“Hear this, you who trample on the needy, and bring to ruin the poor of the land.” — Amos 8:4
By one measure, the American economy seems to be doing quite well, if we can trust the statistics—a big if. Unemployment is around 4.2 percent, which economists usually consider full employment.1 Most people who want jobs have them.
But when I talk to people, few say this is a good economy. People have jobs, but many feel stuck. Hiring has slowed a lot, so changing jobs is riskier. Wages have not kept up with rising costs. Housing, groceries, insurance, health care, and utilities take up more of the family budget. Consumer confidence is now at its lowest point in over twelve years.2
There is no contradiction here. The unemployment rate measures how many people have jobs. It does not tell us if their lives are going well. Earning a living is not the same as building a life.
The biblical prophet Amos lived in the eighth century BCE, a time when ancient Israel was quite prosperous. Trade was growing, wealth was increasing, and new houses were going up. Many people could look around and believe the nation was doing well.
But Amos saw small farmers losing their land because of debt. He saw wealth piling up among those who knew how to work the system. He saw poor people becoming more at risk of being taken advantage of.
In one of his strongest passages, Amos talks about merchants who can’t wait for the Sabbath to end so they can return to business. They keep the holy day, but their thoughts are already on the market. They plan to “make the ephah small and the shekel great,” changing the measures so poor customers get less and pay more. They even sell the leftover sweepings from the wheat.
“Hear this,” Amos says, “you who trample on the needy.”
His anger is not aimed at trade itself. People bought and sold goods in Amos’s time just like we do now. He is questioning an economic system that can create wealth while abusing the people who make that wealth possible.
For the Hebrew prophets, economics was always tied to faith. Land mattered. Wages mattered. Debt mattered. Fair measurements mattered. Sabbath mattered. The way immigrants, workers, widows, and poor people lived mattered because the economy was never just about moving goods and money. It shaped how people could live.
Isaiah later makes a similar point about religious practice. People complain that they have fasted faithfully, but God does not seem to care. The prophet says their fasting means nothing while workers are mistreated and neighbors go hungry. The fast God brings freedom, shares food, gives shelter, and fixes what is broken. You cannot separate spiritual life from the real conditions your neighbors face.
Economist and systems thinker Riane Eisler brings that old idea into our time by saying that “the real wealth of a nation is not financial.”3 Eisler, whose work on what she calls a “caring economy” has challenged conventional economic thinking, argues that “a nation’s real wealth consists of the contributions of people and of nature.” She says we therefore need economic measures that give visibility and value to “the most important human work: the work of caring for people, starting in early childhood, and caring for our natural environment.”
Think about how much of what sustains life is almost invisible in our economic accounting. A parent can spend a whole day feeding, teaching, comforting, transporting, and caring for a child without producing a dollar of measured economic output. A woman can spend years caring for an aging spouse and still remain almost invisible to conventional economic measures. Without that work, families fall apart, workers cannot work, and communities cannot function.
This same blindness extends to the natural world. Eisler’s point is striking: we have built economic measures that count what we take from life much more easily than what sustains it.
David Korten makes the distinction beautifully: “Money is a tool of the economy—not its purpose.”4
We are so used to talking about the economy in numbers that it is easy to mix up the measurements with what is actually being measured. Employment rates matter. GDP matters. Inflation matters. Markets matter. Money lets billions of people who will never meet trade goods, organize work, invest in the future, and build things none of us could make alone.
But none of those things is the real purpose. The purpose is life itself.
An economy exists to help people and communities sustain life. Its success should be seen in more than just numbers. It should be seen in families who can afford homes, workers who have time to rest, children who are cared for, elders who can age with dignity, and young people who can dream about the future without worrying if they can afford it. It should be seen in communities that can support people when life gets hard and in land healthy enough for the next generation.
Reasonable people will have different ideas about how to build this kind of economy. There are real debates about markets, taxes, rules, public programs, business, and what government should do. The prophets do not give us a detailed economic plan.
They give us a standard that every plan should be measured against: what is happening to the people?
