Tag / poverty

by Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig

Handling Poverty in a Christian Libertarian Frame

I think I’m going to write a series of posts on Christianity and libertarianism. (I say, having written two already. I guess three makes a definite series.) There are a lot of corners to flesh out here, and I continue to find interesting issues I hadn’t considered as I research.

For this post, I’m going to assume a libertarian frame in which the state has withdrawn involvement in any kind of social welfare programs, and then take a look at what kind of support for the poor we could rationally expect.

One reason this is sort of hard to discuss in a ‘libertarian’ sense is that I tend to find after engaging with libertarians that they report themselves to be infinitely fractured, and therefore impossible to speak generally about. I’ll accept that this is true. But since that’s the case, I’m limited to discussing either a) ideas that have been submitted by self-proclaimed libertarians or b) ideas that are at least fully consonant with the tenets of libertarianism. In this case, I’m doing both.

So, if we suppose that government has withdrawn all or most social welfare programs and we agree that Christians have an obligation to support the poor, what do Christians do?

It’s been hard for me to find any programmatic answer to that question. (See: ‘we’re infinitely fractured’ dodge.) But I’ve been able to hunt down some broad suggestions. Father Robert Sirico goes for the same old ‘it’s not charity if it’s something the state wants, too’ bit that I’ve already handled, but in doing so seems to argue that support of the poor should be the province of individual Christians. He uses the Good Samaritan example; since that example is one-on-one and we have more than one poor person in the world, I’ll just assume he’s scaling up: in that case, we’re looking at large-scale giving by groups of Christians.

And Christians group in churches. Sirico doesn’t use the term ‘churches’, but no question is posed to him that would warrant him using it, so it’s not unthinkable to imagine his strategy would be along those lines. Anyway, even if he would shy from an actionable plan, Norman Horn comes right out with it:

First off, we must recognize that many, many resources are being used in the form of “charity” for people who can and SHOULD help themselves. When those resources are freed up and those people who can work do, then production takes place and wealth can be saved. This is the only way in the first place (further savings) for how charity can ultimately take place.

With these savings in place, individuals will be able to choose adequately where to be charitable. I suspect that, just as we have now, many churches (like my own) will be able to minister actively to those people who cannot help themselves. There will probably continue to be charitable organizations supported by multiple groups (including religious groups) that work these things out. Furthermore, the families of those “helpless” ones – assuming that they do care for them – will likely be active as well in pursuing their well-being.

Emphasis mine. So, first things first: libertarian Christians seem very upset about the notion of having to help the poor, as you can see from his first paragraph. They tend to imagine a morally unimpeachable poor person as being someone who literally cannot work, e.g. someone who is physically disabled. The NT is actually much less strident on that front: Jesus doesn’t delve deeply into legitimizing certain forms of poverty and deriding others. So, the illegitimate v.s. legitimate poors argumentation would all dissolve to me on those grounds, and the lasting commandment would still be to support the poor. As Jesus put it in Luke 6:32-36:

 “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that. And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, expecting to be repaid in full. But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.”

 

So suppose we support the poor in the libertarian frame. In that case, we’re looking at, as Horn says, churches carrying out ministries to the poor. Now, this immediately presents a problem: what about the non-Christian poor who do not wish to be involved in a ministry-style outreach program? (Remember: care for the poor, not care for the good-and-Christian poor. So Christians are just as obligated to care for the non-Christian poor as the Christian.) Even if a libertarian were to argue that ministries could be styled as to be content neutral, there is the issue of internal ethics: see the running battle between LGBT organizations and the Salvation Army.

But even if we background those problems, there are marked income inequalities between different denominations, which would severely impact their ability to carry out a project like the one Horn envisions. Check out this 2009 Pew graph detailing the incomes of various religious groups:

In case it’s too little for you to make out: the shades of blue denote the incomes of that denomination/group in ascending order from lightest to darkest. The palest shade denotes an income of less than 30k yearly, the next shade is 30 – 49.9k, then 50 – 74.9k, then 75 – 99.9k, and finally to 100k and over. The graph is clearer on the Pew page, and the report in .pdf form there is good reading too, if that kind of thing excites you. To quote from it:

“Catholics make up about an equal proportion of adults making over $100,000 per year and of those making under $30,000 per year. But there are proportionally many fewer members of historically black churches (3%) and evangelical churches (20%) in the top income bracket…majorities of members of evangelical churches, historically black churches, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Muslims earn less than $50,000 per year.”

