Should Economics Be Ethical?

Tonight I am posting a few reflections inspired by a video at this link:

Video on Income Distribution

In many ways, this video speaks for itself and needs no commentary.  And yet, I know that many will strongly disagree with the point that its creator is trying to make.  The question of income distribution and what is to be done about it marks one of the key fault lines in modern US politics.  I would like to address just two of the objections raised by those libertarians and fiscally conservative thinkers to the line of argument presented in the video.

Objection #1:  The WHOLE pie is getting bigger.  Yes, the poor may be poorer relative to the wealthy, but in absolute terms, they are actually better off than before.  Economics is not a "zero sum game."

Response:  This is a well-worn argument from laissez faire capitalists of all shapes and sizes.  And, to some extent, it is true.  Even though the income distribution is less equal than before, it can be demonstrated that the poor have benefitted in certain ways by participation in the larger system of free market economics.  When the waterline rises, all the boats rise with it.  

However, although this argument works if we look at the last 60 years since WWII, I am not sure that it is as conclusive if we narrow the scope down to the last 30 years.  In terms of buying power and wages relative to the cost of living, the poor in today's economy, according to some economists, are actually worse off than they were in 1980.  I would argue that the days of the "whole pie getting bigger" are over.  The boom of the post-WWII economy did benefit all Americans economically, but that is not the current reality.  We might also note that there were MORE financial regulations during the period of the 1950s and 60s than there are today.  For more on this, see this wonderful little video:  Senator Warren Lays the Smack Down

Secondly, I question what we mean by "better off."  This question goes beyond the realm of economics and into the realm of philosophy, theology, and sociology.  Is the generation of wealth the ultimate good for a society?  Is the creation of more stuff the telos of human behavior?  Moreover, does obsession with production, accumulation, and general creation of wealth even lead to greater levels of happiness?  I recall reading an article several years ago (if I find the source I will add the link later) which compared the poor of America's inner cities to the poor of India's slums.  In terms of absolute wealth, the American poor were far better off.  They ate more food, slept in more comfortable homes, had access to better drinking water, and even enjoyed luxuries like television.  The poor of India, on the other hand, lacked many or all of these.  But here is what's so fascinating:  the poor of India reported greater levels of happiness and satisfaction in their lives than did the poor of the United States.  Perplexed by this finding, the researchers dug deeper and ultimately determined that the residents of India's slums were happier due to the sense of community, fraternity, and solidarity that they found among their peers.  The poor of America's inner cities, in contrast, experienced fragmentation, alienation, isolation, and fear.  We could draw many fascinating conclusions from this, but for my purposes here I would simply state that the creation of wealth in and of itself does not necessarily benefit humanity or lead to greater levels of happiness.  The assumption of many economists that a "higher standard of living" is a self-evident, inherent good fails to recognize that achieving "a higher standard of living" is not the end goal of human existence.  There are greater goals.  One of those greater goals, I would argue (based on my theology) is the experience of community and unity with one another.  The vast inequality in the distribution of wealth that we find in the United States actually breaks down this sense of community and instead creates envy, class warfare, and various and sundry (I have always wanted to use that phrase in a blog post) forms of social strife.  Thus, a) the argument that the pie is getting bigger may not even be true anymore and b) even if it is, that does not necessarily mean that humanity is better off.

Objection #2: Economics is an amoral discipline.  It exists on its own and cannot be bothered with questions of morality and ethics.

Response:  Do I really need to respond to this?  Evidently I do because I distinctly recall hearing a self-described member of the religious right (a member of my church and leader in my youth group during my high school years) and a Republican staffer for the Illinois state congress stating, "We simply cannot start thinking of economics in moral terms.  The two have nothing to do with one another."  For a firmly committed libertarian, that is indeed the line that one must take to be consistent.  Ayn Rand saw this perfectly well.  You see, it all depends on what story you believe in.  If the world is nothing more than a dog-eat-dog, winner-takes-all free-for-all devoid of any larger meaning-making metanarrative, then there is no moralizing to be done.  In fact, injecting morality into the conversation is to appeal to a trick of nature, a weakness in the human evolutionary process, a particularly powerful and malicious meme (to use Dawkin's term) that deceives us all.  I don't have time to go into this philosophy here because books have been written on it, but suffice it to say that thinkers as diverse as Nietzsche, Jean-Paul Satre, Epicurus of the third century BCE, and Ayn Rand have maintained that without God (and the larger metanarrative that S/he provides), the only true meaning in life is self-gratification.  There is no right or wrong; there are just brute facts.  And the truly enlightened individuals who realize this (the übermensch) are able to cast off the shackles of morality and embrace the glory of their own will to power.  This is why Rand can write a book entitled "The Virtue of Selfishness."  

Do I need to say it?  These ideas are not Christian.  They are the antithesis of Christianity.  Nietzsche loathed Christians because they had been deluded into thinking that humility was actually a virtue.  He scoffed at their ignorance.  Well, Friedrich, I'm a Christian.  And as such, I believe in right and wrong.  I believe in good and evil.  I can look at the war in Syria and claim, "That is a bad thing."  The nihilist cannot do that.  I can also look at an economy in which 1% of the population controls 35.4% of its wealth and say, "That's a sad state of affairs.  In fact, it's wrong."  

