Religious defenders of the Welfare and Entitlement State seem
ambivalent but concerned about the final debt deal between
President and Congress. A “Circle of Protection” led by Sojourners
activist Jim Wallis and including the National Association of
Evangelicals, National Council of Churches, U.S. Catholic
Conference, and the Salvation Army had met with Obama, U.S. Senator
Majority Harry Reid, and U.S. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi,
urging higher taxes and rejecting any limits on social spending
growth.
“We met with the president and Democratic leaders Harry
Reid and Nancy Pelosi and all of them fought to defend low-income
people as we asked them to do,” Wallis recently reported,
while bemoaning that Republican leaders claimed to care about low
income people but failed to uphold this principle. And he
complained: “The most glaring problem with the deal is that it
doesn’t, at this point, include revenues.”
Oddly, Wallis, who is a pacifist, failed to rejoice over
potentially sharp limits on future U.S. military spending. He did
celebrate that his Circle of Protection proved that “poor people do
have a constituency looking out for them.” And he promised
that the “faith community will be watching to see if the most
vulnerable are being protected or savaged for the financial sins of
the rest of us.”
Why representatives of the Catholic bishops and U.S.
evangelicals chose to collaborate in Wallis’s public relations
gambit to mobilize religious voices behind Obama and against
Congressional Republicans is a mystery. At least the official
statement from the U.S. Catholic Conference was more modest than
Wallis’s apocalyptic and insistent rhetoric,
admitting: “We write as pastors and teachers, not experts or
partisans.”
A statement from the board of the National Association of
Evangelicals (NAE) this Spring actually prioritized debt reduction,
declaring, “By failing to live within its means, the nation has
enjoyed unsustainable prosperity at the expense of future
generations.” And it warned: “Persistent deficit spending, whether
at the personal or national level, violates biblical teaching and
leads to bondage.” But the NAE representative who met with Obama
seemed to echo Wallis’ prioritization of welfare spending and
praised Obama in an interview with Roll Call afterwards:
“I talked about the importance of fiscal responsibility, which the
president articulated very clearly, so we’re with him on
that.”
The National Council of Churches out-radicalized even Jim
Wallis, boasting
about arrests of its officials in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda in
protest against budget “cuts.” “Our elected officials are
protecting corporations and wealthy individuals while shredding the
safety net for millions of the most vulnerable people in our nation
and abroad,” hyperventilated the NCC’s former president after his
arrest. Another arrested NCC official explained, “We are citizens
first and foremost of the realm of God,” When steps Congress is
taking contradicts our call as followers of Jesus Christ, we must
take action.” Interestingly, Wallis, despite many arrests in his
colorful past, declined to join the civil disobedience this
time.
None of the Circle of Protection members seemed to
question that any limits on federal social spending or entitlements
could be anything other than an assault on the needy. Do these
programs work, or does the federal Welfare State instead entrap the
poor and perpetuate poverty? Would limiting taxes and the size of
government not help the poor and all Americans if it fuels economic
growth? And wouldn’t endless debt and higher taxes, in producing
further economic stagnation, not harm the poor most of
all?
Most federal government spending goes to “entitlement”
programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, and no
long-term solution to debt and government growth is possible
without their reform. Shouldn’t religious leaders concerned about
the nation’s health, if they enter the political fray, speak to
this urgent need? Of course, hyperbolic voices like Jim Wallis
portray most government spending as military related or claim that
government revenues are eviscerated by special tax breaks for oil
companies and corporate jet owners. The military accounts for about
25 percent of the federal budget, a percentage that will decline.
And whatever else their merit, corporate tax breaks likely produce
more productive jobs than do federal transfer payments.
Overall, federal spending per household has nearly tripled
over the last 45 years. Shouldn’t religious and moral leaders be
concerned that the federal government’s massive expansion is
impeding not only economic growth but also the ability of churches
and private charities to function fully in fidelity to their faith?
Or do some of them see the Welfare and Entitlement State as
ultimately a replacement for religion and charity? Maybe one of the
most threatening corruptions of Big Government is its usurpation of
the spiritual authority that rightfully belongs to religious
institutions.
Responding to the failure of many church officials to
question the morality and plausibility of an endlessly expanding
federal government is a new coalition called “Christians for a
Sustainable Economy (CASE).” It portrays endlessly expanding
government and debt as potentially ruinous. “Compassion and charity
for ‘the least of these’ is an essential expression of our faith,
flowing from a heart inclined towards God,” their inaugural
statement declared. “And just as the love of God frees us for a
more abundant life, so our charity must go beyond mere material
provision to meet the deeper needs of the poor.”
CASE warned that “to suggest that Matthew 25 — or any
commandment concerning Christian charity — can be met through
wealth redistribution is to obscure these truths.” And it urged
considering the “whole counsel of scripture, which urges not only
compassion and provision for the poor but also the perils of debt
and the importance of wise stewardship.” Signatories to CASE’s
stance (including myself) are so far not so much senior church
officials but theologians, ethicists, and lay activists. Check it
out here.
In many moments of history, senior church prelates are
stagnantly attached to the cultural status quo, however
dysfunctional. Momentous social reforms usually arise from the
lower ranks. Maybe CASE will signify a new groundswell among
America’s church goers for fiscal responsibility and a genuine
concern for the needy rooted beyond a failing Welfare
State.
