|
Edited on Wed Mar-05-08 02:23 PM by Joshua N
Christian Right's complicity to this improper ideology that I would be happy to post. Oh, and *warning* it is a religious paper, although I do feel that twisted religion is still at the heart of this matter. ********************************************************** PAPER/PAPER/PAPER/PAPER ********************************************************** Joshua N Jesus Against Christianity – Lawson Midterm Paper March 13, 2007 Jesus’ View on Poverty: a Critique of U.S. Civic Republicanism and Jesus’ Alternative. American public policy concerning poverty has changed in many ways over time, but one ideal which has affected it remains consistent: the independence and individuality of civic republicanism. This tradition, as expressed in twentieth and twenty first century U.S. poverty policy, takes an unrealistic view of the causes of poverty. Rather than acknowledge the various factors that bring about the social condition of poverty, civic republicanism focuses on individual choice; and, since the problem is considered mainly one of individual choice, the proposed solutions fail to account for the multiple sources of poverty. This narrow focus of poverty stands in contrast to Jesus’ view. Jesus recognized the many causes of poverty and worked to provide solutions that acknowledged these. Although he challenged individuals both rich and poor, to Jesus the main cause of poverty the way in which the rich manipulated the poor. If the United States wants to better alleviate poverty, it must abandon the civic republicanism that puts primary responsibility for poverty on the poor individual and instead take up a poverty policy that limits the exploitative practices of the rich. History of Civic Republicanism American public policy on poverty has its roots in English ideas and thought concerning the poor, dependent classes. Although there existed a small middle class of merchants and trade smiths, seventeenth and eighteenth century England separated its classes between the wealthy “gentry” (landowners and nobility) and the poor “commoners” (servants, slaves, and tenant farmers). Commoners were considered mentally and even morally inferior to gentlemen, whose intelligence and superior morals placed them in a position of wealth and independence. Land was the primary source of wealth at the time, and most of it was owned by gentlemen. Commoners worked the land to make a living, and therefore were dependent upon the gentlemen for existence. Because of this, over time manual labor, dependency, low intelligence and low moral standards became interconnected characteristics attributed to the poor. In America, however, manual labor was not associated with the poor. Land was no longer a commodity available only to the rich elite. “Anyone” – that is, any free, white male – had fairly easy access to land ownership. Those who in England would have been landless, dependent workers for the gentry now had an opportunity at independence and prosperity through manual labor on personal property. Hard work, then, came to be associated with self support and economic independence. Anyone who was willing to work hard could find success and independence (again, this, to an extent, is true if “anyone” referred to free, white males). For example, in the mid eighteenth century two-thirds of free, white male workers owned their own property. In addition, the one-third who did not own land was mainly comprised of recent immigrants and young men who had not yet established themselves. When this statistic is compared with the same statistic in England, where one-third of free white males owned land and two-thirds did not, it can be seen why manual labor on personal property became a virtue among free, white male Protestants in America, especially when considering the increase in personal wealth that came from land ownership. Over time, “the independence of property ownership was equated with virtue, propertyless dependency symbolized vice.” This negative view of propertyless dependency extended not just to free, white males who were propertyless and dependent, but also to groups like African slaves, indentured servants, and free, white women and children whose propertyless and dependence were primarily due to social structure. In any case, it was assumed that they “were responsible for their condition, that they could fairly easily obtain employment and eventually gain land and economic independence if they were willing to discipline themselves and work.” Any person or group who remained consistently dependent was considered lazy, morally inferior, and intellectually deficient. For instance, African Americans were characterized as “an inferior and naturally dependent race whose freedom in a republican nation would be a source of corruption;” free, white males who were too poor to own property were not considered worthy of full citizenship or the right to vote; and, no woman regardless of land ownership status could vote.