I will state it very simply:  Economics is a moral discipline.  It, like all that exists, exists because God created it.  And it falls under the umbrella of that which has meaning and value, that which has moral weight, that which "stands under judgment."  As Jim Wallis is fond of saying (and I agree with him), "A budget is a moral document."  The way that the earth's limited resources are used reveals what we value -- and there are good uses of it and bad uses of it.  The Christian who is firmly convinced that God is God over all things must then evaluate every pattern of thinking according to the nature of God.  Economics does not get a free pass.  It too must be evaluated as ethical or unethical.  (To the schizophrenic Christian libertarian, I say, "Please stop fragmenting your mind.  You're gonna hurt yourself.  Economics and ethics aren't two different universes; they're inextricably bound.  Better yet, economics is subservient to ethics... or at least it ought to be.")  It seems ridiculous to me that I must even write this because it seems so obvious, yet some Christians have been so utterly duped by the language of capitalism that they actually say things like "We simply cannot think of economics in moral terms."  

Once economics is opened up to the critique of morality, I believe we are then right to claim that such an absurdly unequal distribution of wealth as we currently have in America is not only lamentable, but positively immoral.  Measures must be taken to fight it.  We must even leverage the authority of the government to at least partly address this imbalance for the sake of the common good.  The tools that we use to accomplish such a Herculean challenge are crude, but they are better than nothing -- I'm speaking of tools such as the progressive income tax (*gasp* Fox News watchers everywhere are calling me a socialist right now), a robust social safety net, public education, labor laws (which tries to counterbalance the power of that amoral übermensch who will not hesitate to squash a Filipino textile worker in order to increase his bottom line), strict financial regulations (in the hope we won't have a repeat of 2008), and on and on.  We are not aiming for perfection through these tools.  That's not possible.  But a more just society IS possible.  And a provisional, limited peace can be upheld until the ultimate, unadulterated shalom of God descends upon the earth.

Should economics be ethical?  Yes.  And right now the video that inspired this post shows us that we're not doing a very good job.

The Case for Flagless Churches

Many attend church week after week and never pause to reflect on the presence of a flag in the sanctuary.  Or singing “America, the Beautiful” on the Sunday after Independence Day.  Or a bulletin insert decorated with the stars and stripes.  I know that I didn’t for years.  These things were just as normal as donuts and coffee after Sunday School.  And yet, pausing and reflecting is something we must do because what we do on Sunday mornings matters.  Everything we see, hear, smell, touch, and taste (don’t forget communion!) in worship communicates.  These things orient our lives to eternal truths.   And by placing a flag in the podium we are, aware of it or not, participating in what sociologists call “civil religion.”  It’s a term I didn’t learn until seminary, but once I learned it, I began to see it at every turn.

Rob Hewell, author of Worship Beyond Nationalism, describes “civil religion” in this way:  “Civil religion develops as a nation-state seeks validation from the church or prevailing religious order for its establishment, protection, sustenance and ambitions.  It propagates itself through a cross-pollination of the stories, symbols and celebrations of the church and nation-state.”  In short, it is mixing patriotism with worship.  And it is ubiquitous in American churches.

The American flag did not appear in churches until World War I.  Why?  The simple answer is that a wave of patriotism always sweeps through a nation during times of war.  The tremendous cost and horror of “The Great War” united Americans and motivated them to display the flag in church.  The church felt the need to validate the nation and its agenda.  This was a lamentable change and it needs to be reversed.

When I was an English teacher in China, I had the opportunity to attend the officially state-sanctioned “three-self” church.  It caught me off guard when I entered the sanctuary and saw, next to the cross, a large Chinese flag hanging from the wall.  The juxtaposition angered me:  One was the symbol of peace, forgiveness, and salvation; the other was a symbol of communist, one-party rule; forced abortions; millions starved under the Great Leap Forward; repressed speech and freedom during the Cultural Revolution; and ongoing threats against political dissidents.  Why would Chinese Christians consent to displaying such a symbol next to the cross of Christ? 

But not so fast.  We do it too. 

Now I’m not equating the American government with the Chinese government.  Just hear me out.  Think about what the American flag symbolizes to different people groups.  To Native Americans, it means exile, dispossession of land, blankets infected with smallpox, rape, murder, Wounded Knee, and the Trail of Tears.  To African Americans, it means a history of slavery, broken families, Jim Crow, and burning crosses.   To my Iraqi neighbors, it is a symbol of military might, war, and national upheaval.  To the Japanese, it is a reminder of two of the worst days in human history, when thousands upon thousands of innocent civilians were instantly incinerated.  To Latin Americans, it is the emblem of a nation that funded bloodthirsty regimes in the 1980s.  I could go on.