In other words, different denominations have different concentrations of rich and poor people. Christianity is not a monolith, and the borders between denominations are not necessarily fully permeable. It’s not reasonable, for instance, to expect that mainline protestants would step in to aid the poverty eradication efforts of historically black churches — R. Drew Smith had a good 2001 article on this kind of phenomenon in Sociology of Religion called “Churches and the Urban Poor: Interaction and Social Distance”, if you’re curious about the history there. But even if ‘mainline protestants’ as an entire denomination decided to engage in a project like that, how? Geographical distance and the trouble with establishing regular engagement among so many diverse groups would seem to pose immediate irresolvable problems under the libertarian frame. Denominations with less would simply be left less able to care for their poor, and denominations with more would be better able: but this is antithetical to our overall goal of extending relief to the poor at large.

So again I return to my preference for state-run welfare programs, though Christians are by no means limited to the cheerful payment of their taxes toward that end. Because the state separates giver from receiver, it prevents the sort of prejudice and exclusion based on doctrinal disagreements (e.g. LGBT issues, religious differences) that I described earlier while still allowing a person to provide aid to others. This is amazing: by lowering a veil between the payer and the paid, our good will to provide for the poor is stripped of any ill we might wish them if we knew who they were, or vice versa. This is closer to the message of Jesus in Luke 6:32-36. And when the state taxes, it does so with sensitivity to where wealth is concentrated (albeit not to the levels some of us would prefer), which is a step toward avoiding the problem of relegating the poorest communities to paradoxically spare more for their own members. This better suits our goal of providing relief to the poor at large.

by Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig

Poverty Impoverishes Our Expectations of Charity

What happens to charity once poverty has been eradicated? 

I want to begin by establishing what we’re talking about when we talk about Christian expressions of charity. As Mary T. Clarke writes:

“Those who think that with the progress of justice charity can be eliminated are unconsciously identifying charity with what is commonly associated with it — the material gift which expresses the love of the giver. Yet all gifts derive their human value from the love that prompts them, not from their material expression.”

Charity, or caritas, is thus better understood as the altruistic, pure form of  love that underpins a loving and generous orientation toward others, including God. It’s a sweeping and deeply meaningful virtue, and the material gift is only one expression of it. But I will address the question of what happens to charity after poverty to point out a few more things about the nature of charity.

To me, it actually breaks down into two questions:

1.) What happens to the impulse to give charitably once poverty has been eradicated; and

2.) What real opportunities for charity exist post-poverty?

In the Christian ethical frame, these aren’t silly questions, though in a more secular utilitarian/consequentialist frame they may seem quite secondary. The first question is important, I suspect, because the impulse to give to charity in order to alleviate poverty is a key aspect of the Christian experience for many religious people. It has a kind of relational quality: I see images or figures that tell me that specific people are suffering, and to relieve that suffering, I must personally intervene. Thus, if the impulse to give charity disappears, one can imagine some Christians feeling a bit useless, as if there is no place for them to intervene and enjoy the relational aspects of helping.

Then there is the question of what opportunities — genuine, legitimate opportunities — for charity will remain, supposing some state effort to eradicate poverty and reduce inequality has successfully taken place. If everyone has everything they need, one imagines, what will I give, and moreover, how will I adjudicate between seemingly infinite needs with equal (minor) urgency? Most people have something that they would like to have, and this would likely still be the case after the elimination of poverty — but when there’s no longer a crushing, impending sense of harm in the event that I don’t give, how do I decide whose wishes to respond to?

These questions are related because they both spring from a similar framing problem. Let Randall Smith lead in:

“…when as Catholics we talk about the “natural law,” we should understand that human nature is not static, it is teleological: it is directed to the goal (the telos) of authentic human flourishing. The problem with many moral systems – even some forms of natural law thinking – is that they attempt to derive the basic moral rules from our fallen, imperfect human nature. Of course, this is impossible because our fallen, imperfect human nature is the most unlike the person we are meant and created to be.”

Emphasis mine. The impulse to give charity in response to poverty is actually an impulse to prevent impending harm; in other words, it’s a defensive impulse. It arises from a world in which harm is imminent. It is, in other words, only one expression of caritas, the spirit of charitable love. But to suppose that the best charitable relationships are built on this kind of intervention scenario is to drastically underestimate the kinds of relationships people are capable of building based on sharing and giving in less needful times. Consider Jesus in Matt 25:35:

“For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.”

