CASE – Christians for a Sustainable Economy

Chris Banescu, Bp. Savas and the Dust Up

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When ideas clash, they often clash hard. When Chris Banescu took Bp. Savas to task for a mistake he made in reporting the salary of an American CEO, his intention was not only to call Bp. Savas on the error, but to call attention to Bp. Savas’ economic assumptions.

The error was minor and we all make them. It was easily corrected. The assumptions rest deeper. Since Bp. Savas has entered the public square and unabashedly promotes the assumptions, challenging them is fair game. That is why I decided to publish Banescu’s piece.

Bp. Savas evaluates and prescribes economic policy exclusively through a Progressive political framework. His thinking differs little, if at all, from Jim Wallis, arguably the leader of what we can call “Christian-Progressivism.” Wallis has been a Progressive for as long back as anyone can remember, at least from the 1960s when he first became a political activist.

Progressivism has a storied history in American that we won’t enter into it here. In the last four decades however, it has grown increasingly statist. That means Progressives see the state as the source and enforcer of the policies that they think conform to the Christian moral imperative to love the neighbor.

In many ways the shift from early to contemporary Progressive ideology parallels the history of feminism (which today also falls under the Progressive umbrella). Early feminists were pro-life, modern feminists are the loudest voices for aborting the unborn. Clearly something changed from then to now.

Progressive ideology employs the language of the Christian moral vocabulary to justify its policy goals especially about helping the poor. This causes a considerable amount of confusion among the uninformed. It sounds like the Progressive policy goals and the Christian moral imperatives are one and the same.

The reality is entirely different. Progressive ideas have done more to harm the poor than help them. This first became apparent in Charles Murry’s ground-breaking work Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950–1980 back in 1984 (read more here).

Murray’s book was a game-changer. His research showed that instead of helping the poor, the Progressive policies contributed to the break-down of poor families and created a cycle of dependency that institutionalized poverty. These policies were first formulated under the Johnson administration’s “Great Society” programs and were for all purposes well-intentioned. Their results however have been catastrophic.

For example, in Harlem (the first focus of the Great Society administrators), 70% of all children lived in intact two parent families and the trend was increasing. Thirty percent lived in a single parent household. Ten years after the onset of the Great Society, the numbers were reversed.

Further, the breakdown of the family has left many boys bereft of father figures leading to the increase of gangs as their primary unit of socialization. It is also the reason why young black men are over-represented in our prisons. In fact, single-motherhood has become the single most reliable determinate of poverty.

Murray’s initial research has been confirmed time and again, enough so that even the Democrats who first championed the Great Society ideals had to admit its failures. President Bill Clinton, to his credit, was the fist to roll back the reach of the Progressive welfare state when he ended “welfare as we know it.” You can find the research justifying the change and examining the results by searching the indexes of the Manhattan Institute and the Heritage Foundation.

Thankfully there are other Orthodox Christians who recognize the harm that the Progressive ideas have fostered. The Fellowship of Christians United to Serve (FOCUS, an Orthodox organization) has launched a program to teach men how to become men and reverse the soul-denying patronization that they’ve suffered:

The Man Class

The Progressive economic assumptions have risen into view because the debt crisis threatens their dismantling. This was the reason why Jim Wallis organized the public signing of the document “The Circle of Protection” at the White House several months ago and why President Obama received them. (Full disclosure: I had a part in organizing CASE – Christians for a Sustainable Economy in response to Wallis’ efforts.)

These assumptions ride on the back of the Progressive social agenda. I mentioned above that Progressives borrow the Christian moral lexicon to justify their policy goals. This borrowing confuses many people because they assume Progressive ideas are the way that we fulfill our Christian obligation to care for the poor. It sounds like Progressive ideas and the Christian obligation are one and the same.

Ideas have consequences, and Progressive ideas have been catastrophic. Yet to many the catastrophe remains hidden because when Progressive ideas are challenged, they are met with more moral exhortations. These kind of responses never add any clarity to the discussion. They are meant to impugn the motives of the questioner and close discussion.

Our job is to think clearly. That means we should not take the Progressive borrowing of the Christian moral lexicon at face value. Just because a policy or idea sounds Christian does not mean that it is. Nor does it mean that when the Progressive impugns the critic’s motives in his response, that the response is authoritative. Most often it is not. Instead, call the response what it is: a deliberate misapplication of the Christian moral lexicon to avoid answering the criticism in any meaningful way.

