by us on earth whilst we claim God’s divine endorsement of our economic systems that encourage wealth-worship and a financial caste system. The first is that which we are called to aspire to as a part of God’s will done on earth as in heaven; the second serves human selfishness and greed even as we may claim that it in fact serves God.
This book you are holding is much more than an alarm, ringing out about the dangers of putting the church’s imprimatur upon an economy that works for far too few and oppresses many of the rest of us. Because of this reality, this book is not meant to act as a toolkit of the “contact your elected representatives” variety—although it is important to do so. The church—and religion more broadly—represents a different way of engaging issues of economic justice, and it is my hope that what we talk about here offers tools for changing the paradigm with which US Christianity in particular approaches matters of economics and labor.
To do so, honest and difficult conversations will have to be had, hearts and souls will have to be examined, and guidance from the Holy Spirit must be sought. What this book will do, I hope and pray, is give you the tools to begin those conversations, examinations, and prayers in earnest if you or your faith community has not yet done so, or to give you the encouragement to continue down that sometimes difficult but important path if you have. Because I may not know your local individual or community context, far be it for me tell you exactly what to do. But the “doing” part of being a religious community is vital to many of the topics raised in these pages. Simply raising awareness or bringing about right belief will not do. It never did. We are not saved by right belief alone. As James, the brother of Jesus, famously wrote in his letter that we will talk about, faith without works is dead.
What I can do is give you the tools to offer new understanding and, based on that new understanding, discern what you can and should do next. What we explore here is meant to give you the biblical, historical, theological, and sociological tools to work for change in your own contexts, wherever they may be. In this way, this book is also meant to serve as a blueprint, a manual, and a source of spiritual nourishment and inspiration, especially if you feel like you are having to survive on the ashes this economy has to offer.
For while ashes may not be a literal foodstuff found in any household’s pantry, they remain a potent spiritual symbol not only for their connotations of penitence and humbleness, but also for its association with the phoenix of myth and lore. From the ashes of its own self-immolation a phoenix emerged, prepared to live once more in the heat and light of creation. Arising, like the phoenix, from the ashes has become a powerful image that many a writer before me has reached for.
One of those writers was the early-twentieth-century International Workers of the World activist and songsmith Ralph Chaplin, who concluded his immortal pro-union anthem “Solidarity Forever” with the following stanza:
In our hands is placed a power greater than their hoarded gold Greater than the might of armies, multiplied a thousand-fold We can bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old For the union makes us strong
For Chaplin, ashes are the crucial ingredient birthing a new world. Newness does not have to issue forth from nothingness; it can also come from what already exists. I believe a new world of justice and equality can indeed spring from the ashes we have been told must sustain us, but we must first rededicate those ashes for such a holy and sacred purpose if our new world is to have any hope of survival. Then, as members of a broader union bound together by the Holy Spirit, we must get to work creating a new world.
That new world will not be brought forth overnight. It will not come about miraculously or accidentally. A new world that values the poor the way we have historically valued the rich, and the laborer the way we have historically valued the owner, can only come about through purpose and great care.
May we, then, strive ever onward toward birthing that new world, to creating it and bringing it forth out of the ashes that we, and our neighbors around the world, have long been expected to labor for in a merciless and soulless economy. May we one day confound the reality that Jeremiah laments, and in its place create a reality that Jeremiah—and God—would celebrate.
This is the hope I have for us.
Vancouver, WashingtonJuly 2018
1. Austin Jenkins, “Washington Supreme Court Finds State in Contempt,” NW News Network, http://nwnewsnetwork.org/post/washington-supreme-court-finds-state-contempt, September 11, 2014, accessed July 23, 2018.
2. Marissa Luck, “Labor Board Says KapStone and Union Have Reached Impasse,” The Daily News, https://tdn.com/news/local/labor-board-says-kapstone-and-union-have-reached-impasse/article_c6a3f52c-0e60-5661-b7ee-a5835db586a8.html, February 6, 2016, accessed July 23, 2018.
Wealth and Inequality in the Twenty-First Century
My father Gordon looks at me over his seven-week-old granddaughter, whom he is cradling in his arms.
“The goals of unionism and the social teachings of Jesus should be roughly the same, and some of organized labor has intersected with religion, but so too did much of labor move away from organized religion. A lot of the early IWW (International Workers of the World) organizers? They had no real use for religion,” he says matter-of-factly.
At the dining table of my modest townhouse in Vancouver, Washington, my dad, currently an appellate judge in Kansas but previously an attorney who represented labor unions for over fifteen years, converses easily on the topic of my doctoral thesis: the intersection of Christian social teaching and labor organizing. Even though the ink on my diploma is still drying, my dad supplements my knowledge of the subject with his years living this history. We cover all sorts of ground in a short amount of time—songsmiths like Woody Guthrie and Ralph Chaplin, the geographic and ethnographic distinctions in how different union locals organized themselves, and much more.
As a judge, my dad is used to communicating in multipage opinions; extracting an elevator-speech sound bite from him is a rare occurrence. But his aside about the eschewing of religion by many labor organizers hangs in my mind. It is a potent reminder that, immersed though I am in the language and trappings of organized Christianity, there continues to be a chasm between my religion and the organizations my father and I believe strive for the social teachings my faith espouses, but it remains as important as ever to work to bridge that chasm.
My father is what I affectionately refer to as a CEO. Not a Chief Executive Officer (that would be a rather incongruous title for a former labor union attorney, after all), but a Christmas and Easter Only churchgoer. But his understanding of the role Christianity has played over the course of the history of the United States is remarkably broad, and I think that going to him for an outside-the-pews perspective on my faith’s role in the American story acts as a vital system check for my own worldview. When we look at how we arrived at this moment of stratified wealth unseen since before the Great Depression, a similar vital system check is in order. If the American church—indeed, any organized faith—is going to proactively approach economic inequality, understanding how we got to where we are is of paramount importance.
What Is So Special About Now?
One of my favorite tidbits of church history trivia is that just before the Protestant Reformation began in 1517, the Roman Catholic Church issued a decree through the Fifth Lateran Council banning the preaching of “any fixed time of future evils, of [the] Antichrist’s