The Theology of Fair Trade

“What we do when we shop is engage in trade. . . It is impossible to buy anything without impacting the lives of other people. Since Jesus asks us as Christians to love our neighbour as ourselves, and our neighbour is any other human being with whom we come into contact, the demand to love must prevail when we shop.” Dewi Hughes, The Bible and Trade

How is Fair Trade a way of living out our Christian faith? A number of authors have worked on the theology – looking at how prophetic teachings on trade and on equity might apply in today’s context; applying, as Dewi Hughes does, the command to love our neighbour to our everyday choices; and investigating the way in which Fair Trade fits into the question of how we steward God’s creation and live in relationship with our fellow humans.

The United Reformed Church’s Commitment for Life programme has published “Fairtrade as Mission,” a small and easily accessible leaflet on the Christian ethics of Fairtrade by the Canon Chris Sugden. You can further explore these issues in Canon Sugden’s Grove pamphlet “Fairtrade as Christian Mission” available from Grove Booklets on Ethics, Ridley Hall, Cambridge, 01223-46474 or in his chapter of the same name in “Markets, Fair Trade and the Kingdom of God,” (ISBN 1-870345-19-3). Some other useful discussions of the theology of Fair Trade are

• Dewi Hughes’ “The Bible and Trade.” This 9-page document, written for Tearfund, is available on loan from CCOW; it has also been shortened to bite-sized Bible studies for youth. To read the youth version, click here.
• The “Lift the Label” campaign's book, “Lift the Label: The Hidden Cost of Our Lifestyle,” (ISBN 1-85078-572-4) authored by David Westlake and Esther Stansfield.
• The meditation on fair trade by theologian Clare Amos in CCOW’s “Faith in the Balance” (available for download in the More Information and Resources section of Issues around Trade).