What Could Be Done but for the Money of God (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798199500050)

What Could Be Done but for the Money of God opens with a stark fact: 25,000 people will starve to death today. It closes with a simple question: could a church property be sold to save a few of them?

In between, S. R. Ward makes a rigorous and impassioned case that the modern Protestant church has wandered catastrophically from the teachings of Jesus Christ - not through malice, but through the quiet adoption of corporate logic. Drawing on Milton Friedman's doctrine that an entity's greatest responsibility lies in the satisfaction of its shareholders, this book argues that the church has become exactly that: a religious community center selling comfort and belonging in exchange for tithes, while the poor wait at the gate.

From the sale of indulgences to fund St. Peter's Basilica, to the half-trillion dollars of Protestant church infrastructure sitting in the United States alone, to the mere three percent of church funds directed toward charitable work, the evidence is damning. But this is not simply a polemic. What Could Be Done is ultimately a book of hope, tracing a path from the corporate church model toward what the author calls Ecumenical Metamorphism: the conversion of church infrastructure into homeless shelters, housing and genuine service to the needy, a return to the radical generosity of the first Christians.

Written for believers and skeptics alike, this is a book about what Christianity was always supposed to be, and what it could still become.