The Bible also contended that charging interest was sinful, inspiring Dante to consign usurers to the seventh circle of hell (alongside sodomites and murderers).
He shook his head furiously and told her that the confession made by women before marriage, in which, surrounded by female relatives, they swore that no man had touched them since their husband declared his interest, was sinful, because Christian wives should not have been touched at all.
In Tjarios Agan Permas, for instance, Hajji Serbanna displays his hypocrisy by damning usury as haraam (sinful) while charging high interest rates for a loan, and refuses to complete the mandatory prayers because he is waiting on a guest bearing large gifts.
And by the time we reach the 18th and 19th centuries, even the fictions disappeared as moral theologians, learning from the experience of Christian merchants, concluded that the taking of interest was not sinful but a necessary part of commercial life.
Charging interest was once considered sinful; indentured servitude was once deemed acceptable.
Before the Reformation, charging interest on loans – usury – was considered sinful by the church.
Like Adam Smith, they simply thought that if the pursuit of private interest were treated as legitimate (not sinful) and were properly regulated (crucial), you could create a society in which military valor was less prized than business acumen, in which capturing a market was more attractive than looting a village.
Alcohol is judged sinful so we created a "sin tax".
The bishop of Durham has described the interest rates charged by payday lenders as sinful and usurious, but says they are the only resort for many families desperate for money.
For centuries the medieval Christian church stigmatized interest as income without true work and, therefore, sinful.
