Building a Moral Economy: Pathways for People of Courage

by Cynthia D. Moe-Lobeda

Publisher:

Fortress Press

, 2024

Overview

This introductory volume in the Building a Moral Economy series invites readers into a new vision for the future of economic life together. Ethicist Cynthia Moe-Lobeda crafts a compelling case for a new moral economy: its vital importance, the pivotal role religious networks can play, and the varied forms of action needed. Building a Moral Economy: Pathways for People of Courage is grounded in the stories of real people, with real struggles, triumphs, and creative energy. Moe-Lobeda invites readers to imagine an equitable, ecological, and democratic economy for themselves and their descendants and provides wise guidance for living into that vision.

Readers will re-see economies as webs of relationship and will root economic life in the great love story--the story of God’s astounding love for all creation, and God’s call to align our lives with that love. Readers will encounter the work of economic transformation as a sacred journey--a journey of healing diseased relationships with Earth, with self, with neighbors far and near, and with the Sacred Source whom many call God. Moe-Lobeda conveys this as a journey of freedom to live as beings in community--human community, planetary community, and community with God.

Moe-Lobeda’s accessible prose explicitly faces the paradox of enormous moral challenges such as climate change held together with infinite hope. Welcoming readers into the vibrant global movement to build life-giving forms of economic life, she seeks to develop a sense of empowered agency. Are we the disinterested individuals motivated by material self-interest that neoclassical economics declared us to be, or are humans called to “think with” others, past, present, and future, seeking communion with all creation? Moe-Lobeda argues that our lives and Earth’s well-being depend on choosing the latter path. The work is urgent; the time to embark on these pathways of restorative justice is now.

Key Features

• Envisions a new future for economic life
• Grounds its ideas in real stories, inviting readers to imagine a better economy
• Presents economic change as a sacred journey of healing relationships

Praise for Building a Moral Economy

Really loving one’s neighbors—and constantly expanding the definition of who those neighbors are—will turn out to be the crucial practice of our overheated century, as these profound meditations make clear.

—Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature

We can live in a world where everyone flourishes; it is what God intends. This life-affirming vision is at the heart of Cynthia Moe-Lobeda’s book. Read this book if you find abandonment amid abundance and poverty amid plenty immoral and wrong, and to find a path that affirms that ending poverty is possible; indeed, it is what our God of justice demands.

—Liz Theoharis, director of the Kairos Center for Religions, Rights, and Social Justice, and co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival

Economics has famously been called “the dismal science.” Who knew, then, that a book about building a moral economy could be engaging, inviting, inspiring, constructive, pastoral, prophetic, therapeutic, and rich with stories? This one is, and it’s Moe-Lobeda’s finest writing and most important project to date.

—Larry Rasmussen, Reinhold Niebuhr Professor Emeritus of Social Ethics, Union Theological Seminary

Product Details

• Title: Building a Moral Economy: Pathways for People of Courage
• Author: Cynthia D. Moe-Lobeda
• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Print Publication Date: 2024
• Logos Release Date: 2025
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Logos Reader Edition
• Subjects: Economics › Moral and ethical aspects; Economics › Religious aspects
• ISBNs: 9781506485201, 1506485200
• Resource ID: LLS:BLDNGMRLCPPLCRG
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2026-01-05T22:00:01Z

About Cynthia D. Moe-Lobeda

Cynthia D. Moe-Lobeda is Wismer Professor of Gender and Diversity Studies at Seattle University and teaches Christian ethics in its Department of Theology and Religious Studies, School of Theology and Ministry, and program in environmental studies. She is author of Healing a Broken World and Public Church: For the Life of the World and is co-author of Saint Francis and the Foolishness of God and Say to This Mountain: Mark’s Story of Discipleship.