The last act of charity — visiting someone in prison — notably lacks any material exchange of goods. Instead, it features a gift of time and energy. (Taking in strangers and caring for the ill are arguably also acts of charity which don’t necessitate donating anything more than time and energy, but since they can be construed as ‘intervention’ scenarios, I focus on the prison example here.) We can imagine that, in a world with less imminent harm, we would find ourselves noticing impulses to share of our emotional energies and friendship that are otherwise drowned out by extraordinarily pressing dangers. And those forms of charity are no less virtuous.

But that isn’t to say that there would be no venue for the giving and sharing of goods, or that there would be no real way to adjudicate between them. Notice that I bolded ‘authentic human flourishing’ in Smith’s paragraph above. That’s because the framing issue that makes us imagine that there would be no legitimate avenues for charity in the absence of poverty arises from a world in which poverty, as an imminent danger to human life, always takes precedence. It effectively limits us to caring principally for the lowest-level animal needs of a person, e.g. the need for food, shelter, water, and medical care. When a person is only surviving, e.g. having only those needs met, they’re likely not flourishing.

What is human flourishing? There are a number of definitions. Nicholas Wolterstorff identifies human flourishing with the OT concept of shalom, which is a great deal more than peace, though it includes peace:

…shalom is fully present among human beings, and between God and human beings, only when there is no injustice in those relationships. Shalom, in that way, incorporates justice. Justice in our relationships by no means exhausts shalom; shalom is more than justice. But justice is, as it were, the ground floor of shalom.

Since I fold the eradication of poverty in with justice — that is, I consider poverty an injustice, and its elimination just — I agree with this view of flourishing. Flourishing as shalom thus becomes possible only when justice has been done by the eradication of poverty. That is to say: opportunities for genuine sharing and giving arise when justice forms the basis of our relationships. You can imagine the possibilities: when we are no longer limited by the violent harms associated with poverty and we’re no longer boxed into reactive intervention scenarios, we can attend to the higher needs people have: the need to create, the need to express, the need to engage in projects together, and so on and so forth.

Now, in a world with poverty, the idea of giving charity to help people express themselves or be creative probably seems a little silly. (Though people still do it.) But in a world where our relationships have a foundation of justice and aren’t framed by the anxiety-inducing harms of poverty, we may very well value human creativity and expression the way they should be valued as higher-level human behaviors. More exciting yet are all the opportunities for community-based sharing in the event that poverty is eradicated: why not get together and build something neat in your neighborhood or city, or start a project (gardens are a popular one) that we can all work on together? Again: these projects seem much less flippant when the lowest tier of human needs have already been met, and our relationships are underpinned by justice.

So there are my thoughts — which will continue to develop — on the state of charity in the absence of poverty.

 

by Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig

The Curious Case of Christian Libertarians

My intent here isn’t to shame or poke fun at anybody. I grew up in Dallas in a predictably right-wing household, and as a high school kid, had some pretty right-wing ‘opinions’ of my own that I parroted from my folks. Then, I volunteered to teach Sunday school to kindergarteners at my church. I became very troubled by the notion that I might unintentionally mislead them about the Bible due to my lack of firsthand knowledge  (I’d only read the bits and pieces most people have) and so I committed myself to reading it on my own. I’ve heard this process turns some people into atheists; it turned me into a hardcore leftist.

Point being: people can change. I suspect a number of Christians who drift into libertarianism ‘change’ in that they become nonreligious, which is, well, one way to do it. It definitely solves the incompatibility problem between the two ideologies. And that in itself belies where I’m going with this: libertarianism is a values system of its own, and it’s an alternative, not a complement, to the values system that is Christianity.

What I mean to show here is that the central concerns of libertarians are fundamentally different from the central concerns of Christianity. This means that the ways the two systems evaluate whether an action/principle is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ and how they prescribe actions are going to differ. Since Christianity claims primacy in moral reasoning, that’s a serious compatibility problem. This doesn’t mean that there aren’t people who, through compartmentalizing or other similar strategies, maintain that they’re Christian and libertarian; it just means that the two ethical systems differ and are incompatible. Pointing out that leftist strategies toward particular ends (e.g. poverty eradication) are ineffective, nonexistent, or inferior to libertarian strategies toward the same end is not a counterargument here: I’m talking about what values the systems express, that is, their criteria for knowing rightness and prescribing action, not the efficacy of their strategies, which is another post altogether.

So let’s get this show on the road!

