Skip to main content
Work with the NEU
When Johann Sebastian Bach stood up to Mammon
Bach’s Debt Cantata demands that you listen not to the financiers and politicians, but to your conscience, writes DAVID YEARSLEY
Johann Sebastian Bach

THE Congressional Budget Office reported recently that the federal debt will overtake GDP by next year and will double to more than $33 trillion by 2030.

Debt and sin are synonymous in Christian thought and liturgy: “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors” runs the Lord’s Prayer as recited by Presbyterians.

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
Similar stories
A weathered medieval sculpture of a kneeling man, spotlit on a plinth against the painted brickwork of a castle hall
Features / 28 August 2026
28 August 2026

MAT COWARD explains how in the 17th century a row over whether to kneel at communion became a battle over religion, class and royal power

SD albums
Music / 17 August 2026
17 August 2026
god
Book Review / 13 August 2026
13 August 2026

MARTIN HALL welcomes a plea for greater compassion between believer and non-believer via the framework of philosophical enquiry

tosca
Opera review / 17 September 2025
17 September 2025

DAVID NICHOLSON is thrilled – and shocked – by an opera that seethes and sizzles with passion and the depraved use of power