If the problem of poverty was dependence, the answer for civic republicanism was not public charity. In fact, “reformers saw the growth of public relief as a cause of increased dependency.” Instead, the proposed solution propagated by civic and agrarian republicanism was opportunity for independent property ownership. There is evidence of this ethical tradition during the presidencies of Adams, Jefferson, Jackson, and Lincoln, among others. For instance, the Harrison Land Act of 1800 allowed individuals to buy tracts of land in the Ohio territory with credit, and the Land Act of 1804 lowered the minimum requirement of purchased land from 320 acres to 160 acres, thereby making land purchases more affordable. Also, the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 greatly increased the amount of land owned by the United States, and the Land Act of 1820 lowered the land purchase requirements from 160 acres to 80 and lowered the price per acre. The Homestead Act signed by Lincoln in 1862 gave land to settlers for free as long as they were willing and able to build a house on the land and live there for at least five years. According to the line of thinking associated with civic and agrarian republicanism, these acts would be able to effectively reduce the number of poor. With hard work, anyone who is poor could change their situation from idleness and poverty to economic independence through property ownership.
Yet, there are a number of reasons why this approach was not as effective as thought. First, these acts still did not guarantee equal access to land for the poor. Even cheap land was not affordable to the low wage laborer and the unemployed poor, and land that could be bought with credit still needed someone with capital and a specific skill set to own it. Most people did not have the training and education to build houses or farm land, and this is especially true for the poor who, even with training, would not have the money to purchase capital. Second, even those who did have the training and could somehow provide the capital were not guaranteed economic independence. Illness, injury, and drought all contributed towards many landowners being forced to sell their property to repay their debt, and many had no choice but to become tenant farmers. Third, even those who could keep their land faced the danger of falling into poverty due to lowered prices based on surplus crop production and international trade tariffs. None of these important factors have anything to do with a person’s determination, will, morals, character, or personal choice – the factors which most greatly influence poverty according to the civic republican tradition.
Over time, the civic republican ethical tradition came to reflect three basic tenets: 1) only hard work is missing from success, 2) Assisting the poor makes them lazy and dependent, and 3) if someone is poor, it is because she is lazy and dependent and not a hard worker, and the best solution is to help her even less. Although there have always existed voices of dissent, civic republicanism has loomed large in the ethos and in the public policy of America. The Great Depression of the late 1920’s and the 1930’s opened the eyes of America to the many factors of poverty. With 24.9 percent of the nation unemployed, Americans could no longer accept the idea that the main cause of poverty was personal choice. Many social programs implemented during the Roosevelt administration, termed the “New Deal”, attacked the various factors of poverty. The government created programs that protected labor unions’ right to organize, created jobs for the unemployed, regulated the price of crops to avoid price depression, provided tax money for natural disaster relief, built public housing, and provided unemployment insurance for the unemployed and social security for the elderly and disabled.
However, it would not take long before the civic republican ethos reemerged. By the 1970’s, growing skepticism of social programs that aided the poor resulted in political attacks, as Americans wondered why the current social programs weren’t eliminating poverty. By the 1980’s, rather than trying to improve upon existing social programs such as Medicare (health care for the elderly, created in 1965), Food Stamps (1964), Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC or “Welfare”, 1935), and Medicaid (healthcare for the poor, 1965), Ronald Reagan slashed funding to all of these programs and completely eliminated the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA) which provided skill training for the working and unemployed poor. Reagan cut funding for public housing in half within his first year in office. This cut in funding increased homelessness across America. Yet, Reagan views on homelessness are expressed by his comment stating that “the homeless… are homeless, you might say, by choice.”
In 1996, Bill Clinton signed into law the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA). Keeping in line with the civic republicanism ideals of hard work and responsibility and holding firm to the belief that aid caused dependency, the PRWORA ended six decades of a minimum guaranteed aid to those in poverty (AFDC/Welfare), and replaced it with conditional aid based on eligibility criteria that is determined by each state. The only consistency in criteria is that welfare aid must end after two years, and lifetime assistance can not exceed five years. An interesting quote from John Iceland discusses the American response to PRWORA, and the economic outcome of the bill’s passing.
“… around a third of families reported problems providing enough food, paying utility bills, and paying rent. A few studies have found significant reliance on family and friends as a means of additional support.