1.) Biblical ethics are not an individual affair; the primary unit of Christian thought is not the individual self.

“The Bible is about the story of Israel, and the new Israel which is the church. It is in general true of most societies until comparatively recent times that the basic unit of thought is not the individual but the group, the family (meaning not, ‘mum, dad and the kids’ but the total lineage or clan), the local community and the tribe or nation, and these last are likely to be viewed as extended families deriving from a common ancestor… This sense of ‘corporate personality’ is important. Religion and morality are both affairs of the whole community. There is individualism, but it is always seen against the backcloth of incorporation…Yaweh is primarily the God of Israel and only secondarily the God of individual Israelites.”

Quoth John Ferguson in The Politics of Love. But you don’t need to go rifling through Quaker book sales to determine this kind of basic Biblical reality: just do a thought experiment. When Cain asks God, following Cain’s murder of Abel, “am I my brother’s keeper?” do you imagine God’s hypothetical answer to be, “no”? Yeah, probably not. In the Genesis story human beings are literally created to aid and cooperate with each other, and God expresses a continuing desire for entire corporate bodies of people (nations, churches, lineages, etc.) to cooperate with one another for their own benefit and for his satisfaction. Some Christian libertarians counter that salvation is a primarily individual affair; I remind them that Christ (Matt 18:6) and Paul (Gal 6) both implicate Christians in the salvation and/or sins of other Christians. In Christianity, you are your brother’s keeper, and you are of value to the world primarily for the role you play in corporate functioning. Individualism, rugged or not, is out. 

2.) There is zero Biblical basis for the valuation of property to libertarian levels. Quite the contrary.

“It will perhaps be objected to this, that if gathering the acorns, or other fruits of the earth, etc. makes a right to them, then any one may ingross as much as he will. To which I answer, Not so. The same law of nature, that does by this means give us property, does also bound that property too. God has given us all things richly, 1 Tim. vi. 12. is the voice of reason confirmed by inspiration. But how far has he given it us? To enjoy. As much as any one can make use of to any advantage of life before it spoils, so much he may by his Tabour fix a property in: whatever is beyond this, is more than his share, and belongs to others..”

Quoth John Locke in The Second Treatise on Civil Government, chapter five. Locke is just riffing off John the Baptist’s pretty clear statement to this effect in response to the ‘what then should we do’ question: “Anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none, and anyone who has food should do the same” (Luke 3:10). He goes on to say that tax collectors shouldn’t take more than they’re owed, and that soldiers shouldn’t extort or loot. Not only does this mean that you’re not, speaking strictly within the realm of Christian ethics, entitled to more than what sustains you in terms of property, but it means that the claim of ownership has very limited moral value. In most cases (outside of sustaining one’s own life) personal ownership is a pretty weak moral claim, akin more to a preference. The extraordinary valuation of property, in other words, is out.

3.) Freedom isn’t a Biblical virtue.

“The Bible discourages freedom. It does not opine about what a man can be in society (never mind a woman), but rather gives practical advice about minding and remembering one’s place. These references are scattered throughout the scriptures, whether it is the advice to slaves to obey their masters or mitzvot concerning the practical duties of the Levitical order, the subjugation of lepers and women. In fact, just about everywhere you look there is an underlying message of anti-individuality whether it is in rank and file order of custom, ritual, society, even lineages. Paul himself tells us that any man who thinks himself something must remember that he is nothing.”

Quoth Trey Palmisano, who is a very smart guy you should look into if this kind of thing excites you. ‘Freedom’ does come up in the NT; it’s referring to freedom from sin, ignorance, or some other tyrannical human foe, not freedom of choice in the Enlightenment sense. The Bible isn’t an Enlightenment text. It does not care about your liberty, your self-determination, or your intellectual pursuits. That doesn’t mean it’s a morally bankrupt book, but it does mean that trying to retrospectively read Enlightenment values into it is going to turn out messy results, as in the case of libertarians who value liberty centrally yet try to claim Christianity as a religion. Recall Jesus on sin: “And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell” (Matt 5:30). In other words, it’s better to completely lack the ability to do wrong than to sin. Doing right is thus elevated over freedom as a value, and liberty as an organizing moral principle is out.