John Couretas: Protect the Poor, Not Poverty Programs

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Source: Acton Institute | By John Couretas

One of the disturbing aspects of the liberal/progressive faith campaign known as the Circle of Protection is that its organizers have such little regard – indeed are blind to — the innate freedom of the human person.

Their campaign, which has published “A Statement on Why We Need to Protect Programs for the Poor,” equates the welfare of the “least of these” in American society to the amount of assistance they receive from the government — a bizarre view from a community that trades in spiritual verities. Circle of Protection supporters see people locked into their circumstances, stratified into masses permanently in a one-down position, thrown into a class struggle where the life saving protection of “powerful lobbies” is nowhere to be found. And while they argue that budgets are moral documents, their metrics for this fiscal morality are all in dollars and cents.

Not only does the Circle of Protection group appear to be oblivious to the power of private charity and church-based outreach to the needy, but they seem to have no hope for the poor outside of bureaucratic remedies. This is a view of the human person not as a composite of flesh and spirit, but as a case number, a statistic and a passive victim of the daily challenges and troubles that life brings.

In response to the Circle of Protection campaign, another faith group has formed with a very different outlook on the budget and debt debates that will consume the political energy of the country in the months ahead. Christians for a Sustainable Economy (CASE) argue for policies that are focused less on protecting poverty programs and more on protecting the poor (I am a supporter). In a letter to President Obama, CASE wrote:

We need to protect the poor themselves. Indeed, sometimes we need to protect them from the very programs that ostensibly serve the poor, but actually demean the poor, undermine their family structures and trap them in poverty, dependency and despair for generations. Such programs are unwise, uncompassionate, and unjust.

This is what Fr. Peter-Michael Preble was getting at when he observed that “… the present government programs do nothing but enslave the poor of this country to the programs and do nothing to break the cycle of poverty in this country.” This is not, he added, an argument to eliminate all government assistance but rather for “a safety net and not a lifestyle.”

In discussing the relative merits of the Circle of Protection and the Christians for a Sustainable Economy campaign, Michael Gerson wrote that “the Circle’s approach is more urgent.” Arguing against “disproportionate sacrifices of the most vulnerable,” he asserted that “public spending on poverty and global health programs is a sliver of discretionary spending and essentially irrelevant to America’s long-term debt.”

It’s a big and growing “sliver.” According to a Heritage Foundation study of welfare spending, of the 70-odd means-tested programs run by the federal government, “almost all of them have received generous increases in their funding since President Obama took office.” The president’s 2011 budget will increase spending on welfare programs by 42 percent over President Bush’s last year in office. Analyst Katherine Bradley observed that “total spending on the welfare state (including state spending) will rise to $953 billion in 2011.”

Instead of more billions for failed poverty programs, CASE argues that “all Americans – especially the poor – are best served by sustainable economic policies for a free and flourishing society. When creativity and entrepreneurship are rewarded, the yield is an increase of productivity and generosity.” Underlying this is a belief that the human person is able to freely and creatively anticipate what life may bring, rather than wait around for a caseworker or a Washington lobbyist to intervene.

That freedom explains why some people, even in difficult economic times, can move up the income scale despite assertions that they are among the “most vulnerable.” A U.S. Treasury study showed that “nearly 58 percent of the households that were in the lowest income quintile (the lowest 20 percent) in 1996 moved to a higher income quintile by 2005. Similarly, nearly 50 percent of the households in the second-lowest quintile in 1996 moved to a higher income quintile by 2005.” In an analysis of income inequality and social mobility, economist Thomas Sowell wrote that there is a confusion “between what is happening to statistical categories over time and what is happening to flesh-and-blood individuals over time, as they move from one statistical category to another.”

Income mobility is debated endlessly by economists, but it is the existential reality for countless Americans who have ever strived for something better — or suffered a setback in their hopes. Yet the one sure thing that will stifle this mobility is an economy in decline, with job creation slowed, and encumbered by ever higher federal budget deficits and debt. And that’s what we’ll get more of if the Circle of Protection’s prescriptions for a “moral budget” hold sway.

When economic systems break down, as they are now unraveling in some European welfare states, those who will be hurt first and hardest will be the poor, the working family living from paycheck to paycheck, the pensioner – those operating at the margins. If we fail to come to grips with the reality of our potentially ruinous fiscal trajectory, we will all learn, as other countries are now learning, what “truly vulnerable” means.

