Although the Occupy movement appears to be losing steam, the issue of fiscal inequality is one that is going to fester and, make no mistake, the anger will erupt again. I know Christians of good will who hold strong opinions on both sides of this issue. But is it really an issue over which Christians might agree to disagree?
One Christian lady has put a bumper sticker on her car, yet another volley in the bumper-sticker battle between political left and right. Her sticker says this: "Don’t spread my wealth. Spread my work ethic." She is not wealthy, however. She is part of the famously shrinking middle class. What’s more, she will likely never be wealthy. Sociologist Judy Root Aulette writes that many scholars have observed how the wealthy have a preoccupation with maintaining the boundaries between themselves and others. They are not just going to open the doors and give her access to the great vaults, no matter how hard she knocks.
With her bumper sticker, however, this woman is making it clear where she stands regarding the Occupy movement. She is taking the side of the wealthy. She has her reasons and she can tell you what they are: she does not want the government to have the power to redistribute wealth, an infringement on her rights; she wants what small wealth she does have to stay where it is.
In the years leading up to the Civil War, the issue of slavery did not just split our nation, it split the church as well. Before the war, every major denomination fractured over the issue of slavery - a fracture that cracked along the same crooked geographical path that the war’s battle lines would take: North against South.
Not many southerners actually owned slaves - a few very wealthy plantation owners did - yet they supported the institution in hopes that someday they might be in a position to buy a slave, to start amassing real wealth. For most, the financial realities made their chances of pulling it off so unlikely as to be impossible.
Many southerners who supported the institution did not say it was slavery they favored, but state’s rights, the right of every state to self-government without intrusion from Washington.
You might say the long-past issue of slavery has no similarities to the present trouble. I say yes it does, particularly for Christians.
When it becomes clear that an institution operates in such a way as to allow - even foster - the perpetuation of inequality, where should a follower of Christ stand? Sure, good people work within that system. No doubt there were a lot of good Christian people working inside the slave-fueled economy of the antebellum South.
Most conservative Christians today say it is big government they stand against, not financial inequality. But, like the southern Christians who supported the slave economy, they hold this position by ignoring the very clear and unequivocal words of Jesus on the subject of money and wealth. Set your politics aside and go back and reread carefully what Christ has to say about the rich and the poor, and the use of money. Ask yourself which side of the Occupy line he would be standing on. Without fail, Jesus takes the side of the downtrodden, the marginalized, the subjugated.
History does not look kindly on the southern Christians who flouted Christ’s clear teaching and supported the so-called rights of slave owners to profit from the labor of their fellow human beings without spreading the wealth. Neither will it be kind to Christians who today are, in spirit, doing much the same thing.
(Photo of an Occupy encampment courtesy of Debra M. Gaines/Wikimedia Commons.)
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Comments (20)
You analogy is an interesting and provocative one. But, I wonder, what is the single issue that galvanizes the positions on either side of the Occupy movement? I think the analogy breaks down here since it is not a matter of redistribution versus no redistribution---we already have a progressive tax code and social programs. Rather it is a complex mix of issues that are at the heart of crippled mobility and rising inequality. To be sure, neither more or less government are a magic pill for what ails us. But, neither is having the wealthy "open the doors and give her access to the great vaults." The boundaries Aulette notes are endemic to all groups of people (race, class, income, etc.), which stratifies society and cripples mobility. Like slavery it is an effective caste system, rather than hoarding that is the greater societal sin.
js
The redistribution of the funds is more of a symbolic way of saying "stop being so damn greedy."
The problem with the 1% isn't necessarily that they're hoarding their money and not sharing, it's that they are taking measures to keep the little people down by putting them in such a situation where they are disenfranchised and working for lower wages than they deserve, while at the same time these leaders of corporations are shoveling in as much cash as they possibly can.