So that’s the shape of things. But what’s important, so far as I can tell, because there are many varieties of both Christianity and libertarianism, is how Christian libertarians themselves justify their dual commitment. Does it seem to make sense? Have they worked out answers to these problems? Let’s have a pictorial review of images from the tumblr  Why Libertarian, which  features a few Christian (or evidently Christian) posters.

libertarian_1

Kerry, 32, says she’s a Christian libertarian because she believes in: free will, free choice, the golden rule, the NAP, just war theory, and non-interventionism. Kerry threw my mind into a tailspin, which is unusual, because usually non-interventionism is the polar opposite of just war theory when we’re looking at Christian theorists. (Augustine says states only need right intention and competent authority to initiate wars; Grotius comes immediately to mind as a Christian who follows in that vein.) For a more updated Christian perspective on just war, see Nigel Biggar’s In Defence of War, which is a purely Christian ethical text. Point is: there certainly do appear to be Christian ethical injunctions that require international intervention of a morally legitimate state.

The non-aggression stuff shouldn’t be confused, anyway, with the pacifism of the peace churches, nor with the golden rule. I’m a Quaker, and we tend to plain speech in matters of life and death. When libertarians talk about aggression, they’re referring to property; Kerry does not want her property threatened, though she necessarily precludes others from the use of resources by laying morally-infused (e.g. violently defensible) ownership claims to them, contra Locke and John the Baptist. I can’t help but imagine this is in direct conflict with the golden rule, which goes like this:

“Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you” (Luke 6:30-31).

How’s that non-aggression principle, for you? Anyway, that aside, the real theological problem here is with her very first reason: free will.

Free will, as Charles Taylor and Heidi Ravven point out, was more or less invented by Augustine to handle the problem of evil. It’s not a virtue; it’s not a laudable thing, and evidence seems to be mounting toward the reality that it doesn’t actually exist. But even within Christian parameters, it’s not really free; Augustine submits, as Taylor indicates, that free will is inherently self-limiting: it’s circumvented from total freedom by limitations on human cognition, which is bound up in depravity. The will bends toward evil, in other words, and should not be entrusted with any particular moral significance.  It is better, as Christ said, to enforce right action than to value morally the fact that a free choice was made.

libertarian_2

Ok, well, JB, 28, I don’t really know what to make of this. Maybe it’s because the (perceived) anti-colonial politics of Jesus are sometimes confused for anti-statist politics at large; but even in that case, you usually wind up with Leo Tolstoys, anarcho-communist types or hardcore liberation theologians, of which I am neither. (My theology actually tends toward the conservative side.) Regardless, Jesus never told anybody not to pay their taxes; quite to the contrary actually, which libertarians try to squeeze around by saying, well, he didn’t exactly get excited about taxes, either.

When Christian libertarians talk about their money being ‘stolen’ through taxation in order to support programs that any good Christian should support — e.g. welfare and healthcare programs — they generally argue that they should be let to contribute to these programs voluntarily, since Christ doesn’t like grudging charity. And this is true: grudging giving is morally inferior to cheerful giving. So here’s a quick two-step program to turn grudging giving into happy, blissful charity:

1.) Adjust your attitude

2) Pay your taxes

Now you are done! Remember: Jesus never addressed how the care of the poor should be administrated; he only insisted that it was righteous that the poor and oppressed should be cared for. Since the state, as a large corporate entity, has the best resources to reach out to and render aid to  people in need, it is our best bet for extending meaningful support to the people we should be supporting. Thus, since care for the needy is superior to voluntarism or property in the hierarchy of Christian moral concerns, there is no Christian objection to paying taxes so that they may be marshaled in support of wonderful services like welfare programs, public education, roads we all use, sanitation systems, and other common goods. (Remarkably, some Christian libertarians completely dispense with any trace of caring for the poor as a moral injunction of Christianity, though it clearly is, and claim that poverty is akin to hell in terms of moral retribution for bad decisions.)

It’s important to remember that Christianity isn’t just a set of rituals and icons; it contains its own system of ethics. The libertarian system’s organizing principles and concerns are not compatible with Christianity’s, and since Christianity makes specific claims on universal truth, that’s a problem, and it doesn’t appear to me to be remotely resolvable in the current incarnation of either.

Edit: for new visitors to this post, I’ve written a lot more on some constructive pieces of it on this blog. There’s now a post up specifically on the meaning of the golden rule, as well as a post on the ‘individual mandate’ argument, and a good post by Kyle Cupp over at Vox Nova on acting freely under force. So if you’re looking for explanations on those constituent parts, feel free to poke around for those longer posts. Since the comments have been pretty extensive on this piece and I’m temporarily swamped with work, comments are off for now. If you’d like to get in touch, though, feel free!