Payday Lenders Escaped Regulation, but Now They Face the Church
Alabama clergy casts such lending as a war between God and greed
Short-term loan businesses in Birmingham, Alabama.
Photographer: Gary Tramontina/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
On one mile of the Atlanta Highway in Montgomery, Ala., more than a dozen stores offer payday loans or cash on a car title, or they let you pawn a ring. Easy Money, Always Money, TitleBucks: They remind the Reverend Shannon Webster of vultures.
“To cluster like that for the purpose of ripping off the poor, it’s against every kind of moral instruction that we have,” said Webster, 62, pastor at Birmingham’s First Presbyterian Church.