Of course America and its flag are not all bad.  Like all nations, America has her moments of greatness.  But we can all agree that, at best, it has a checkered past.  For those who have been served well by the present state of things, the American flag may represent many beautiful things – freedom, liberty, the American Dream.  But the church of Christ is built on a different foundation.  Whereas America – like all nation-states – is founded on military power, Jesus demonstrated self-sacrificial nonviolence.  Whereas America obsesses over security, Jesus taught us to seek first the kingdom and worry not.  Whereas Americans chase the allure of upward mobility, Jesus demonstrated a way of life where “the Son of Man has no place to rest his head.”

You see, when we mix patriotism with the Christian faith, we pervert the faith.  We turn the universal

message of Christ into something tribal.  We confuse the nonviolent ethic of Jesus with the unending power struggles of the powers and principalities.  We fall prey to the temptation that has plagued the church since 313 CE, when Constantine decided he’d been divinely chosen to establish a Christian Empire.  This unholy concoction of the original way of Jesus and the way of the world expresses itself through our worship when we sing national anthems in our services, display flags in our sanctuaries, and use salvific rhetoric in reference to our national troops rather than to God.  Civil religion takes many forms.

We who claim to ally with Christ are part of a new nation, a separate and holy people that are (or ought to be) marked by our refusal to bend the knee to the violent gods that seek to subvert our allegiance.  In this nation, our laws are different, our language is different, our narrative is different, our relationships are different, and our ruler is different.  As Christians, we pledge our allegiance to that kingdom, and that kingdom demands all.  There is no room for any other alliance that might ask us to deny our true citizenship.  In this sense, we who follow Christ are all aliens in this world.  We who set our face toward Jerusalem have no nation but God’s. 

I pledge allegiance to the Lamb of God who was slain.  The one who is worthy to open the scroll.  The one who chose to lay down his life rather than grab political power. His kingdom, unlike America or China or any other earthly nation, will never end.  His kingdom is universal.  So let’s rid ourselves of our symbols of tribalism.  There is no room for them in the unbounded nation of God.

Why Christians Need to Talk about Trayvon

I am a Free Methodist through and through.  In fact, my Free Methodist credentials are quite impressive if I do say so myself.  To my knowledge, I am the only sixth generation ordained Free Methodist pastor.  In the world.  And so, I have devoted a good deal of my academic career to researching and thinking about my denomination's history and unique place within the larger witness of the church, probably because it has played such a large part in the formation of my own identity.

Several years ago I researched a very simple question:  What did Free Methodists have to say during the tumultuous decade of the 1960s?  Did they weigh in on Vietnam?  Did they back the civil rights movement or oppose it?  I set about reading as much as I could of the literature produced by my denomination during that decade.  I pored over the articles printed in the denominational magazine.  And you know what I found?  I found one -- ONE! -- article that even remotely questioned the legitimacy of the war in Vietnam.  It was the only article (more like a short blurb, really) that reminded Free Methodists of our Christian commitment to peacemaking and hatred of violence.

I did not find a single article addressing civil rights.

Think about that.  On the national level, what was taking place was unprecedented.  Martin Luther King was traveling the nation, legislation was being enacted, major strides toward racial equality were taking place... and my church was largely silent.

Remember: this is a denomination that boasts of roots in (and owes its name to) the 1860's anti-slavery movement.  I believe its silence, just a century later, is nothing short of tragic.  It's not like the church was filled with vocal racists and bigots.  Free Methodists weren't donning the white hood and burning crosses (and least, I don't think they were).  But they also weren't marching with the protesters, practicing civil disobedience, and attending the rally to hear about Dr. King's dream.  (By the way, if anyone who reads this knows of evidence to the contrary, please contact me.  I would be delighted to be proved wrong on this).

When my grandchildren ask me about the Trayvon Martin case, I don't want to tell them that I was silent.  I don't want to be found on the wrong side of history.  I want to tell them with pride that my church entered into the conversation and that, in fact, we were on the front lines, demanding that our nation talk about problems of systemic injustice.

Does the gospel have anything to say about what has transpired recently?  Some Christians evidently think that it does not.  According to the Christianity Today poll I participated in today, over 86% of churches did not even make the slightest mention of the Zimmerman trial.  That silence must be broken.  The gospel DOES have something to say here.  The gospel is a message of liberation, a message of hope, a message of reconciliation.  I believe that if Jesus had been alive in 1963, he would have applauded Dr. King's dream and worked to see it come to fruition.  And I believe that in our own day, Jesus would be standing with the family as they grieve over Trayvon's death. (He'd also be seeking to redeem Zimmerman from his violent ways.  Can't you hear him say, "George, put down your gun.  Those who live by the gun, die by the gun"?).  I can see Jesus wearing a hoodie.  It's in his nature to become like us and enter into our pain and our own struggle for justice.  That's what the incarnation is.

Is it any wonder why young people are turning away from the church in droves when the witness of the church has been so silent for so long?  God stands on the side of the victim, the poor, the outcast, the disfigured, the misunderstood black men of our day.  He calls his church to do the same.  And when we remain silent in the face of injustice, we betray the gospel.  Christians need to talk about Trayvon because the whole reason Jesus came to earth was to set prisoners free, give sight to the blind, proclaim good news to the poor, and initiate the year of Jubilee (see Luke 4).  He only asks that his people bear witness to that reality.

Hoodies up, y'all.  Can I get a witness?