ABSTRACT
This chapter establishes the context for the argument developed in the book: the modern obsession with ownership and consumption, summarised in the concept of private property, is largely responsible for the control over our world which produces global phenomena such as climate change. This penchant for control, ownership and consumption also lies behind the mass movement of refugees from Asia, Africa and the Middle East whose properties, and so their options, have been confiscated and their livelihood associated with these places made uncertain. Defining private property as the liberal, and increasingly neoliberal tool that allows us to choose how to control both people (others), and things, goods and resources, and so to shape the world in which we live, we seek to re-insert and re-assert the voice of religion, and more specifically, mainstream Christianity—the theological voice—into dialogue with private property and neoliberalism. Listening to the theological voice allows us to suggest an alternative to the neoliberal worldview, one that will allow us to find a communal morality that goes beyond the market as the ultimate arbiter of value in our modern world. From this conversation, the authors explicate seven theses that remain relevant for our own time. These elucidate the hermeneutical principles that are essential today as we seek to live authentically and offer an alternative to neoliberalism; in short, the reclamation of the theological voice remains as important today as it was in the time of Jesus and subsequent generations of Jesus followers.
