Activity time: 30 minutes

Materials for Activity

• Handout 1, Religious Messages about Money and Wealth
• Pens and/or pencils or sticky dots
• Newsprint, markers, and tape
• Mural from Activity 1

Preparation for Activity

• Write on newsprint and post the following instructions:
  • Circle teachings that are familiar to you.
  • Put a check next to all religious teachings, familiar or not, that offer wisdom for your own financial life.
  • At the bottom of the handout, add messages from any religious tradition that have been important to your understanding of your relationship with money.

Description of Activity

Distribute Handout 1, Religious Messages about Money and Wealth. Note that this handout includes sacred writings and teachings from five major religious traditions and from Unitarian Universalism. Invite participants to follow the instructions you have posted on newsprint. Allow ten minutes for participants to work on their own.

Then invite participants to share reflections. Ask:

• Are there religious messages that you want to incorporate into your own way of relating to money and wealth? Conversely, are there messages that you find challenging or not helpful?
• How do any of these religious messages resonate with your own beliefs about "financial virtue"?
• Ask what connections (if any) can be drawn between cultural messages discussed in Activity 1 and the religious teachings about money and wealth?
• Where are the religious messages disconnected from cultural messages or even in conflict?
• What did you learn from this activity?