Tag Archives: literary oddities

“Bankers: Pillars of society who are going to hell if there is a God and He has been accurately quoted.

All three Western religions have always forbidden the collection of interest on loans. When Samuel Johnson defined the banker in the eighteenth century his status was clear: ‘One that traffics in money.’ Their venal sin of usury continues to sit high on lists of scriptural wrongdoing, which raises the questions of why bankers—the money-market sort excluded—tend to be frequent church-goers. The respect in which they have increasingly been held over the last two centuries has paralleled the growth of economics based on long-term debt, which has spread into every corner of society, from governments and corporations to the poor. The more money owed, the more the lender is respected, so long as the borrower intends to pay it back.

But what effect does this have on the moral position of bank employees? Few modern bankers are owners. Except through their salaries they do not profit from interest payments. Are they or are they not among the damned? Perhaps they should themselves be seen as victims of usury, having little choice but to lend their lives to the usurious process in order to feed their families. Yet for the borrower, these employees are the human face of usury.

The clearest situation for bankers would be if God didn’t exist. They would then be morally home-free and could go to church in a more relaxed frame of mind.”

Excerpted from: Saul, John Ralston. The Doubter’s Companion. New York: The Free Press, 1994.