Fr. Peter-Michael Preble: A Christian Response to the Ongoing Enslavement of America’s Poor

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Source: Huffington Post | Fr. Peter-Michael Preble

Yesterday, President Obama signed a law that will raise the debt ceiling and continue to enslave the American people for another three or four years. It has reduced the national debit some but it seems to me at least that it has not gone far enough. Just so you know, your share of the national debit is about $42,500. It seems to me that the era of Big Government needs to end.

I am what one would call a “classical liberal.” Now, before you go crazy because I use the word liberal, please read on. I think you will be surprised.

Classical liberalism developed in the 19th Century in Western Europe and the Americas and is a political philosophy committed to the ideal of limited government, liberty of individuals including freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly and free markets. The sovereignty of individual private property rights is essential to individual freedom. The philosophy believes in an unfettered market with a very minimal role of government. In other words, small federal government, small state government, with decisions being made at the local level where the people have a direct voice in determining what is best for their community.

The 18th Century Scottish Philosopher Adam Smith believed that government (and by this I think he meant federal or national government) has only three functions:

Protection of the population from foreign invaders
Protection of citizens from wrongs committed against them by other citizens
Building and maintaining public institutions and public works that the private sector could not profitably provide (roads, bridges, harbors, canals, railways, postal and other communication services)

Classical liberalism places emphasis on the sovereignty of the individual again with private property rights being essential to individual freedom. Classical liberals believe that individual rights are natural, inherent, inalienable and exist independently of the government. This is what Thomas Jefferson called the inalienable rights in the Declaration of Independence. Unlike social liberals, classical liberals are “hostile to the welfare state.” They do not have an interest in material equality but only in “equality before the law” (Alan Ryan, “Liberalism,” in “A Companion to Contemporary Political Philosophy”). Classical liberalism is critical of social liberalism and takes offense at group rights being pursued at the expense of individual rights.

I have written before that I believe the church is the social institution that should deal with the social ills of society. In the time of St. Basil the Great the Church was responsible for education and health care. The church has a long history of providing for those in need. When Jesus fed the 5,000, he did not turn to Caesar and say, “Hey, give me a grant so I can feed these people.” No, He just made it happen. In the Books of Acts, when the widows were being neglected, the church ordained deacons to care for them and they took up collections to support the work, not from the Roman government but from believers.

During the debate on the debt ceiling a group of very well meaning Christian leaders from across the religious spectrum, led by Jim Wallis of Sojourners, lobbied the President and leaders in Congress to pass a law that would protect the welfare state. They posit that there is biblical evidence that the government needs to care for the poor no matter what the consequences. As a classical liberal (and yes, as a Christian), I disagree whole heartedly with the aims of this group and I would submit that they do not speak for the majority of Christians in this country.

Recently, thanks to my friend Fr. Hans Jacobse, I have come to learn of another group of Christians that have come together to counter that argument of these so called “progressive Christians.” The group is called, “Christians for a Sustainable Economy,” and in their letter to President Obama they have this to say:

We believe the poor of this generation and generations to come are best served by policies that promote economic freedom and growth, that encourage productivity and creativity in every able person, and that wisely steward our common resources for generations to come. All Americans — especially the poor — are best served by sustainable economic policies for a free and flourishing society. When creativity and entrepreneurship are rewarded, the yield is an increase of productivity and generosity.

I submit that the present government programs do nothing but enslave the poor of this country to the programs and do nothing to break the cycle of poverty in this country. There is a growing gap between the haves and the have nots, and economic freedom is out of the reach of many, many people. I am not saying that we need to end all social programs. That would be cruel and unfair to those who really do need the social safety net. But we need to plan for the end game. It seems to me that the government is very good at starting things — welfare, unemployment, wars — but is not very good at ending them. Yes, we need a social safety net, but it needs to be just that — a safety net and not a lifestyle.

There is ample biblical evidence for the church aiding the poor. In fact, it is one of the mandates that Jesus left us to love our neighbor. And there is ample biblical evidence of the church “teaching a man to fish.” It is time that the church and her people get off the sidelines and get into the game.

Please consider reading the articles on the website of Christians for a Sustainable Economy and if so moved add your signature to the letter to the President. I was honored to add my name to the list of American Christians that care about the poor and care about our country. Won’t you too be one of them?

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