Introducing: Building a Moral Economy

Pathways for People of Courage—and how you can support the series

Nov 03, 2024

It’s easy to focus on what’s wrong about the world. Can religious people and organizations help us put things right? Since this is the one planet home we have, what’s the best way for us to share space, resources, and power?

Dear ones, I’m writing a book.

We launched the Building a Moral Economy series (Fortress Press) earlier this week with an introductory volume from series editor Cynthia Moe-Lobeda. Through 2026, Cynthia, I, and five other authors will share stories from people bringing to life an emerging equitable, ecological, and democratic economy in the US and around the world. I’m writing the closing book on the role religion and spirituality plays for those on the frontlines of this world-building work.

So this week, I joined the other authors to talk through what we’re getting up to and why: to inspire, to challenge, to explore, and to connect.

Here’s what I said.

Allow me to introduce myself.

I’m Keisha, daughter of Lyn and Mack and granddaughter of Mary, Robert, Deta, and John. My ancestors are farmers and woodworkers, nurses and teachers, church workers and homemakers.

My people are the peoples of desert plains and red dirt—from the UK and Jamaica to West Texas and West Africa. They sing praises to the transcendent and marvel at the beauty of the rising and setting sun. Their laughter is as legendary as their work ethic. When they say “This world is not our home” and “Brighten the corner where you are,” what they mean is we can experience better than the defaults we were given, and we each have a role in making that so. My people may not always say there’s room for one more at the table: but they will demonstrate that commitment by sharing a slice of sweet potato pudding and a cup of tea with anyone in range.

How I came to understand the system we have.

When I was about seven years old, I learned about the capricious world of economics by contrast. In the early 90s, my mother and her colleagues “won” their family access to a resort conference by racking up sales at work. When we all arrived at the airport, the company met our whole group with a fleet of stretch limos and town cars.

By day during that trip, I wandered through the hotel gift shop, touching shiny trinkets I couldn't afford, and by night we dined at evening banquet tables layered with food and champagne glasses. I was so dazzled by the tokens of the well-to-do. It was a world far from my parents' working 2.5 full-time jobs to send us to schools where kids would no longer get tax-funded milk because Margaret Thatcher said so.1

Of course I didn't understand the adult argument about who was responsible for making sure every child had milk and a square meal—the state or the family or some third choice.

But I did understand that someone who said they spoke for us had decided on our behalf that children shouldn't get milk at school. I understood that some of my schoolmates would now go without. And I understood that something about the world was broken.

So I was about seven when I started to recognize there was a world of wealth that left people like me out, and I think I'm still learning why. Perhaps you are too? My people taught me to work, tithe, and save, but as Black Caribbean immigrants and striving working class people we simply didn't have access to the world of capital, the dominant economy of our lifetime.

Why we’re doing this project.

One of the purposes of the Building a Moral Economy series is to help us all understand the system we have and what we can do to heal it.

Economist Kate Raworth says the challenge of this century is to “meet the needs of all within the means of the planet”—to make sure we have the climate, food, housing, and water we need to survive. She describes this as “the doughnut of social and planetary boundaries.” And it's more than the tangible markers of a stable biosphere and ecology. It’s also the quality of our community ties. The vibrance of our political systems. The reliability of our healthcare.

But there's something more to it. And it’s why we’re building this series of stories from faithful and moral people in climate action, food production, housing access, and clean water.

Stories that inspire imagination and action.

The quality of our lives depends on the richness of our moral vision. Whether we can muster an imagination deep and broad enough to shelter all of us, not just today, but for generations to come. Our imagination and resilience makes the difference. There’s a relationship between local acts, global systems, and the worldviews that prop them up or can change them. Our ideals shape our lives, and our behaviors shape us.

In this series, we highlight people of faith and conscience who are already pointing the way to change through their own local, frontline experiments in a world of enough. So in Religious Roots, I share their stories. What spiritual practices point the way to a moral economy? What nourishes people as they try to transform this world of capital and hoarding? What spiritual/religious roots feed their values and choices?

My life has organized itself around the question, “Can religion be an enabling force?” And the stories I and we lift up in this series are one way to answer, “Yes!”

How you can support the series

Follow us on social media. We’re on Facebook and Instagram for now.
Fund the web resources we’re building. Our site will include short videos from authors and other experts on how change happens, examples of solidarity economies from across the US and around the world, and how readers can build locally with others.
The Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary is our fiscal sponsor: on their online donation page, click “Other” under “Designation,” then type in “Building a Moral Economy Book Series” and it’ll get to us).
Preorder the books as they launch! Cynthia Moe-Lobeda’s introductory volume, Building a Moral Economy: Pathways for People of Courage is out November 12. Mine will round out the series in 2026. Of course I’ll let you know when it’s here!
In the meantime, point me to people I should meet. You know at least one person—a friend, colleague or neighbor and someone of faith or conscience—whose work in your communities with money or business or in food, housing, water, or climate justice inspires and encourages you.

Tell me about them: I’d love to talk to them. I’m scheduling interviews right now.

Another world is possible!
Support this project and help us spread the word.

Until next time,
Keisha

The late Baroness Thatcher was not the first or last British Prime Minister to roll back public spending or care services for children generally. Nor was she the first to advocate for reduced access to milk at school specifically.

But she was the longest-serving PM of my childhood, and her shadow loomed over UK politics from the mid-1970s clear into the Blair era thirty years later. The Thatcher legacy is seared into me as a part standing in for the whole: a miserably stone-hearted economic project that fails to meet the needs of all the people—by choice not necessity.

We can do better than taking food off kids’ tables, if we want, if we choose.