Thou Shalt Not Steal?

It does seem to be a strange conclusion to the study. Of all the things that could be a link for the high volume of these types of lenders, how can you really quantify that it has anything to do with religion? Has the correlation of colleges in the communities, or average income levels, or the number of young struggling families versus areas with more of a singles or aged population, etc, been looked into?

Well, as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormon), I can tell you that the leadership of the church has counseled its members for years to avoid debt and this type of lending has been mentioned by name as an unwise practise. It's a shame that people don't always listen to wise counsel.

pay day loan could be good for a short term ,but bad for other reason, borow $500.00 and you're paying back $650. so i'd stay aay from that crappy loan........!

Rather than using this article to debate whether or not there is any connection between conservative Christians and Payday lenders, the question that this article engenders should be:

Why does self-proclaimed Christian leadership of these areas allow hese businesses to operate under such poor conditions.

It was the exploitation of such workers in such ways which led to the development of communist theory and its adoption in many countries in the 20th century. That is very unlikely to happen again. Regardless, nobody will dispute the superiority of the capitalist system, but neither should anybody argue that unfettered capitalism is beneficial to workers. If government does not provide a minimum of regulation to protect its people, then they will often be effectively duped into surrendering their freedom through economic means.

If America is the greatest country in the world, why does it allow its citizens to be abused in such ways? How different is this from those effectively relegated to modern-day feudalism by their debts?

Thank you for the comment on cause & effect. Almost nobody bothers paying attention in HS when you learn logic (remember ~a -> b = false). Therefore, they are easy prey to well-educated people writing articles with mathematical terms, fancy charts, etc. This article shows how much is wrong with Newsweek, and much of the media - they publish what they want to be true rather than discuss facts.

I don't think it really has to do with religion, politics, or race. Most of the conservatives I know do not come from families that are well off or communities with lots of high paying jobs, so that's where the money is for payday lenders. Often, conservative communities are homogeneous, so large numbers of people with the same attributes are being observed, making it seem they are targeted due to religion or some other characteristic. So it appears to be a white, conservative, evangelical, semirural problem when in fact people with these attributes have clumped together in needy communities that represent a profitable market for payday lenders. When payday lenders can make money in locations where people with different attributes clump together, usury will have a different face.

from Wikipedia:

"Correlation between two variables does not imply there is a cause-and-effect relationship between the two.

Here's a great example:

The more firemen fighting a fire, the more damage there is going to be:
Therefore firemen cause damage:

The above example is simple and easy to understand. Just because of the strong correlation between the amount of firemen at a scene and the damage that is caused does not imply that the firemen cause the damage. Firemen are sent according to the severity of the fire and if there is a large fire, more firemen are sent. Large fires cause more damage."

The point of the article should be to open a dialog and ask ourselves why is there a stronger correlation between payday lenders and Christians -- more than income or race -- not to claim that one causes the other (why hasn't anyone suggested payday lenders create Christians?)

The authors who discovered this correlation suggested that it MAY have to do with the fact that Christians tend to favor less government control (it's a belief -- neither good or bad). And maybe, ???less government??? has some unintended consequences.

Or maybe not ??? unfortunately, too many people here have already decided this is ???left-media??? attack on conservative Christians ??? which doesn???t really lend itself well to ???dialog??? or rational discussion.

Personally, I found this article intriguing ??? the juxtaposition of opposites. I continued, reading the comments, hoping others would contribute to the discussion of our modern society. With my apologies to those individuals who were the exception and did make well-thought and meaningful contributions??? the comments proved to be a sad commentary and unfortunately more enlightening than the original article.

What a shotty piece of fiction this article is.It is full of speculation to smear the conservative right as uncaring,money hungry,sociopath preying on the less fortune. If your reason is to believed that more lax lending practices are allowed in conservative state,it would seem that personal responsibility are the reason they exist and yes maybe because people of faith hope that wolves will not move in and take advantage of the less fortune.

As for the reference to usurp in the Old Testament,that was an instruction to the Jews to deal with other Jews,not the population as a whole for they could lend to non Jews with interest.As for the New Testament in Luke 19 Jesus told the story of a unprofitable steward who returned no interest on the money given him.I only insert this to show a possible lack of Bible knowledge of the writer and not that Jesus wants us to take advantage of people.

Let me preface this by saying that I am a Christian, and a pastor. Now, two comments: 1/ just because a person is Christian doesn't mean that they are a hard-right Republican. Lots of good and faithful Christians aren't Republican. This has been a label that has been hijacked by one strain of Christianity (conservative evangelical) over the past 20 years. 2/ So what if someone is critical of Christians? The church is never perfect and is always subject to correction. Real Christians can take it, and God uses all sorts of means to keep the church faithful. This is not a "gross waste" but something conservative evangelicals should wrestle with.

If you had some substatial commentary about Christan Leadership and Stewadship this would have been of interrest to read but your substance is vague and lacking meaniful form and seems to be a limp efflort to deride Christianity and its leadership. There are plenty of real issue with meaty substance if you want to do that but this article is lame and a gross waste of everyones time including yours.

Being politically conservative (as Christians lean) usually equates to supporting less government control. Less control equals more freedom BUT opens the door to bad actors including more predatory lenders.
What is hard about this logic?

Having said that, what was the author's motivation for writing the article?

If you had some substatial commentary about Christan Leadership and Stewadship this would have been of interrest to read but your substance is vague and lacking meaniful form and seems to be a limp efflort to deride Christianity and its leadership. There are plenty of real issue with meaty substance if you want to do that but this article is lame and a gross waste of everyones time including yours.

With data like this, one could just as easily assume that predatory lenders prey on conservative Christians, but the article does not address that possibility at all. Instead, it hints at conservative Christians *being* predatory lenders.

Payday lending in any form needs to be regulated as does the interest that credit card companies are allowed to charge their customers. The main regulation should be that they can charge no more than 5% above what banks pay on their customers' savings accounts.

When I was growing up in the '60s, passbook savings accounts were almost universally paying 5.25%. Mortgage rates were in the 6%-7% range. I had a credit union savings account that actually paid 7%. It stayed this way until the late '70s/early '80s when mortgage rates started spiralling up seemingly out of control. Still passbook savings accounts paid 5.25%. Then, in the mid-'80s, the banking industry was "de-regulated" and it has been all downhill ever since. For the benefit of the wealthiest few, the American people that can least afford it have been sold into slavery to the current environment of predatory lending practices.

My understanding is that this sort of environment that preys on the weakest members of our society should be anathema to any organized religion. Why then, in a nation that professes to so strongly uphold "Christian" values, should this morally reprehensible environment be allowed to persist?