The Poverty Imperative
Written by Mark Harris on June 25th, 2007It is hard to read a lot of inside the beltway chatter without coming across the “new” conventional wisdom. The Republican Party’s domination of religious Americans is waning, evangelicals are now growing concerned with “social justice” and “environmental” issues as much as the life issue. The nascent premise being promulgated by many left of center Catholic, Protestant, and secular thinkers is that the social issues are in some way illegitimate “divider” issues but that issues of social justice and helping the poor are a moral imperative for Christians.
They are right on both counts, but in ways they probably don’t expect. Of course hot button issues like abortion divide people, but just because they divide people doesn’t mean they aren’t a moral imperative. Opposition to abortion has been a tenant of Christianity literally since the beginning. The Didache, basically the earliest Christian writing we have specifically condemns abortion. In fact, all of Christendom until the 1920s condemned all forms of birth control too (not that I am advocating for that as a government policy). So this premise that the Republicans invented this issues to win elections is farcical. There can be no doubt that it has been viewed as a moral wrong by Christians of every stripe since Christ walked the earth.
There second point is that Christians should care about poverty. They are 101% right and it is certainly true that conservatives don’t talk enough about helping the poor. The liberals then make the logical leap that caring for the poor equals big government programs, and thats where I and many other Christians jump off the bandwagon. We don’t oppose these programs out of some want to keep wealth to ourselves and keep the poor down. In fact, we as a group give much more in private charity than similarly wealthy liberal atheists. We just believe that big government programs do tremendous harm to society and have systematically made the poor worse off and destoryed the traditional institutions that used to aid them.
Sojurners and other of the progressive evangelical movement want us to move beyond abortion to social justice. I say that we should not move beyond abortion, as it is still the key human rights issue of our generation, but should talk about how our programs help the poor. As Fred Thompson recently pointed out, increased prosperity due to decreased government involvement in the economy has resulted in healthier, happier children. Prosperity is not a cure all for sure, but certainly time and time again it has proven a benefit.
Then there are stories like one back in Pittsburgh of an evangelical megachurch that has almost singlehandedly revived and entire neighborhood. Not through taxpayer dollars, but through building a true community and using that community to help their neighbors. No bureaucracy, no red tape, and yet an effect bigger than any of the proposals the “social justice” people are putting out their today.
If we want to help the poor it starts at home. Donating to charities, volunteering time, and building institutions that will help them without Big Brothers wasteful arm involved. From a government level if we want to help poverty lets start with lwoering taxes so people have more money to donate and then lets remove the red tape that 501(c)3 non-profits have to jump through. How much money do non-profits spend every year just to comply with Uncle Sam that could actually be spent feeding the hungry, or building camps for disadvantaged kids, or any number of other worthy causes that instead go to legal fees just to keep Uncle Sam from shutting the operation down.
Then lets deal with the big poverty issue of today: marriage. I am not talking about gay marriage, lets forget about that for now, but talk about regular marriage and how the public policy solutions of the 60s combined with cultural changes have destroyed the #1 anti-poverty organization there is: the nuclear family.
Now unlike the other side, I don’t think that the good brothers and sisters in Christ over at Sojurners are evil or have some grand scheme to hurt the poor. I think they genuinely want to show Christ’s love for the poor, but unfortunately have chosen methods that actually hurt the people they are trying to help. But I would love to discuss the issue rationally, instead of the current situation where opposition to big government programs gets one lableled heartless and anti-poor. We should be able to dialogue not demagogue on this issue.
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i would make a few corrections.
1. abortion is probably the biggest human rights issue in the United States but certainly there are much more important issues worldwide, and secondly i do believe conservatives have spent too much time worrying about the make up in the supreme court when they could be much better used in promoting adoption which everyone can support.
2. charities are great especailly on a micro level but they to get big and inefficient if they try and do things on micro level, also goverment has alot more access to information then a charity, so at some cases the goverment can do things better.
3. goverment can be involved in developing a community especially if they do it in free market ways. (giving companies that did buissiness in harlem really did have a huge impact)
4. the family is important but don’t think it an end all solution.
5. i think conservatives would do much better if we promote free market mechanism (such as vouchers to buy health insuranance instead of medicaid) we can imporve care for the poor, while limiting goverment interference
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a few points i would like to make
1. abortion is key human rights issue in the US, but worldwidw there are a lot more important things going on (I’m in morocco by the way)
2. family is good but not the end all solution.
