Rev Dr Sam Wells

Good morning. Economists, climate scientists and delegates are gathered in Paris to address what’s called the polycrisis: climate breakdown, political extremism and rising social tension. They’re considering taxes on billionaires, reductions in working hours, a change in diets and transfering investment from industry to education and health. Right now, attention is focusing on tech bros. Some believe a few geniuses will invent our way out of our multiple crises, and are entitled to the rewards. Others maintain only a flattening of wealth across our whole society will make life sustainable beyond this generation. It seems like a face-off between liberty and equality. What’s seldom recognised is that these are originally theological notions. Liberty says we’re fundamentally solitary creatures. Our well-being is for ourselves to determine; sin is a personal failure: repentance is a chance for individual renewal. It’s an imposition for the state to inhibit that. By contrast equality says we’re fundamentally collective beings. Our situation in life is profoundly shaped by the social, economic and psychological conditions around us; sin is about structural and systemic forces beyond our individual ability to withstand: by combining with one another we find power to address them. The state rightly steps in to assist and protect when we’re struggling, and to catalyse and redistribute to make society fairer. There’s plenty of support for both positions in the Bible and theology. But another thing that’s often overlooked is how these rival perspectives shaped the most basic things about early Christianity. Women and slaves flocked to the first-century church because there they found dignity and security in the face of the predations of their masters. Early Christians shared material goods and supported the needy. These were significant practices of equality. But the church also called for individual conversion. It never forgot the centrality of personal relationships and discipline. Most tangibly, it created a weekly event in which each person, based on their individual income and material affluence, brought their respective gift to a common table; whereupon a priest described the personal and social transformation made possible by Christ; after which everyone gathered ate and drank – but crucially, each received the same. Over the centuries this came to be called the eucharist or the mass, and was ritualised into an elaborate ceremony. But originally it was a vivid social practice that harmonised a focus on the individual in their gifts as well as their need for repentance, with the collective ideal that all could flourish and none need be left behind. To get through the polycrisis we’re going to need all the wisdom we can get. But sometimes that wisdom lies in the past, not just the future.

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Rev Dr Sam Wells is an episode from Thought for the Day by BBC.

This episode is 3:19 long.

This episode was published on Jun 5, 2026.

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