Giles Fraser tells the story of how Christians came to have such mixed feelings about a subject we all obsess about: money.

Giles is the Canon Chancellor of St Paul's Cathedral. As well as being responsible for the Cathedral's money, his job is to reach out to the people who work in the City of London. But with Jesus' instructions to give up all worldly goods, what can Giles say to people earning millions of pounds a year? At what point does profit become immoral? And what can the Church of England as a whole say to the financial community, when itself has hundreds of millions of pounds on the stock market? Is that why the Church went rather quiet during the credit crunch?

In this second programme Giles uncovers how, over the centuries, the church changed its mind about money. From it's origins as a religion based on ideals of poverty, the medieval church grew to be the richest institution Europe had known.

But at the heart of the church's changing attitude to money is the Reformation, which whilst starting as a rebellion against the riches of the medieval church, relaxed laws on usury and opened the way for today's capitalism. Giles talks to historian Niall Ferguson and to Lord Griffiths, Vice President of Goldman Sachs and a committed Christian, to explore how the Reformation paved the way for our attitudes to money today.

Producer: Jane Greenwood
A Loftus production for BBC Radio 4. Show less