Cultural Life of Money and Finance 5: The Theological Power of Money, with Devin Singh

The Cultural Life of Money and Finance podcast explores money and finance through the arts and humanities – asking new questions about finance, the global financial system, and financial behaviour in the twenty-first century. In a series of conversations with researchers and practitioners, we look at how money is being, and has been, thought about in different contexts – across historical, cultural, ethical, religious, social, and material settings.

The Cultural Life of Money and Finance project is based at the University of Leeds, and is led by Matthew Treherne, Rachel Muers and Mark Davis.  The project is supported by the Leeds Arts and Humanities Research Institute, and by the Leeds Creative Labs scheme at the Cultural Institute at the University of Leeds.

In this episode, Rachel is joined by Devin Singh, Associate Professor of Religion at Dartmouth about his 2018 book entitled Divine Currency: The Theological Power of Money in the West. The issues discussed in the conversation include the connections between moneylending and warfare; why we talk about punishment as 'paying a debt'; theology and coinage, including why and why not people might put a sacred image on a coin; links between religious innovation and economic innovation; minting of coins as assertions of sovereignty; and the cultural history and contemporary relevance of the idea of 'dirty' money. 

Devin Singh's book is available at https://www.degruyter.com/view/title/589048. For more information on Devin, please visit https://religion.dartmouth.edu/people/devin-singh.

For more information on the Culture Life of Money and Finance Project, please visit https://culturallifeofmoney.leeds.ac.uk, and follow us on Twitter @CulturalMoney.

The podcast was edited by Lisa Trischler.