That is the real question behind our unusual economic moment. An unemployment rate of 4.2 percent tells us something important about the country. But people who say they are tired, worried about money, struggling to get ahead, or scared about the future are also telling us something important.
We need both types of information. Money is just a measure. Life is what really matters.
In the end, the health of an economy should be measured by the health of the lives within it.
We are in this together,
Cameron
Reflection Questions
When you hear the word “wealth,” what do you instinctively imagine, and what forms of wealth might that definition leave out?
What economically invisible work sustains your own life, and who is doing it?
If you measured the health of your community by the flourishing of its people and land rather than primarily by money, what would you begin paying attention to?
A Prayer for the Day
A Prayer To Teach Us What Is Wealth
Holy Mystery, We have learned to count many things that matter. Teach us to notice what our numbers cannot hold. The hands caring for a child. The neighbor tending an elder. The soil making food from rain and seed. The hours given freely in love. Give us wisdom to build a common life where work carries dignity, rest is possible, hunger is answered, and no one is discarded because they produce too little profit. May money serve life and never become its master. Teach us again what it means to be rich. Amen.
Spiritual Practice: Count What Doesn't Count
For one day, notice the work around you that rarely appears in an economic statistic.
Notice who cooks, cleans, listens, drives, tends, teaches, repairs, comforts, organizes, checks on a neighbor, cares for an animal, raises a child, or sits beside someone who is sick.
Choose one person whose work is easy to overlook and ask them about it. What does the work require? What makes it difficult? What allows them to keep doing it?
Then thank them specifically.
At the end of the day, make your own small balance sheet. On one side, write down the things you spent or earned. On the other, write down what made the day genuinely rich.
See which list tells you more about the life you are trying to build.
Upcoming Events That Might Be of Interest…
My team and I launched a new experiment we are calling “The Commons.” It’s an online space centered around communities of practice: groups of people who share a common concern, set of problems, or passion for a topic, and deepen their knowledge and expertise by interacting on an ongoing basis. Join the community here.
October 6, 2026 - 12:30 - 1:30pm ET - FREE ONLINE BOOK CLUB - For the next 5 weeks, I am hosting a book club where we will read Fr. Gregory Boyle’s “Cherished Belonging: The Healing Power of Love in Divided Times.” Father Gregory Boyle, founder of Homeboy Industries, has spent decades building community among people whom society has often discarded. In Cherished Belonging, he draws on those relationships and stories to explore what might happen if we stopped sorting people into categories of worthy and unworthy, us and them. Don’t worry if you don’t have time to read the book. We always have incredibly rich conversations. All are welcome. RSVP Here.
October 6, 2026 - 7-8:30pm ET, ONLINE EVENT - Matthew Fox and I are teaming up again to launch a series called Journeying with the Mystics. The mystics have always emerged in times of uncertainty. They appear when old certainties are crumbling, when institutions no longer provide easy answers, and when people find themselves longing for a deeper experience of the Sacred. Join us for a 24-session exploration of the teachings of St. John of the Cross, Thomas Merton, Hildegard of Bingen, Kabir and Rumi, Meister Eckhart and more. This is more than a lecture series. It is an invitation into a living spiritual journey. REGISTER for the first session HERE!
October 15, 2026, 7-8:45pm ET - I will be joining Jackie Sussman for an online session on practicing eidetics as part of our “Reclaiming the Power of Imagination” monthly series. Eidetic Imagery is a powerful tool for pastors, denominational leaders, coaches, and spiritual directors working with others, and for individuals seeking deeper integration and healing in their own lives. Jackie is a psychotherapist, author, and leading expert in Eidetic Image Psychology, and has spent over forty years helping leaders and individuals unlock creativity, uncover hidden strengths, and move through limiting patterns. During this session, she will lead a live Eidetic process shaped by mythic imagery, offering a direct experience of the work. REGISTER HERE.
