April 17, 2009

The United Methodist General Board of Church & Society will be a co-sponsor of the “Mobilization to End Poverty,” April 26-29. More than 1,000 Christians from across the country will gather in Washington, D.C., to participate in this important event committed to the biblical imperative of reducing global poverty.

The great civil rights leader U.S. Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) and the Rev. Jim Wallis of Sojourners, which is hosting the event, are among the speakers. We will also rally at the Capitol.

We are in the midst of a moral-spiritual crisis of profound, unprecedented dimensions.

I believe people want to live good, decent, honorable lives and contribute to the positive development of the world. We don’t want to buy shirts made in sweatshops in Southeast Asia, or coffee grown on land in Central America that should feed its hungry children, or metal products from mines in Indonesia that have displaced thousands of people. We are not pleased to be pumping toxins into our planetary home, destroying the ecosystems on which life depends. Yet, we do these things every day.

We are in the midst of a moral-spiritual crisis of profound, unprecedented dimensions. The reigning model of economic globalization threatens earth’s life systems, undermines cultural integrity and diversity, and endangers the lives of many who are poor in order that some might consume exorbitantly and a few accumulate vast wealth.

’We got to get out of here’

Recently, I accompanied one of our United Methodist bishops as she spoke to a Teamsters organizers conference. This bishop had supported union efforts regarding FedEx, one of the most anti-union companies in the country. She had been invited to speak to their national gathering.

U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) spoke just before the bishop. He thanked the organizers for what they did for his family. He told them his parents had been sharecroppers in South Carolina in the 1940s. They married at 18. His father had a second grade education; his mother a first grade education. His father worked from dawn to dusk on someone else’s farm, plowing behind a mule for 15 cents a day. His mother earned 10 cents a day digging potatoes.

If you miss even one day of school it will be because you died the night before.

At some point Cummings’ father realized: “We got to get ourselves up out of here.” They moved north as did millions of other African Americans. He got a job at a steel plant in Baltimore, made $1.10 an hour and only had to work 8 hours a day. He became a union man, had health insurance and vacation. Eventually, the couple had seven children, saved their money and bought a four-bedroom house.

Cummings said his dad used to tell the kids, “If you miss even one day of school it will be because you died the night before.” Cummings’ father had been deprived of an education, but he was determined to make sure his children had it better. He attended church every Sunday, sang in the choir, and walked the picket line when the union went out on strike.

When Elijah Cummings was sworn into office as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, his father watched from the gallery and cried. The son had never seen the father cry before. Elijah asked why now. His father replied, “Of course I’m proud of you, but now I see what I could have been.”

Today, a much smaller percentage of the work force is unionized than even 30 years ago.

A basic idea

Our economic system has a basic idea: People consume and their consumption creates demand fulfilled by companies that hire people to produce the products people desire. The idea is that the economy continues to grow and people acquire and consume ever more.

Do you remember being in first grade? As you did your school work, you were supposed to keep the answers away from the kids at the next desks because those students were supposed to figure it out for themselves. The students who get the best grades go to the best schools. They get the most lucrative jobs, and perpetuate the system, which is built on competition, not cooperation.

The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.

The fact of the matter is that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. And, have you noticed that whenever anyone suggests responsibility should be shared proportionately it is immediately denounced as class warfare? Jesus stated clearly in Luke 12:48, “From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required; and from the one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded.”

Five million jobs in the United States have been lost so far during this recession; 8.5% unemployment; 9 million people working part-time. If you include the part-time workers, we have a 15% unemployment rate. We have a lot of hourly laborers today who are not being paid enough for the basic necessities of life.

The International Labor Organization projects a loss of 50 million jobs globally by the end of 2009. The World Bank warns an additional 53 million people will fall into poverty, living on less than $2 per day. The World Bank also warns that millions more children will die by 2015, if the crisis persists.

’The Quiet Coup’

Simon Johnson, former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund has written an article titled, “The Quiet Coup” in the May issue of The Atlantic Monthly. He contends the financial elites drove us off the cliff because the “American financial industry gained political power by amassing a kind of cultural capital: a belief system.” John writes:

Once, perhaps, what was good for General Motors was good for the country. Over the past decade, the attitude took hold that what was good for Wall Street was good for the country. The banking-and-securities industry has become one of the top contributors to political campaigns, but at the peak of its influence, it did not have to buy favors the way, for example, the tobacco companies or military contractors might have to. Instead, it benefited from the fact that Washington insiders already believed that large financial institutions and free-flowing capital markets were crucial to America’s position in the world.

The economic crisis is a good opportunity to change things.

The economic crisis is a good opportunity to change things. For me, Christianity is a way of life summed up by the passage in 1 John 4:8, “Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.”

Why is it that the God of Love so often, it seems, has to fight an uphill battle against the God of Law? The God of Love is not only nurturing and sustaining, but requires us to face up to three great myths that have damaged and distorted our lives: white supremacy, male superiority and American exceptionalism. The damaging effects of these myths have made it difficult for love to express its full power.

A long way to go

We have a long way to go in putting to rest the notions of white supremacy and male superiority. And, I fear, an even longer road to travel in bringing an end to the idea that the United States is God’s gift to the world.

Pope Benedict recently said, “Positive faith in the human person, and above all faith in the poorest men and women of Africa and other regions of the world affected by extreme poverty is what is needed if we are truly to come through the crisis once and for all.”

God does not want us to let people live like this.

Poverty and suffering are extreme. Just a few weeks ago, several of our bishops traveled to south Sudan in east Africa and visited the only hospital in the town of Yei. As they arrived, a tiny, frail child was being prepared for burial. The bishops prayed for the hospital’s patients and their families. During that time, three more babies died. The day before four other children died. Why? War, poverty and disease.

With tears in his eyes, one of the bishops said, “God does not want us to let people live like this.”

I am a Christian who lives in the United States of America. I am a white male in this nation. That makes me part of the most powerful group of people ever to walk on this planet. I want my nation to commit to making sure everyone in the world has fresh water, electricity, basic medical care, enough food to eat and a school. The resources exist to do these things.

I want my country to want to do them without asking for anything at all in return because it’s the right thing to do. To do this will require humility, and to date we have been anything but humble.

The years ahead are perilous: global warming, disease, environmental degradation, religious conflict and the rise of fundamentalist movements in the world’s major religions, the growing gap between the rich and the poor, the emergence of the doctrine of preventive or preemptive war, and the spread of nuclear weapons.

The years ahead are full of positive possibilities, too. If our children and grandchildren are to have decent futures, it will be because we changed the very direction of the United States from a sense of manifest destiny to cooperation, justice and peace. Let us pray that we can make it so. The world’s impoverished need it to become so.