After spending his day in private meetings with small groups of deputies and roaming through General Convention’s Exhibit Hall, the Archbishop of Canterbury devoted Wednesday evening to delivering a vigorous critique of unchecked capitalism.
 
“We are made so that what is given to us is to be given to another,” Rowan Williams told a near-capacity crowd of several hundred in a sprawling ballroom of the Hilton Hotel. “There is an unbreakable connection between our belief in God and how we relate to one another.”
 
The archbishop’s critique, part of a panel discussion on “Christian Faithfulness in the Global Economic Crisis,” was not limited to bankers, the leaders of international conglomerates or British politicians who have used government funds to pay for opulent home improvements. Instead, he said, environmental and financial crises indicate a deeper crisis. “We have been lying to ourselves” about financial matters, about how we relate to nature and its limits, and about the nature of our relationships with each other as human beings.
 
“Our word has not been our bond,” the archbishop said. “We have learned to tolerate high levels of evasion and anti-relational practices.”
 
Christians ought to counter these cultural failings by developing habits of telling the truth—precisely in the same areas in which the cultural norm is lying to ourselves and to each other.
 
“What we have to do as people of faith is to name this as a crisis of truthfulness and to live in the truth,” he said. “Trust doesn’t happen simply because someone says, ‘Trust me.’ … Trust happens almost without your noticing it.”
 
Christians may tell the truth about the world we live in by showing respect for nature’s limits. The world cannot forever accommodate a culture of consumerism that shows little regard for nature’s resources. The archbishop also urged telling the truth about the common good.
 
“There are many goods that are not perfect if they are not shared,” he said. “We who have created the equivalent of gated communities in international relationships need to hear that.”
 
Microeconomics, the work of “real persons in specific communities,” may become “the shape of a healthy future,” the archbishop said. “We shouldn’t and we needn’t look to the government to solve all of our problems.”
 
Douglas LeBlanc reporting from General Convention in Anaheim.