October 18-21, 2026 - PREACH! 2026 Conference- I’ll be co-hosting PREACH in Minneapolis with Church Anew, a new gathering for preachers, storytellers, worship leaders, and spiritual communicators navigating what it means to speak with clarity, compassion, and courage in a changing world. If you’ve sensed that the preaching moment has changed and are longing for thoughtful community and renewed imagination for this work, I hope you’ll join us.
November 10, 7-8:30pm ET - I’ll be joined by theologian, writer, and professor Dr. Debra Rienstra for a special ONLINE conversation on Refugia Faith. In ecology, refugia are small places where life survives amid disruption, pockets of resilience from which life can eventually regenerate and spread. Debra invites us to consider what this might mean spiritually in an age of climate instability, political turmoil, institutional decline, and profound uncertainty. What if our congregations, communities, relationships, and even our own lives could become refugia, places where courage, compassion, beauty, wisdom, and possibility are protected and cultivated for whatever comes next? I hope you’ll join us for this timely and deeply hopeful conversation. REGISTER HERE!
December 15, 7-8:30pm ET - FREE WEBINAR - I will be joined by Dr. Charissa Mikoski, Assistant Professor of Research and Hartford Institute for Religion Research for a presentation on “The State of American Congregations: What the Latest Data Tell Us.” This webinar explores findings from the 2025 Faith Communities Today survey, including changes in worship attendance, congregational vitality, finances, volunteering, programming, and leadership. It will also examine what more than 24,000 individual attenders tell us about participation and their experiences of congregational life. Together, these findings offer a picture that is neither simply one of decline nor one of revival, but of significant change and uneven recovery. REGISTER HERE.
Fun Things My Friends Are Up To…
I get to work with such amazing, creative people. This section is my way of celebrating them—no paid promotions, just joy in what they’re creating.
My dear friend Brian McLaren has a new novel coming in November, and I’m excited about this one. The Great Rift is the second book in his Last Voyage trilogy, imagining ten pioneers leaving a dying Earth for a fragile human settlement on Mars. The story weaves together ecological imagination, spirituality, art, survival, and the possibility of creating a genuinely different future. Brian is one of the most thoughtful and imaginative writers I know, and I love seeing him use fiction to explore questions he has spent a lifetime asking. The Great Rift comes out November 3 and is available for preorder now.
My friends at Church Anew have been building a terrific library of resources for congregations and church leaders navigating ministry in these strange and demanding times. You’ll find thoughtful worship and preaching resources, practical tools, and material designed to help communities engage the questions actually shaping our lives right now. I deeply appreciate the imagination and theological depth Church Anew brings to its work, so if you’re a pastor or congregational leader looking for fresh resources, spend a little time exploring what they’re creating.
Every Monday, 12pm ET - ONLINE WRITING GROUP - My dear friend, Meryl Marshall-Daniels, is leading a writing group open to all. This is a simple and spacious writing circle for people who want time to listen inwardly and put words on the page without overthinking, performing, or polishing. Meryl offers a prompt designed to invite reflection, imagination, and attunement to what is already alive within you. The practice honors writing as a way of listening, of letting images, memories, questions, and insights surface in their own time. Learn more here.
If you are a leader or member of a congregation looking for consulting support in visioning, planning, hiring or staffing, please consider Convergence.
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.htm
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-goes-into-midterm-elections-with-less-dynamic-form-full-employment-2026-10-05/
https://centerforpartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/2011-UN-General-Assembly-Address.pdf
https://davidkorten.org/the-new-economy/
This very October month puts this issue into stark relief!
Absolutely enormous amounts of private and taxpayer money are fueling political campaigns even as people -- seen and unseen-- continue to struggle to pay for the food, transport and housing enabling them to work and care for others.
We need a thousand prophets to get us back on track!
Thanks so much for this-- The discipline of economics can seem so distant from faith, yet it is derived in part from the same Greek word that gives us the term, "ecumenical." The BTS Center in Maine recently convened a bioregionalism reading group, and one of the first assigned readings was a transcript of a lecture about "Bio-Fi," an alternative financing structure based on the needs of living systems. If you haven't already come across it, the transcript can be found here: https://centerforneweconomics.org/publications/the-promise-of-bioregional-economies/.