Dear Editor,
I was fascinated by the article ‘Should we own property?’ by Michael Haykin (en December) about Benedict’s rule regarding private ownership. I am busy re-reading the wonderful biography William Carey: The Father of Modern Missions, by S. Pearce Carey, and am interested to add to the discussion the fact that he and originally four others agreed a covenanted community of fellowship in Serampore, based: ‘on equality of each, pre-eminence of none; rule by majority, allocation of function by collective vote; superintendence by each in monthly rotation; … the mutual forbidding of trading or of labour for personal gain, together with the pooling of all earnings, the apportionment of frugal pay to each family according to its needs, and the consecration of the whole surplus to the Mission’s expansion’ (pp. 183/4).
The author then comments: ‘Here they strictly followed Moravian precedent, smothering covetous impulse before its birth. In the same spirit they vested all the premises they bought or built in the Society, declaring themselves trustees rather than proprietors.’
I think we can deduce that this is the nearest we get to a Benedictine type of community of evangelical missionaries who are following Acts 2:43,44 and that it was a great success, but they did not assume all would find it easy to buy into it. Thus they ‘asked the home committee to give them local authority to exclude any family which might prove obstinately unwilling to resolve any difficulty’ because, as Ward, one of the four, said in advance: ‘I tremble almost before we live together. So much depends on a man’s disinterestedness, forbearance, meekness, and self-denial’ (p.182).
While I agree with Michael Haykin regarding private ownership being perfectly Scriptural, I think we can see in certain situations that families, over the years, have freely given up the right to private income and possessions, and the results have sometimes been that ‘their work-power was more than quadrupled by their pulling together’(p.183).
I am sure others more knowledgeable than I could list many cases of evangelical, Bible-believing Christians making a success of different types of renunciation of private ownership for the common good. Though the cynic may quickly list a number of failures as well, or sects which have perverted shared ownership for oppressive purposes, which Carey very carefully wanted to avoid, as shown by his rejecting of the Moravian precedent of appointing ‘a head or house-father, to whom the rest should in love be subject’(p.183).
Yours sincerely,
Steve Truscott By email