Some of the positive aspects of PRWORA are that it contained a number of features with wide public support – it emphasized work over welfare and in doing so raised employment rates among single mothers, placed the obligation of child support on both parents, supported state-level innovation, emphasized reducing teen pregnancy, and stressed individual responsibility. A negative feature is that it focused more on reducing dependency than on reducing poverty. Work obtained by former (and potential) recipients often does not pay very well. Some hold that the bill placed too little emphasis on human capital development and support services, that it leaves many very needy families without income support…..” (emphasis added)
While welfare cases were greatly reduced from 5 million in 1994 to 2.2 million in 2000, those who left the welfare program were still extremely poor. Likewise, though the employment rate of single parents rose, their average annual income remained below the poverty line.
Despite the popularity of the belief that government aid keeps the poor in poverty and that the solution is for the poor to work harder, facts do not support this view. There are many other factors that contribute to the state of poverty in America. Civic republicanism does not adequately take these into account, and America must adopt a view that recognizes and takes seriously all the factors of poverty.
Reasons for Poverty besides Personal Choice
Although individual choice, morals, and work ethic can play a role in poverty, they are neither the only nor the most important factors contributing to it. Economic factors such as industrialization, deindustrialization, and globalization have contributed to poverty in America. Likewise, social factors such as racism against minorities and discrimination against women have also played a great role in creating poverty.
When industrialization took hold in the late 1800’s, farming became more mechanized and rural workers were left unemployed. This increased the number of poor in America. Also, in the late 1900’s up to the present, deindustrialization has contributed to poverty in America.. Iceland notes:
“… the shift of employment in the economy from manufacturing to services resulted in the destruction of a disproportionate number of higher-wage jobs, especially those whose primary requirement is manual skill. In their place, the service and retail trade sectors of the economy generated millions of new jobs, but these tend to be associated with a polarized earnings distribution and poverty.”
In other words, as higher paying manufacturing jobs were eliminated from the market, they were replaced with lower paying jobs retail and service jobs. This is not the fault of the workers; rather, this is the result of globalization. In order to maximize profit, corporations have sent many manufacturing jobs overseas where materials and labor are cheaper. Americans who filled manufacturing jobs lost them not because of laziness or poor personal decisions but because of corporate greed. These workers only options became lower paying retail jobs and underemployment or downright unemployment. Either way, the result is lower wages and possibly poverty.
According to a study in 1997, 48 percent of Americans who lived in poverty were people in families where at least one person worked full-time; 29 percent were people in families with at least one part-time worker; and, lastly, only 24 percent were people in nonworking families. As is evidenced by these statistics, hard work does not guarantee financial independence or economic security. Also, many of those who work only part time and many of those who do not work in any capacity do not wish to be partially or unemployed. Many would like to work full time jobs, but the opportunity is not available. Of all the poor in America, only 24 percent do not work, and many of these wish they had work. The percentage of those who do not work because of laziness or a sense of entitlement to aid and dependency is extremely small. In other words, Reagan’s “welfare queens” do not exist.
Up until the second half of the twentieth century, racial discrimination had been officially instituted into American public policy for centuries. Before 1865, most African Americans were slaves who worked without receiving pay and with no hope of personal freedom, let alone a decent wage. After the abolition of slavery, Jim Crow law refused southern black people the opportunity to work almost any other job besides sharecropping. There was virtually no opportunity for social mobility. This circumstance would not change for another hundred years, when the American civil rights movement of the 1960’s instigated change in overt laws and systems which limited the economic opportunities of racial and ethnic minorities. Although overtly racially oppressive systems have been fought with some success, covert racism is still prevalent in America. Job discrimination based on race is still widespread
There are many consequences of the discrimination against women which result in wage inequality and poverty. Iceland notes that,
“First, discrimination occurs when men are paid more than women for the same work. Second, discrimination contributes to occupational sex segregation – where men and women are highly concentrated in different types of jobs. The result is that women’s work is typically accorded both lower status and lower earnings than occupations with high concentrations of men.