The company that I work for does just this. They claim to be about the product that they put out (newspapers), but let's be honest -- their product is terrible. It's filled with syndicated content that readers can access hours before the paper even hits the stands. And people lose interest. So stocks fall. But instead of doing what they should do (modifying their business plan to keep up with the way people engage with information), they cut even more corners, which leads to a worse product, less pay, more layoffs, and many unhappy employees. And let's not forget forced unpaid time off. We were all--company wide--told to take 3 weeks off from work unpaid, as a means to keep from having layoffs. Fine. But at the same time we were tightening our belts for the good of the company, a certain executive gave him or herself a 50 percent raise.
Ouch.
Oh. And by the way, almost 200 people were still laid off.
So, this is what it's more about. OWS is tired of this type of thing happening -- a minute percentage of our population having the vast majority of the money and control that are endeavoring to keep it that way at the cost of the wellbeing of others.
Karl Marx is more right than many care to believe, it seems.
The problem occurs when the government steps in and bails the company out. It short-circuits the automatic market discipline. The government takes money from all citizens and redistributes it to a well-connected business. The executive keeps his/her exorbitant raise instead of losing it.
I think that neatly illustrates the true cause of the shrinking middle class. The lack of upward mobility is being caused by the GOVERNMENT. You know, the one entity that can use force to transfer wealth. The one entity that takes away freedom.
Meanwhile, with the furloughs I've been forced to take, my brother has made more tossing pizza dough than I have as an experienced, college-educated journalist.
What would you have our society ( and this means our laws) do to change this? What regulations would prevent it without killing the company?
On the whole thing about the bumper sticker, the author missed the point as well. He couches it in the realm of "rich-vs-poor", while the bumper sticker was presenting a personal value, a Biblical value by the way, regarding personal responsibility regarding work.
Also regarding the bumper sticker: in light of the conversation this woman is joining, the point is quite clear. Us--those who work hard and want to keep what we earn--against them--those who are lazy and shiftless and want to take it away. A personal value for sure. But since institutional racism and classism is a statistically demonstrable fact.
From the link above:
Many white people continue to believe that racism and sexism, like ethnic prejudice, are simply hateful attitudes toward people. They look inside themselves and cannot find either the feelings or the beliefs they associate with prejudice and so conclude that they are notprejudiced. Because they are committed to treating people fairly, they believe they do so. They teach their children not to judge others by the color of their skin, and they contribute to various charities that address issues of equity and civil rights. Because they have never been taught the difference between simple “prejudice” and the more complex and recalcitrant forms of oppression signified by the words “racism” and “sexism,” they cannot understand why some people want to talk about “racism” all the time instead of individual initiative. They do not understand that racism and sexism are perpetuated every day by nice people who are carrying on business as usual. They do not recognize that what passes as “business as usual” already institutionalizes white skin, male, and class privilege. They honestly believe that what separates them [...] are intelligence and hard work.
Capitalism is inherently financially unequal. Like it or not, this system is the basis for the economic progress we have enjoyed. The so-called rich are to be motivated to generate wealth by creating jobs for the rest of us. Is there greed and corruption intermingled in that process that have led to abuses? Of course; the 1% need Jesus and the power of the gospel to transform their lives.
I believe that a sizable portion of the occupiers responded to the class warfare call put forth by our president and responded accordingly. Some are true victims but many also have a victim mentality and expect the government to create jobs for them. Those people need to respond to the bumper sticker exhortation. The 99% need Jesus and power of the gospel to transform their lives too.
"He has shown the strength of his arm,
he has scattered the proud in their conceit.
He has cast down the mighty from their thrones,
and has lifted up the lowly.
He has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent away empty."
I don't know about you, but that sure looks like "taking sides" to me.
You have capitalism completely backwards if you think "creating jobs" creates wealth for the holders of capital. In fact, precisely the opposite is true; lowering labor costs creates wealth for the holders of capital, whether that means cutting jobs, paying workers less, or moving the jobs to somewhere where workers will accept less. The interests of the ownership class are in creating as few jobs as possible, at the lowest rate of pay possible. That is a crucial fact in capitalism; the interests of the ownership class are aligned against the interests of people.
