Claiming to represent 62 million Americans, U.S. religious
officials at a Washington, D.C. press conference demanded more U.S.
cash for impoverished Third World nations before they left for the
first Transatlantic Forum on Global Poverty, over which the
Archbishop of Canterbury presided.
Meeting in London in late June, the forum of American and
British clerics, ecclesial bureaucrats and religious activists
implored the Group of Eight summit of Western leaders to end
“extreme poverty” in the world through debt cancellation and by
providing more direct aid.
But their bulletin, along with the statements of some
signatories, implied that Global South poverty was the fault of the
West and could only be remedied through massive redistribution of
wealth.
“I think the faith community has got to push political
leadership on these issues because often they don’t do the right
thing,” explained the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Hunger Program’s
Coordinator, Mark Lancaster.
There was less emphasis on fostering policies of economic growth
that, more effectively than temporary Western aid, could actually
lift Third World nations out of chronic poverty.
Evangelicals for Social Action leader Ron Sider declared at the
Washington press conference, “The United States gives only .2
percent of its gross national product to help.” He added, “God
demands that we double and redouble our efforts.” Sider, of course,
was only counting direct federal government’s foreign aid, while
ignoring private aid, not to mention U.S. trade, U.S. defense
efforts, and other U.S. policies that protect and foster economic
trade and growth around the world.
Other U.S. participants in the Forum included liberal Call to
Renewal activist Jim Wallis, United Methodist Bishop Peter Weaver,
Father Andrew Small of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops,
Evangelical Lutheran Bishop Peter Rogness, and Bread for the World
President David Beckmann.
Beckmann contrasted U.S. foreign aid with U.S. spending on the
military in Iraq and claimed the U.S. could cut world poverty in
half within ten years by spending only $3 billion a year. “Poverty
is no longer necessary,” he insisted. Bishop Weaver, professing to
speak for the legacy of Methodist founder John Wesley, called for a
“just sharing of economic resources.”
According to the London bulletin issued by Weaver, Beckmann, et
al., “Humanity possesses the information, knowledge, technology and
resources to bring the worst of global poverty virtually to an
end.” All that is missing is “sufficient political and moral will.”
It called upon President Bush and the British Prime Minister to
provide “costly political leadership” to make the “structural
changes necessary to eradicate poverty.”
The bulletin urged more debt cancellation for indebted nations,
beyond the $40 billion already promised by Western powers, and
called “extreme poverty” a “moral scandal” that requires the
“wealthy nations” to do much more through “dramatic improvement in
the quantity and quality of aid.”
“All of us in the prosperous world…stand under judgment to the
degree that we fail to respond to such a situation with costly
compassion and generosity.”
To be fair, the bulletin does not exclusively confront the
ostensible sins and obligations of the West. It mentions “good
governance” and “corruption” as important issues, while including a
passing reference to jobs and wealth generated by the “private
sector.” But these citations are vague. The main emphasis is on
government to government transfers of wealth from the developed
West to the less developed Global South.
Global South poverty results from Western greed and
indifference, we are led to believe. For global poverty to be
“eradicated,” the West must only overcome its exploitative
miserliness and pony up what rightfully should be shared.
For many of these religious officials, “eradicating” poverty is
the equivalent of a big church building campaign. Shake-up the
congregation, warn of dire consequences, shmooze with the largest
donors, and hire the contractors when the checks role in! Many
clerics’ economic expertise is confined to fundraising. So when
they speak to economic issues they focus on charity and
re-distribution, while giving little thought to how the wealth is
actually produced.
Readers of the Scriptures and of all human history, even
clerics, should know that poverty is not just the result of greed
by a few to be overcome by good will and political resolve. It is
the natural state of almost all humanity from the beginning of
time.
The ongoing creation of sustained new wealth that lifts millions
of previously poor people into the middle class or higher is a
relatively modern development mostly unique to Western market
economies governed by the rule of law and the protection of private
property. But that history is largely ignored by clerics advocating
“economic justice.” Some of these clerics also forget too easily
the words of Jesus that the “poor ye shall have with you always.”
Poverty, like disease, war and crime can and should be fought and
reduced. But like sin itself, it cannot be “eradicated” in our
fallen world.
The enormous transfers of wealth from Western governments to
Global South governments that liberal clerics advocate may reduce
some poverty. But such transfers will also feed corruption and
reduce accountability by Global South governments to their own
people. Why should regimes more dependent on Western donors than
their own taxpayers worry about democratic reforms? Unless prodded
by those Western donors, these regimes are even less motivated to
provide internal economic reforms or financial transparency, which
are far more likely to lift their poor out of poverty than any
amount of Western charity.
Indeed, the Forum’s bulletin seems to criticize Western pressure
for free-market reforms, alleging they foster “inequality” and
“undermine pro-poor policies of local governments.”
The clerics who bundled off to London to issue their manifesto
doubtless were full of admirable intentions and Christian charity.
And their bulletin is mostly free of the neo-Marxist jargon that
has cluttered too many such statements in the past. But their
proposals still sound more like preachy nagging than constructive
counsel for truly helping the poor.