3.charities are very good at micro level, but when they get big at marco level they ca become inefficient as well (see red cross)
4. sometimes u need the goverment because they have access to alot more information then do charities.
5. goverment can be productive when used in free market ways. (tax breaks for retailers in harlem comes to mind as really good idea.
6. conservatives need to use creative ideas to adress problem instead of liberal throwing money at it, or conservative don’t, instead use money to give vouchers. (don’t give the poor public housing, give them a voucher for housing and let them decide for themselves, and i would add the same thing for health insurance too!!)
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When I was running for office, I met a businessman who told me about how he had just given a sizable amount of money to Catholic Relief Services. He told me he wasn’t Catholic but that he did his research and found that CRS was the absolute most effective organization across the board at getting help to people in need. While FEMA wasted billions of dollars in New Orleans groups like CRS spent 90% plus of their donations on actual aid instead of waste and overhead.
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“…better used in promoting adoption which everyone can support.”
Since when is “adoption” what we can all agree on, and not “prevention”? Pushing adoption still means you have many women who are pregnant who don’t want to be pregnant. The left is about preventing that for a plethora of reasons. (Off the top of my head: physically growing a person for nine months and delivering it isn’t a walk in the park, job discrimination (just ask my cousin who had to hide her pregnancy in order to keep her job), health care for those without insurance/enough insurance, etc.). If you had said “prevention” (ie, sex & health education, contraception, etc.), I would have been on board.
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Having just read some large chunks of the Bible in the last few months, I was just thinking “what?” when I read this. You can open the Bible blindfolded, wave your finger in the air, and point at any random verse, and you’ll probably find something about helping widows and orphans. And very little, anywhere, that can be construed as addressing abortion. I guess if you’re really just going for “Christianity” as in, early additional writings and commentary, the original premise might be more true. But if you’re addressing the Protestant tradition (which I’m clearly reading in), it would seem much less convincing.
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Becky,
A quick history lesson here. Ever since the first Puritans landed at Plymouth or for that matter, since the first Anglicans landed at Jamestown, it was common law that a fetus was not to be harmed following what was called “quickening”, that is, seeing as there was little medical technology at the time, they acknowledged the child as a child once the woman could feel the child inside her. As a matter of fact, even dating to the Salem witch trials, several of the women convicted of witchcraft had their death sentences postponed because the ministers certified that the women were with children and the law protected children starting at quickening.
The theory of quickening as a starting point for protection actually dates back far further in English common law and even into the accepted practices of the Papal States.
It has origins in Catholicism but was actually even more pronounced in the Protestant traditions.
So, actually, children had more protection under Christian views in the 15th and 16th century than they do in America today.
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I apologize for avoiding pregenancy prevenation, but i didn’t want to open the can of worms of absistene only or use of contraception debate. but yes it is an important part
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You shall not procure abortion, nor destroy a newborn child” (Didache 2:2) That was written in the first century AD
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Gceres:
Thanks, but that wasn’t really necessary. I know that the idea of “quickening” was a common way to date personhood, and I seem to recall something about Aquinas also assuming that. Such an assumption would actually *support* early abortion rights. But what I was really focusing on was the fact that in the Bible itself there is precious little on the supposedly “hot button morality issues” of today, but a whole lot on helping the poor.
Which leads me to Mark’s comment: That’s got to be the clearest statement I’ve seen, but it’s not even in the Bible proper. Which I realize is itself entirely a construction of various texts — all the more reason not to cherry pick one or two lines out of Leviticus (or apocrypha, or early writings from God only knows what person/ place in the early Church) in order to support one political cause or another. I’m still of the opinion, that if we’re taking the Bible as a center for morality, it’s incredibly consistent on helping the poor, but not nearly so concerned about legislating abortion rights.
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I’ll grant you that point Becky…however, the Bible in no way, shape or form advocates or condones government action as a means of helping/aiding the poor but rather as an extension of individual Christians’ love for their fellow man. You do not see Jesus for example telling Christians to ask Caesar to spend more clothing and feeding the poor but rather Christ telling his followers to show compassion and caring to the poor themselves.