disparity

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Trendy approaches to Social Transformation

There are frequent moments when I find myself thinking about some social media rant of this or that friend, “You and I have the same goals. But I think we have different thoughts on what needs to be done to reach those goals. So what is needed is the wisdom and knowledge/experience to know which approaches will actually create a net gain in shalom for the people we are concerned about, and which approaches may seem promising [and popular] but will turn out to be at best less effective, and at worst, counterproductive and actually harmful to the people we are trying to help.”

The UN has run up against this reality time and again, trying to help and then realizing this or that approach has created unforeseen results counter to the goal, harmful in fact. There are many popular “fixes” being advocated today,  popular as in, it is trendy and hip to advocate those approaches, and young people -and perhaps even your leaders- will consider you enlightened and with-it if you advocate those ideas, but which, in reality, do not solve the problem, will not create a net gain in shalom, will harm those we are concerned about, and are “empty clouds that produce no rain”.

None of that is to say that nothing should change, nor that we should just do what we’ve always done.  No one who, in their mid-40s, spent the time and money on an expensive degree in International Development would ever suggest such a thing.  What I do suggest is that jumping on the bandwagon of our favorite political party and advocating,  without studying an issue carefully over time,  whatever trendy fix is in the news at the moment, is not “the work of mature wisdom”. What I do suggest is that at this present moment, many people in our society, and in my own denomination, are advocating trendy fixes which a bit of mature wisdom, experience, and understanding of economics and community development  should indicate are hollow approaches which will do more harm than good for the very people we love and want to bless.

3000 years ago a Jewish sage wrote “Zeal without knowledge is not good, and the one who acts hastily sins.”

There’s a lot of truth there.

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Wealth and Prosperity

Although in our time, with the extreme disparity between ultra-rich and ultra-poor that we are aware of, wealth and prosperity have become words with a negative association in many peoples’ minds, in the ancient Near Eastern biblical texts, wealth and prosperity are seen as blessings, “every man under his own vine,” a security for the survival and safety of your family, a hedge against famine and weather. It is only, as a West Virginia great-grandmother recently put it, “ill-gotten gain” that is critiqued as a sin against the poor and their Creator. That, and fairly acquired wealth, but without a concern for those in need. As I explored briefly in the last post, the ancient scriptures have quite a few examples of men and women of wealth and property who are held up as examples of uprightness in God’s eyes, as they use their means as a way to help those in dire straits; the orphan, widow, poor, and foreigner. A more recent example of this I came across years ago, is this memorial plaque from England describing a man of means who saw his wealth as a tool given by God for the betterment of the world. It reads as follows:

CHRIST IS ALL

In Memory of Robert Holden Esq.

Of Nuthall Temple, born July 24 1805.

A monument of grace.

A noble example to the rich,

And an unfailing friend to the poor.

He lived in holiness before God

And great usefulness to man

And fell asleep in Jesus November 11 1872.

 

 

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Reinhold Niebuhr on Economic Disparity

I admit that I tend, like most people, I suspect, to think of terms like economic inequality, social justice and social disparity as phrases growing out of the 1960s social movements. I understand why some of my friends roll their eyes at these terms, seeing as there has always been economic inequality among humans on Earth – for our entire history! – and that such terms are often favorite code words today for confiscating resources that someone worked diligently to earn to help their family, and redistributing them to people who are not working. In a culture built on the Protestant Work Ethic and Germanic ideals of work-hard-be-rewarded-well-prosperity, it’s easy to see why many people consider these terms less than useful.

However, Christians have been concerned about economic injustice and disparity since the beginning. Christianity’s emphasis on God’s concern for the poor is drawn from its constant appearance in the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. Preachers as far back as Gregory the Great (540-604 AD) not only railed about concern for the poor, but also were already analyzing contributing factors as to why they were poor in the first place (Gregory himself observed that rural poverty due to a poor harvest had a different genesis  than urban poverty where the societal structures in place kept rich people rich and poor people desperately poor.)* John Wesley, Anglican founder of the Methodists, argued that a Christian should make as much money in his business as he could – as long as it didn’t harm his neighbor’s business! (Sermon: On the Use of Money). For myself, I am not against a factory owner making more money than the factory worker. Having known those owners, and their story, including un-assisted rags-to-riches stories that, yes indeed, were done without crushing anyone, not even systemically, I don’t have a problem that they are enjoying the fruit of their hard work. The ancient scroll of Proverbs in the Old Testament celebrated the cause-and-effect benefits of diligent work 3000 years ago. Every time someone succeeds, it does not mean it was via injustice, however hidden. A seven-person broom business in Bangladesh started with a Muhammad Yunus micro-loan shouldn’t have to listen to the charge of systemic injustice. I know American businesses started by very poor people that succeeded the same way. Constant assumptions of systemic injustice whenever someone does well, are over-reaching on the subject.

What does strike me as a new conundrum, is that in the current way our transnational corporate world is organized, the factory owner now makes over 350 times what the worker does, whereas 60 years ago they made about 12 times more than the worker. The fact that the owner was from that same town and felt a sense of responsibility for his workers, created a context in which all-or-nothing short term profits were NOT the order of the day. This is one of the chief reasons thinkers like Fritz Schumacher argued for smaller businesses rather than mega. But I got thinking of all of this when I was reading The Theology of Reinhold Niebuhr by E. Campbell today and came across this passage – using those terms like social injustice, in 1932! Here is Niebuhr’s quote, from Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics (1932):

                “The sharpening of class antagonism within each modern industrial nation is increasingly destroying national unity and imperiling international comity as well. It may be that the constant growth of economic inequality and social injustice in our industrial civilization will force the nations into a final conflict… the disintegration of national loyalties through class antagonisms has proceeded so far in the more advanced nations, that they can hardly dare to permit the logic inherent in the present situation to take its course. Conditions in these nations, particularly in Germany… reveal what desperate devices are necessary for the preservation of even a semblance of national unity…

                If the possibilities and perils of the contemporary situation are to be fully understood it will be necessary to study the class antagonism within the nations carefully and estimate their importance for the future of civilization.”

Heightened disparity undermining civilization. This from a landmark Christian theologian back in 1932. Interesting.

*Wealth and Poverty in Early Church and Society (Holy Cross Studies in Patristic Theology and History) Susan R. Holman, editor. 2008.