Inequality in the labor market may also occur due to bias or discrimination prior to a person’s entrance into the labor market… For example, girls are more typically socialized into family-oriented roles, while boys… are encouraged to enter careers that emphasize making money… Women may be more likely to reenter after… pregnancy and raising young children, and that therefore do not offer as much upward mobility.”
Women in America make only 68 cents to the dollar of men’s salaries. This gross inequity that causes many women to live in poverty is not the fault of women. Laziness and poor decision making do not account for such a discrepancy in earned income.
Also, the above mentioned social and economic factors of poverty do not take into account the harmful effects of an unexpected illness, being disabled or handicapped, experiencing a natural disaster, the consequences of being elderly, having a mental illness, or being mentally retarded. None of these factors have any thing to do with personal choice, yet they all can play a major part in a person’s income level. A person of similar skill and educational level who is handicapped or disabled will be less likely to get a job than someone who is not handicapped. The elderly who can no longer work are on fixed incomes that are often poverty level. Those who experience natural disasters, especially those who are already poor, are hurt by the material loss and the ensuing financial burden. The mentally ill can become poor due to social “stigma, low morale, loss of self-esteem, medication side effects….” The mentally retarded can do some work, but most of it is lower skilled and therefore low paying.
There are social programs that address almost all of these detrimental factors of poverty; however, the funding for most of these programs has been drastically cut over the past 25 years. There exists in the American consciousness a certain callousness towards the poor that arises from a justification rooted in civic republicanism. Civic republicanism, with its emphasis on independence, free choice, hard work, and self-determination, allows most Americans to feel comfortable in turning the other way while their fellow Americans can not meet their basic needs. America can learn from Jesus, who not only recognized that poverty was in part due to the exploitation of the poor by the rich, but also protested against it.
Economic Exploitation In America
More than anything, the greatest contributing factor to economic inequality in America is the economic exploitation by the rich, especially wealthy and powerful business corporations. John Iceland notes, “Income inequality results from economic systems that foster the accumulation of money and assets in one segment of society, often at the expense of another….” Wealthy corporations oppress the poor by fighting to keep wages low in order to maximize profit.
The wealthy and their corporations have great influence in Washington, and they use it to their advantage. In order to become an elected official in America, a candidate needs large amounts of money. Most of this money is provided by large corporations. When a candidate is elected, he or she in a sense owes the corporations who financially contributed to their campaign. These corporations then have access to government power that can be used in their favor. As an example, Roger E Tamraz admitted that he donated $300,000 dollars to candidates but was not registered to vote. When asked why he did not vote, he replied that people with money have more access to Congress than voters.
Because of their influence, corporations and the wealthy individuals behind them are getting richer while the poor are getting poorer. A large part of this is due to the government’s help in giving corporations an advantage. For instance, in 1962, 21% of federal taxes were paid by corporation and 77% was paid by individuals. In 2003, 7% of taxes were paid by corporations compared to 90% paid by individuals. In fact, in 2004 82 of the 275 largest corporations in America reported that they did not pay any federal income taxes, and this while the federal tax code requires corporations to pay 35 percent of their profits in tax. With President Bush’s tax cuts between 2001-2003, 28.3 percent of the money went to the top 1 percent of the wealthy, 43 percent went to the top 5 percent wealthy, and 69 percent went to the top 20 percent wealthy. This makes sense when, of the 100 wealthiest economies in the world, only 47 are nations and 53 are business. These are only a small number of available statistics which indicate that the U.S. government is being bought by the wealthy. The top 10 percent who own 70 percent of the nation’s wealth and 84 percent of the nation’s stock and mutual funds have a grip on the nation’s wealth and will not let it go.
All the while those who hold to the ideology of civic republicanism allow this injustice to exist. America needs to realize the many factors of poverty, most importantly the exploitation of the rich to keep the nations wealth out of the hands of the worker and the less fortunate. America needs the example of Jesus, who many of its nation’s citizens claim to follow. Jesus recognized that poverty had more to do with personal responsibility. Jesus stood up against the unjust practices of the rich in his time, and if America wants to see poverty eliminated it must do the same.
