Usury In Religion Essay

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The concept of usury or the practice of charging financial interest in excess of the principal amount has been existed for almost four thousand years ago. This concept repeatedly discussed and condemned by the practitioners and experts because it is involving moral, ethics and religions. Major religion around the world had been aware about the concept and practice of usury. Further, every religion had own rules and obligations regarding the usury for guidance to mankind. According to Visser and McIntosh (1998), in the fourth of century, Roman Catholic Church forbids the taking of interest by the ministry, and a laws which they prolonged until the fifth century to the society. At the beginning, the practice of usury is forbidden in the fourth …show more content…

Due to this, in 1620, a theologian named Ruston stated that usury has been accepted from being an oppression to the public whereby Christian government projected to treat this matter as a private integrity and an obligation for a new generation of Christian philosophers to redefined the meaning of …show more content…

The prohibition of usury in Catholic context can be proven in three classes in the Old Testament which came in form of illustration by Deuteronomy 23:19-21 which points out that we should not charge interest to one of our own people but may charge to foreigner which indicate that interest-taking is not presented as inherently sinful, Another group of context is in form of passages such as by Exodus 22:25 and Leviticus 25:35-38 which order the interest-free loan to be given to the poor, out of compassion and mercy and lastly in form of a group of texts in Ezek. 18:13,17, Jer.15:10, Prov.28:8 this texts provides that the rich is criticize to oppress the unfortunate by charging with a ridiculous amount of interest in which they are unable to pay. (Palm

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