Why the Joseph Centre Is Publishing a Theology of Financial Transparency

By Josh Harris, Director of the Joseph Centre for Dignified Work

When we started the Joseph Centre, our work began with conversations. Hundreds of them. Cleaners arriving before dawn to empty bins in towers they would never enter as guests. Security guards working twelve-hour shifts in lobbies designed for people passing through, not for people staying. Hospitality staff serving meals to traders whose lunch cost more than their hourly wage.

The launch event of the Voices for Transparency Exhibition. Photo by Katia Pirnak.

These conversations taught us something we are still learning to articulate: that the dignity of work cannot be separated from the systems within which work happens. A cleaner's pay is not just a matter of one employer's generosity. It is shaped by procurement contracts, by ownership structures, by the legal architectures through which money moves across borders. The same is true of the conditions of garment workers in Bangladesh, of cocoa farmers in Côte d'Ivoire, of care workers everywhere.

This is why we are publishing A Theology of Financial Transparency and why we are launching it alongside the Voices for Transparency exhibition.

Why transparency, and why now?

Financial opacity is often discussed as a technical problem. It is seen as a matter for regulators, for tax authorities, for compliance officers. It is, of course, all of those things. But it is also a moral problem, and one with identifiable victims. Research by Transparency International suggests that companies registered in British Overseas Territories alone have diverted £250 billion from 79 different countries through bribery, embezzlement, rigged procurement, and the unlawful acquisition of state assets. That £250 billion did not disappear into the ether. It was taken from public budgets, from hospitals, from schools, from infrastructure in some of the poorest places on earth.

When we talk about the conditions of low-paid workers in the City, we are talking about people whose families and communities often bear the cost of these flows. The same architectures that allow profits to be shifted away from accountability also shape the global landscape of opportunity. There is a line, even if it is sometimes a long one, between opaque corporate structures and the migration of a cleaner from Quito to Aldgate.

What the report argues

The report makes the case that financial transparency is a matter of justice with deep theological roots. It draws on three biblical themes: the prohibition of false witness, the moral weight that scripture attaches to money and material wealth, and the apocalyptic tradition of divine unveiling. This is the conviction that what is hidden will be made visible, and that human communities should anticipate this in how they organise their affairs.

It also engages with Pope John Paul II's concept of "structures of sin" from Sollicitudo Rei Socialis: the recognition that evil can become institutionalised in patterns of economic life, and that addressing it requires more than personal conversion. It requires the willingness to name systems honestly and to work for their reform.

This is not a Catholic argument, though it draws on Catholic Social Teaching as a shared inheritance of Christian thought. It is an argument that I hope speaks across confessional lines, and indeed to people of other faiths and of none who are concerned with the same questions.

An argument for the City

The Joseph Centre exists because we believe the City of London can lead. The same City that has been a global centre of capital can be a global centre of integrity. The same professionals who shape financial systems can shape them differently. This is not naive. It is what the City's best traditions have always been about.

We are publishing this report for finance professionals, for advocacy organisations, for policymakers, and for the wider public who are increasingly aware that the architectures of global finance are not morally neutral. We hope it contributes to a serious conversation about what transparency requires of all of us: including, as the report insists, of churches and Christian organisations themselves.

Join us

The Voices for Transparency exhibition runs at St Katharine Cree, and I warmly invite you to visit. The report is available to read on our website. If this work resonates with you, please get in touch. At the Joseph Centre, the most important conversations are still the ones we have face to face.

A City that works for everyone is possible. But it begins with being able to see clearly what is actually happening.

Josh Harris is Director of the Joseph Centre for Dignified Work, a project of St Katharine Cree, the Guild Church for Workers in the City of London.