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The global economy is nothing new. It existed in the days of Christ himself, protected and encouraged by the Roman Empire, and extending to the very limits of the known world. The spread of the Christian faith is itself a product of globalization, and the first moves towards a Christian theology are contained in letters sent by St. Paul to the far outposts of the empire. What is new is not so much the global economy but the speed with which ideas, information and assets can be transferred around the world. This speed has shrunk all distances to negligible proportions and has enabled firms in one part of the globe to compete openly with firms in another, whatever the distance between them. This fact presents new opportunities and new dangers. The opportunities are obvious: new markets, new partnerships, new forms of human life with which to stimulate commercial imagination. The dangers are less evident, but equally real: the hostility provoked by insensitive marketing, by aggressive competition, by manners and images that are offensive to the rooted values and religious beliefs and by products that are marketed regardless of their adverse side effects.
Theodore Roosevelt Malloch
Spiritual Enterprise: Doing Virtuous Busines , (p. 120-121), Encounter Books, 2008