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The Papworth principle

"Jesus said love your neighbor. He didn't say love Marks & Spencers." Thus saith John Papworth, a 75-year-old minister in the Church of England, and with that the wrong reverend pronounced for his parishioners a theology of thievery. It's OK, the Rev. Papworth said, to shoplift from large chain stores such as Britain's Marks & Spencers, because they allegedly put small stores out of business, create unemployment, and encourage greed and consumerism. "When you talk about stealing, you can only steal from a person," he explained. "You can only have a moral relationship with a person; you don't have a moral relationship with things. That is a power relationship." Leaving aside that the "neighbor" Jesus spoke of would indeed include the owners and employees of Marks & Spencers--since the assets of that business and the wages it pays belong to persons--Mr. Papworth makes a helpful admission concerning his admonition: "I don't regard it as stealing. I regard it as a badly needed reallocation of economic resources." In other words, what most people regard as common theft, this Christian socialist regards as forcible income redistribution. And because he asserts that Marks & Spencers is exempt from the command to "love your neighbor," Mr. Papworth thus concedes that carrying out this "badly needed reallocation of economic resources" is unloving. It's no more loving to demand the government do it. For those of us on this side of the pond, Mr. Papworth has unwittingly illustrated what's at stake as Congress and the president negotiate the FY 1998 budget.

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March 29, 1997, Vol. 12, No. 2

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