To put it very bluntly: "Class warfare" didn't start sometime after January 20, 2009; it's been waged consistently by the ownership class against the people for decades now. Look at the real wages of the average worker, which have declined in the past three decades. Go to your local soup kitchen, food pantry, or free health or dental clinic and look at how much longer the lines are. Drive around and look at all the foreclosed homes.
But somehow, those things aren't "class warfare"? It's not "class warfare" when a company that's already making money cuts a few thousand jobs, making all the rest of the workers work that much harder for no more pay, just to make more? It's not "class warfare" when a poor kid can't go to a school with air conditioning in the 90º heat while the rich kid has a brand new million-dollar facility in the suburbs? It's not "class warfare" when I'd get 5 years for stealing $50 from someone on the street, but the bank CEO gets a $10 million bonus at the end of the year for stealing billions of dollars from the people?
Why do we only hear about "class warfare" when the people stand up against the ownership class and demand justice?
You're right that Occupy is part of class warfare. It's the people finally standing up against the ownership class, who have been making war against us for decades right now. And when it's the hungry versus the rich, I recommend rereading the Magnificat before trying to say that God doesn't take sides.
That's a very selective and faulty reading of scripture that includes only those instances that support your point. If poverty is an accident of birth without moral stigma, so also is wealth. It is quite different to suggest a moral weight in this way versus seeing the incarnation as a transformation of the existing order of the world. It is the second option that Mary proclaims, not a winning of the culture war by a definitive identification of God with one side. If it were only an identification of a deity with the poor, rather than transformative salvation of the created order, it would be an act rather unworthy of devotion.
js
Further, your point that poverty and wealth are largely an accident of birth is quite true; few of the wealthy in this country have Horatio Alger rags-to-riches stories, and many if not most were born into means. Anyone who's been around the working poor knows that they are by far the hardest-working people in this country—often working multiple jobs while trying to stay in school and/or raise children—while many of our nation's wealthy do nothing productive of any kind while their capital allows them to make unfathomable amounts by stealing from the sweat of another's brow. (Some of the wealthy did work for their wealth, I won't deny that.)
However, wealth is power, and power is responsibility, as Scripture makes clear; thus, wealth does have moral consequences that poverty doesn't have. So, too, does the power to make decisions for a business. From those to whom more is given, more is expected. I don't know how you avoid that as a moral mandate.
I agree that the Incarnation is much more than simply a victory by the poor against the rich—but Scripture is clear that in the Kingdom, a place where all of God's wishes are incarnated in the community, a place where injustice has no place, the poor are filled with good things while the rich are sent away empty. Mary speaks to this here, Jesus speaks to it in the Gospels, the Prophets cry out for it, the Law is packed to the brim with it. God stands alongside the poor as they cry for justice, and God calls us to join in the work of the Kingdom.
js
There really needs to be a serious investigation done into the heart of American Christianity (and, yes, as Vic said, it's history of being pro-slavery) and why it seems that Christians feel it imperative to side with capitalists, with the rich, with a primarily white demographic. Any efforts outside of that are expected to lauded as "good deeds."
The fact of the matter is that the ruling class IS crushing the upward mobility of the middle class. To say that people are not hard working because they are less fortunate is truly hateful. My father is someone who has never been able to make a ton of money. He came to this country as an immigrant in his mid-20s and has worked up to even 90 hour weeks to try to make ends meet. And he is highly skilled, artful even, at what he does. Meanwhile, it's not him who is getting pay raises for doing work faster and at an increased level of quality. It's his employers sitting in their offices who make benefit from his ingenuity, and don't so much as offer a bonus.
Yes, you'll say that he should work for a different employer, but it's all the same. I've seen him work for a variety of different companies, and it's the same everywhere. Expect magic from your workers in difficult situations, but pay them nothing extra in return.
This is the point I was making with my own employer, and it's a comparatively white collar position to what he does (he is a master craftsman). We'll give you garbage, but expect award-winning products to result, meanwhile we'll not only not give you a raise, but we'll CUT your pay and expect you to be thankful that it's only a cut.
No thanks, America.
Matthew 19:24 "Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” :-)