical response to environmental degradation, and how can we eat in a way that honours God? This book addresses the high environmental and social costs of modern food systems and provides theological reflections on the interconnected relationships between God, humanity and the non-human creation. By developing an extensive theology of food and eating, it suggests practical applications for individuals, organisations and policymakers, and proposes a framework for thoughtful eating – so that we can learn to eat joyfully, relationally and sustainably.