Jesus and Poverty
According to Howard Thurman, Jesus’ ministry was meant to benefit the poor and oppressed. He recognized that poverty was not just the result of poor personal choice, but knew that poverty also came about as the result of oppression.
Poverty in 1st Century Palestine
The concept of a middle class was unfamiliar to first century Palestine. One was either considerably wealthy or considerably poor. The rich, upper class was less than five percent of Israel’s population. It consisted of tax collectors and other Roman officials, priests, and wealthy landowners. This upper crust, as we will discuss, controlled the flow of wealth in various ways.
As is the case in America today, in first century Palestine most of the poor were working poor. The poor worked the land to support their families and maintain a living. However, most of what was grown was taken by the Romans as tax. Most poor people barely had enough land to provide enough food for their families without the tax. With the tax to Rome, as well as the tithe to the Temple, poor farmers were forced to work the land of wealthy landowners for wages to make ends meet. Sadly, these were the lucky ones. Many would not produce enough crops to pay all of the Roman tax, and as a result the Romans would seize the farmers’ land. With no land to provide an income, many would resort to begging. Some could work as sharecroppers on other people’s land, but many of these ended up in debt and therefore either in debtor’s prison or enslaved.
As can be seen by these examples, the have-nots were dominated by the haves in Jesus’ day. Roman authorities and priestly officials took advantage of the poor by prospering off of the poor’s hard labor. Jesus’ combats this mistreatment of the poor by condemning the selfish action of the rich and encouraging those who have to share with the needy. This is apparent in Jesus’ support of the practice of Jubilee as well as his parables and sayings which challenged the status quo of the rich.
Jesus’ Response to the Rich
The Gospel of Luke portrays the beginning of Jesus’ ministry with this quote: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor… and… to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Jesus felt called to preach good news to the poor. In doing so, he also spoke out against the injustices of the rich.
Lazarus and the Rich Man
One example of this is found in Jesus’ parable of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-23). In the story, Lazarus is a poor person who begs for help from the rich man. The rich man never helps Lazarus, but instead enjoys the abundance of his wealth without any thought of obligation to Lazarus. Eventually, they both died and, in the afterlife, Lazarus spent his days reclining in the bosom of Abraham while the rich man suffered in eternal fire. The rich man was punished because he kept his wealth to himself and neglected to help Lazarus. He may have never personally oppressed Lazarus, but he left the underprivileged Lazarus to fend for himself rather than acknowledging Lazarus’ legitimate need for help. This parable shows Jesus’ attitude toward the callousness of the wealthy toward the plight of the poor. Jesus was willing to expose even apathy for the poor as the evil that it was.
The Unjust Steward
Another example of Jesus’ challenge to the rich comes in his parable of the shrewd steward (Luke 16:1-9). The steward was in charge of the estate of what was probably an absentee landowner. Although it was against the law to charge interest on loans, the steward loaned the landowner’s money while charging hidden interest that he was collecting for himself. There was a commonly used technicality that allowed for interest to be applied to loans that were not of immediate necessity. Since most loans were not considered this, interest was able to be applied that usually did not show up in the written contract. This allowed the steward to demand disproportionate amounts of interest that he could pocket for himself without the landowner’s knowledge.
Because of his greed, the steward has loaned out much of the landowner’s estate and has charged so much interest that the people can not pay the money (often, in the form of goods) back. The estate is out of money, and the landowner is planning to fire the steward. In the face of danger, the steward acts wisely. He could not forgive the entire debt that was owed to the estate, but he could forgive the extremely high amount of interest he charged in order to pocket for his own benefit. The steward could have had those who did not make their interest payments thrown into debtors’ prison. Instead, the steward acts righteously (and shrewdly) by forgiving the unjust amount of interest. Free from the unjust interest, the borrowers now can pay back what they owe.
