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ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN
Copyright © 2020 by Eric Atcheson
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.
Unless otherwise noted, the Scripture quotations are from the Common English Bible. All rights reserved. No part of these materials may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitted by the 1976 Copyright Act, the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or in writing from the publisher.
Church Publishing
19 East 34th Street
New York, NY 10016
Cover design by Paul Soupiset
Typeset by Denise Hoff
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Atcheson, Eric, author.
Title: On earth as it is in heaven : a faith-based toolkit for economic justice / Eric Atcheson.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019048951 (print) | LCCN 2019048952 (ebook) | ISBN 9781640652262 (paperback) | ISBN 9781640652279 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Economics--Religious aspects--Christianity. | Social justice--Religious aspects--Christianity.
Classification: LCC BR115.E3 A83 2020 (print) | LCC BR115.E3 (ebook) | DDC 261.8/5--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019048951 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019048952
For Carrie, who is my love in every possible
and impossible sense.
For Sadie, who is my hope made flesh.
The love of generations is always at your back, my child.
And always, as my Jesuit alma mater would say,
for the greater glory of God. Ad maiorem Dei gloriam.
CONTENTS
A Modern-Day Famine: Wealth and Inequality in the Twenty-First Century
The Divine Economy in the Law and the Prophets
CHAPTER 3
The Divine Economy in the Gospels, the Epistles, and Acts of the Apostles
CHAPTER 4
The Divine Economy throughout the History of Western Christianity
CHAPTER 5
How We Got Here: Christianity’s Pursuit of Wealth in the United States
CHAPTER 6
The Dispossession of Children and Elders: Wealth and Generational Status
CHAPTER 7
Questions of Color: Chattel Slavery, Violent Removal, and Reparations
Epilogue: Rest on the Seventh Day
Acknowledgments
Discussion Questions
My committee had just read over the first full draft of my doctoral thesis, and one of the members was intensely curious. Why did I title my project “For More than Ashes?”
I pointed toward the verse in Jeremiah where the prophet says that God has proclaimed, “People labor in vain; nations toil for nothing but ashes” (51:58).
He responded, “You need to make clear that verse’s importance to you.”
So, I did. You are holding the fruits of that years-long effort right now.
This book is inspired by my work as a doctor of ministry student at Seattle University’s School of Theology and Ministry, where I wrote my thesis on a pair of labor union strikes that took place almost simultaneously in the late summer of 2015 in southwestern Washington State. At the time, I was pastoring a historic Disciples of Christ congregation in the area. Across Washington, public schoolteachers were going on strike in protest of the drastic privations imposed on them by a state legislature so dysfunctional that the state supreme court had held it in contempt for not approving a budget that passed constitutional muster the year prior.1 Locally, the teachers who worked for the Kelso School District and were members of the Kelso Education Association labor union were among those who went on strike during those waves of protest.
Meanwhile, the millworkers at the pulp and paper mill owned by KapStone in Longview, across the Coweeman River from Kelso, had been laboring without a collective bargaining agreement for months, despite a series of protracted, on-and-off negotiations between KapStone and the Association of Western Pulp and Paper Workers Local 153. After working without a contract since May 2014,2 the members of AWPPW Local 153 went out on strike in 2015. It was the first time that Local 153 had done so in over thirty-five years, and they remained on strike for twelve days.
The close geographic and chronological proximity of both strikes shook the community in and around my former parish. I had congregants whose households were picketing and living on strike pay, and others (myself included) who attended rallies in solidarity with the teachers and millworkers. All around town, signs of support for the striking workers went up in the windows of homes and local businesses.
Beneath the outward signs of support, however, rumbled a genuine backlash toward the teachers, millworkers, and those who supported them. Furious letters were written to the editor of the local paper, The Daily News, denouncing the strikes. I began to receive unsigned hate mail at my church office. The striking workers still felt fear, stress, and trepidation as they took the leap of faith and courage to go on strike.
I know that because they told me so. In the autumn of 2017, just over two years after the strikes, I spent two months surveying union members who were also active in local congregations about their memories and feelings of the strikes and what they felt the church and the clergy could or should be doing to support them and help spiritually prepare them for the hardship of organizing and striking. I also surveyed those workers’ pastors to also ask them about their own memories of the strikes and their beliefs about how the church should respond.
What the union members had to say surprised and inspired me. Their memories of the strikes were vivid and heartfelt, as they spoke lovingly of the support they received as well as forthrightly about the worries they felt. Most—though not all—of