The issue of private property and the rights it confers remain almost undiscussed in critiques of globalization and free market economics. Yet property lies at the heart of an economic system geared to profit maximization. The authors describe the historically specific and self-consciously explicit manner in which it emerged. They trace this history from earliest historical times and show how, in the hands of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke in particular, the notion of private property took on its absolutist nature and most extreme form--a form which neoliberal economics is now imposing on humanity worldwide through the pressures of globalization. They argue that avoiding the destruction of people's ways of living and of nature requires reshaping our notions of private property. It also examines the practical ways for social and ecumenical movements to press for alternatives.

Spanning the continents, three internationally respected theologians demonstrate how the thought and legacy of Martin Luther can serve in an ecumenical and interfaith context as a resource for a radical critique of global economics and culture. Lutheran Christianity originated in its own era of economic and cultural crisis. One of the great misinterpretations of Martin Luther has considered his heritage as fundamentally reactionary, seeking to preserve the political status quo. Instead, set free by the biblical message of liberation, this book wields Luther's theology to engage the reality of poverty, hunger, oppression, and ecological degradation caused by an imperial capitalism as the most urgent theological issues in the contemporary world. The volume demonstrates the liberating possibilities of theology done out of a biblical and Lutheran perspective for the economic and cultural crises facing the church in the present century.