Subprime thoughts in sublime settings

Financial planner Alan Siegel in his office in Easton. Siegel invests money according to conservative Christian principles. (Bill Greene/Globe Staff)

As American finance crumbled in the past year, analysts opened for us a dictionary of disaster. Words such as "subprime mortgages," "credit-default swaps," and "structured investment vehicles" spooled off tongues to describe the crisis and response.

On Rosh Hashana last week, Rabbi David J. Meyer treated members of Marblehead's Temple Emanu-El to a few choice words of his own about Wall Street. He preached against "contemptible behavior" by investment bankers, their "indefensible multimillion-dollar salaries," their "incessant lying to both Congress and their own shareholders, and their arrogant disregard for the consequences of their personal excesses."

As Congress debated and President Bush signed a bailout for Wall Street, clergy have been pondering from the pulpit the pros and cons of capitalism, their reactions ranging from condemnation of financiers to soothing spiritual succor for average folks suffering financial setbacks.

We live in odd times when some lenders did what you'd never expect - give out money without necessarily assessing borrowers' payback ability - and theologians find themselves doing something unexpected as well, pronouncing upon matters of economics rather than theology. Admittedly, the two intersect. But it got to the point that the archbishop of Canterbury, symbolic spiritual leader of the Anglican Communion and therefore of American Episcopalians, wrote a magazine article applauding restrictions on short-selling, whereby one sells stocks he doesn't own in order to profit later by buying them at a lower price.

Meyer wasn't quite so arcane; instead, he borrowed a line from the prophet Micah that seemed apt for modern, predatory mortgage lenders: "They covet fields, and seize them; houses, and take them away."

The Rev. Anne B. Bonnyman, Episcopal rector of Trinity Church Boston, also found scriptural wisdom when she preached about the crisis last month. Bonnyman offered a good news/bad news response. The bad news: "We are all vulnerable in the face of powerful forces beyond our control." The good news, she continued, was Christian Scripture and history, which are fecund with examples of people surviving turmoil by trusting in God.

As it happened, the lectionary served up two examples the Sunday of her sermon - the Exodus story of God feeding the starving Israelites with manna, and Jesus' "last shall be first" parable in Matthew's gospel, in which a generous employer pays every worker the same wage regardless of his time worked.

"God's economy is different from ours," she said. "In these times of uncertainty, we proclaim that when the going gets tough, we are tethered to God."

Rabbi Eric S. Gurvis used his Rosh Hashana talk to urge the congregation at Newton's Temple Shalom, individually and together, to demand accountability from their political leaders as they try to fix the economy. "We must each go to the polls" Nov. 4, he declared. "In the eyes of our Jewish tradition, it is a mitzvah, a sacred responsibility, to participate in civic life.

"The current crisis has already hit some in our midst, and the rest of us still do not know whether our homes, our families, and are futures are secure," he continued. "We need to be each other's safety net. We need to demand responsible leadership from our elected officials [and] that the rancor of partisanship be set aside."

In the Florence neighborhood of Northampton this weekend, Deacon Bernard Fleury plans a sermon spun off of a letter from the US Conference of Catholic Bishops to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and congressional leaders. The bishops urged that the bailout plan also help average victims caught in the economic crisis. Fleury, deacon at Our Lady of the Annunciation Parish, says, "Any reform plan must be focused on our people's welfare rather than corporate greed or dishonesty."

In this barrage of thoughts across denominations, some listeners may have been comforted, while others perhaps enjoyed the venting by proxy. Others may prefer hard economic solutions to words, however compassionate. Whatever their take, the clergy who shared their sermons with the Globe did not go quite as far as some Hebrew Bible prophets by castigating the people along with their leaders. That has been left to secular commentators, among them Washington Post business columnist Steven Pearlstein, who said Americans' failure to save and proclivity for multiple credit cards exacerbated the trouble.

"The average American was living on debt," Pearlstein said recently on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos." "If there's not adequate purchasing power [in your budget], then you don't purchase."

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