Bounty in the mutiny

Many books have been written about global capitalism since the recent crisis discredited its credit culture. But Stephen Green's Good Value (Allen Lane) is unique. It is written by someone who has spent long, meditative hours in the cathedrals of both high finance and Christianity.

It is now a century since corporate skyscrapers routinely began to dwarf Christian cathedrals. Architecturally, the towers of a creed of creative destruction began to dominate a creed of resurrection. Founded on a belief in eternal life, churches were built to last; but the temples of private profit and acquisition glorify their own sublimely uncertain future: in the name of economic growth they are liable to be destroyed by their servants and rebuilt even higher.

Mr Green is a practising capitalist - chairman of HSBC, the world's largest bank - and a liturgically active Anglican priest. Last Friday, at the President's Palace, when I heard him discuss his book on "money, morality and an uncertain world", I found it difficult to disentangle the two roles.

His voice, at once grave and conversational, is classic BBC Thought for the Day. He filed past me three times, down the aisle, as part of President George Abela's retinue; each time with the demeanour of a robed priest processing towards the altar, with that light step, straight back and gaze pitched into the middle distance, just above and beyond the inquisitive Maltese faces turned towards him.

So, his view on globalisation might emanate from the 42nd floor of 8, Canada Square, Canary Wharf. But his eye is also trained (not least by the poetry of TS Eliot) in the ascetic discipline of discernment of spirit: in the play of light and shadow in historic churches, in the chiaroscuro of Church history.

His book is about values but it recognises that ambiguity is inescapable. He does not under-rate the fundamental development that capitalism must undergo if a sustainable, equitable global community is to be formed; so he rejects the triumphalist liberal view of globalisation's boosters. In refusing to make a fetish out of its many discontents, he separates himself from social conservatives and militant rejectionists.

And, in finding that the most interesting developments today are intercultural - the hybrid creations and inventions flourishing in Beijing, Qatar and London, among other cities - he refuses to accept that boundaries between civilisations are necessarily areas of clash and conflict.

Mr Green appraises 21st-century globalisation from a perspective that measures it against the invention of agriculture, of cities and of machines. He evaluates financial credit in terms of what makes it creditable: the role that economic confidence can play in developing individuality and community. Above all, he has been deeply influenced by the French Jesuit thinker, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955), who speculated that the cosmos was evolving towards a single spiritual consciousness.

Mr Green shares the view that the age of the internet may be a sign of the fulfilment of Teilhard's vision, which presents participation in a global community as a necessary aspect of the spiritual enrichment of every person. One day, Teilhard wrote, when humanity harnesses the energies of love, it will have rediscovered fire.

From Teilhard and others, Mr Green takes the idea that for each of us the world becomes more personal the more we share it. However, he acknowledges the depersonalising and, therefore, dehumanising tendencies of the modern economy.

One is the spread of modern forms of slavery and abjection. Another, to which he devotes much attention, is a Faustian definition of success, which affects affluent societies: the bargain to sacrifice human relations for career, that form of alienation reflected in the desire to be superhuman. Originally an illusion that only an aristocratic or intellectual elite could entertain, its seductions have increasingly become democratised.

Overcoming alienation, he writes, must involve a spiritual mutiny: not a retreat from the world but a sharp advance into it. We must, twice over, recover our sociability.

First, by refusing to lead compartmentalised lives: our standards of integrity, commitment to one another's good and "servant leadership" must imbue our working lives as much as our private ones.

Second, by recognising that money has a role to play in building trust and sustainable communities. We could not have a world well protected against disease and hunger without banking. Or without personal ambition. But money and ambition must be put to long-term, sustainable uses.

Mr Green argues the Washington Consensus cannot survive the crisis. In its place he urges capitalism with an ethos of creative sustainability rather than creative destruction. Is such capitalism possible in practice or is it a contradiction in terms?

The question is fundamentally about institutions: those needed to develop the forms of political and economic democracy that sustainable communities require. Mr Green recognises that the most affluent societies depend not just on markets but also on institutionalised transactions (like social benefits) conducted outside them. However, he chooses to remain focused on interpersonal relationships.

Politicians will need to work out the available answers for themselves. But from Mr Green they can learn how to address values without bleating about them and how to accept shades of grey without becoming unprincipled.

ranierfsadni@europe.com