In this parable, the landowner represents God who is taking to task the wealthy for their unfair practices. The steward responds righteously, and as a result is commended by the landowner. The landowner is pleased, the steward can keep his job, and the borrowers are treated fairly. Everything worked out when the steward acted righteously. Jesus uses the example of the steward to show both how things can work when one acts justly and also to criticize those who serve greed over God. Jesus goes on to say in v. 13, “No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You can not serve God and wealth.” The wealthy in Jesus’ day were serving their greed rather than serving God who intended for the wealthy to show fairness and even generosity to the poor. Greed for wealth enslaved the rich. Rather than use their advantage to help the poor, the wealthy used their advantage to exploit them by charging unfair amounts of interest. The parable of the unjust steward exposes the unjust practices of the rich and points out that one major factor for poverty is the exploitation of the poor by the rich.
Parable of the “Rich Fool”
Another example of Jesus’ protest against the rich comes in the form of a parable (Luke 12:13-21). A wealthy landowner has collected the fruit of his harvest for the season. The yield is so plentiful that his storehouses can not hold the amount of grain he has collected. He decides to tear down his old storehouses and build larger ones that can support his surplus grain. His hope is to use his new wealth to sit back and live comfortably.
It does not seem like there is any point where the “rich fool” considers using his time, energy, or thought towards helping the less fortunate. It seems not to cross his mind that his surplus grain could be used to feed those who are destitute. Instead, his thoughts are centered on serving himself, as is evidenced by 11 self-references in a span of four verses. His first thought is to tear down his smaller storehouses and build larger ones (which, by the way, would require more work and planning than simply building and additional storehouse). After building the new storehouses, he plans to store his surplus grain and “relax, eat, drink, and be merry.” Yet, this is not the plan that God has for him. God tells him that, despite all his planning, the wealthy landowner was going to die that very night. The parable ends with this statement: “So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God” (v. 21).
It is interesting to note that Jesus seems to equate being rich toward God with being generous to the poor. This implication strikes at the selfish actions of the rich who, far from being generous to the poor, exploited and used the poor to acquire their wealth. With this parable, Jesus condemns the greed of the wealthy and challenges them to change their practices of mistreatment to practices of generosity.
Jesus and Poverty: Conclusion
Jesus understood the role of the rich in making poor people poor, and he was not afraid to speak out against it. He challenged the rich even when surround by the threat of personal danger. Yet, Jesus did not stop speaking about the inequality of the wealth disparity in his nation. In fact, Jesus’ protest against the Roman and priestly domination system likely cost him his life. To a historically and presently majority Christian nation like America, Jesus is a wonderful model for how to address and deal with factors of poverty outside the personal responsibility of the poor.
Conclusion: Jesus, an Example for America
Although many other factors to poverty have been identified by scholars and recognized by the general public, it is up to America, political leaders and common citizens alike, to press for change that helps the poor. Americans can no longer accept civic republican ideology that feels comfortable in leaving the poor to their own devices. Cuts in social programs like welfare, Medicare, and Medicaid have hurt the poor, and innovations like Welfare to Work have spurred the cycle of poverty by taking the supervision of single parents out of the home. The actions stem from the civic republican ideas, not in the beliefs of Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus understood that some roots of poverty came from the domination of the poor by the wealthy. If America wants to eradicate poverty, it must abandon civic republican ideology and replace it with the perspective and the attitude of Jesus.
Works Cited
Chamberlin, J. Gordon. Upon Whom We Depend: The American Poverty
System. Peter Lang Publishing, New York. 1999.
Collins, Chuck and Yeskel, Felice. Economic Apartheid in America: a Primer on Economic
Inequality and Insecurity. New Press, New York. 2005.
Hendricks, Obery M. The Politics of Jesus. Doubleday, New York. 2006.
Iceland, John. Poverty in America: a Handbook – Second Edition. University of
California Press, Berkeley. 2006.
Kraybill, Donald B.. The Upside-Down Kingdom. Herald Press, Scottdale, PA.
1989.
Nelson –Pallmeyer, Jack. Jesus Against Christianity: Reclaiming the Missing
Jesus. Trinity Press International, Harrisburg, PA. 2001.
Thurman, Howard. Jesus and the Disinherited. Beacon Press, Boston, 1949.
Zundel, Alan F.. Declarations of Dependency: The Civic Republican Tradition in
U.S.Poverty Policy. State University of New York Press, Albany. 2000.
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
