It's interesting that J9 brings up the question of what citizenship we as Christians truly hold, because it seems to beg the question of our attitude towards nations and nationality.

On the comments to the first entry there was quite an interesting discussion about compulsory giving, which I like. Mainly because if others didn't make me do good things, I wouldn't do them. And I like the idea of a tax (I'm an economist, obviously not from Chicago).

However, why should the government be the only institution strong enough to tax? Why do we give it more allegiance than we do the church? Think of what happens when you commit treason vs. what happens when you commit blasphemy, as happens quite often on Sunday morning (how many of us go to churches with an American flag in the front?). It still seems to me the place for giving - and all of Christian life - is the church.

Which leads us to the obvious question: How about a church tax? Everyone who is a member of a church gets taxed on their income, by that church. This money is then sent to help the poor who are our neighbors and abroad. In fact, we can follow Jesus' example by making this tax 100% of your monthly income (eg. luke 14;33). This completely avoids the Left-Right divide, because as Christians we wouldn't have ANY money to give the government after we're done following Jesus.

The church hasn't always been so weak that it couldn't tax its members - why not now?

Real-World Example #1

Despite how much many of us are committed to certain principles, many of us feel confined by the terms "Left" and "Right" and feel that the theoretical discussion sets itself up for irreconcilable disagreements. So, I'm going to propose a real-world example and invite discussion on how we think we should confront this problem from the perspective of the various hats we wear at once. We are (a) as citizens of this world, (b) as Christian citizens of this world, and (c) as Christians whose citizenship is in heaven. I hope that this set of three approaches to the problem will illuminate our sometimes conflicting tendencies as fleshly but in some sense immortal, beings. I encourage someone else to write the next blog entry with perhaps another real world example to discuss.

Example:
Marisa became pregnant her senior year at East High School in inner-city Rochester, NY in 2003. She had the support of her mother and grandmother, and decided to both graduate and keep the baby. The baby's father, John, her high school boyfriend, left to Iraq in 2003 right after they graduated. They both did reasonably well in school, getting Bs and having a good chance of getting into college. Marcela was especially good at writing. But, she decided that in order to take care of the baby she would be better off getting a job someplace near home, at least at first. She hoped to someday go to the local community college. John, Marisa decided, was not ready to be a responsible parent yet, so she didn't really want to marry him or live with him, even if that would make raising their daughter Tiana so much easier. Plus, she didn't want to get married as a teenager. So, Marisa kept in contact with him when she could, and received some monetary benefits from his military stipend.

For the last four years, Marisa has worked at the local supermarket as a cashier and recently got a job at a doctor's office as a receptionist and aide. She can hardly believe the health insurance available at her new job. Tiana is now turning four, and Marisa is thinking more seriously about going to school to be a nurse's assistant or maybe even a nurse. She is paid just above minimum wage and her annual income is currently $15,000 before tax. She qualifies for subsidized loans if she does get into college. John may be coming back permanently from Iraq soon, and may have his own chance to go to college as well. John's military service afforded him the opportunity to become a full citizen, and Marisa encourages him as a friend to pursue his interests in business. (She doesn't see a future for them beyond friends.) Tiana is now taking part in the local Headstart program, a federally funded program for nursery school age children in low income families. She loves the arts and crafts, but the class size is huge and the staff is low, and every year they talk about closing the program. If they do cut that or the heavily subsidized after school program, Marisa will not be able to afford private childcare or have the time available to go back to school. She already cannot find a steady job that pays her over $7.50 per hour.

Question:
Whose responsibility is it, as US citizens, Christian Americans and citizens of heaven (please distinguish if they conflict), to respond to the needs of this family? Whose duty is it to :

a) Provide Tiana with the nursery school or day care education and health care. These are currently funded by state and local subsidized programs for low income families.

b) Provide John, a US veteran and father, with higher education, health care and other opportunities to develop civilian skills for a "second" career. Higher ed for veterans is currently funded by the budget for the military in the G.I. Bill, also in the process of revision and cuts.

c) Provide Marisa, a high school graduate and mother, with opportunities for a living wage so that she can someday support herself, higher education for a career of her own some day, and child care while she is either in school or working. Currently, the minimum wage is far below a living wage, and women who have not been in the military seldom win publicly subsidized rides to college. The old welfare system, aid to families with dependent children, strongly encourages "marriage" as a solution to single parent families. Women with children who seek public subsidies are childed for laziness. What is the public's (as citizens, Christian citizens, and Christians) responsibility to Marisa?

What's the Matter with Kansas?

This blog has been established to discuss matters of Christian faith and politics. Anyone is invited to join the conversation! Hopefully, this will become a collaborative project for fruitful discussion on these important subjects.

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How should faith /moral values interact with politics? How should social class/ economic status interact with politics? How should faith and social class constitute one another? On one hand, the Christian Right says that marriage laws, abortion laws and limited government (limited collective responsibility) are all essential moral values to uphold (despite economic status of oneself and others). They believe that individuals should acquire goods and services for their personal welfare and that of their immediate family. Agnostic about the degree to which that personal acquisition has to do with the acquisition of others, they believe that public sharing of utilities (historically this has been won in water, electricity, transportation, Social Security, Aid to Families with Dependent Children (welfare), public schools, city recreation facilities and programs, and the list goes on... to the current debates over publicly subsidized health care) is not "efficient." (Why exactly this is not efficient often leads into a discussion on the best way to increase the GDP by creating new "capital." However, I usually think of efficiency and a strong economy as two very different objectives. I'd love to discuss this more.)

Meanwhile, the Christian Left understands our nation as a fundamentally interdependent unit. The wealth of some is not necessarily their entitlement, for it was won at the expense of many others who did not have a share in the profits of that wealth-producing endeavor. Therefore, the poverty, health care and civil rights of the disfranchised is as much the responsibility of the majority as it is of the minority. Some believe more in redistribution of riches than others. For some, charity should be much more "voluntary" than for others. But usually, Christian Leftists are distinguished from the 'Righters in their belief that the state has the responsibility to secure Civil Rights and equal opportunities, for the "free market" and doctrine of indivdiualism will only work against the legal and social development of individuals at the bottom of the social and socioeconomic ladder. Fundamentally, the Christian Right and Left disagree not over the relevance of aspects of our faith. We disagree over the role of Christian faith as it constitutes and directs our government. Despite what they tell you, 'Leftists do not usually hate private charities or babies, and 'Righters do not usually wish poverty and inaccess to proper health care on others.

We do disagree over how personal our Christian faith is intended to be. Is our faith an individual calling to ethics outside of our legalized system of wealth creation (American capitalism)? Should our faith deny awareness of the social hierarchies of race, gender, nationality, sexuality and religion, all of which help to mutually constitute the most exploited class in the legal/economic system? This personal concept of faith lends itself to the argument that public utilities and charity should all be "privatized." It provides the foundation for 'Righters to argue that a prime role of the government is to regulate "life" and "death," but everything else is a "personal" decision that conscious individuals can make themselves. Meanwhile, 'Lefters don't see faith so personally. Much like the Biblical vision of Israel, 'Lefters see collective responsibility for one another, enforced through the law, as a prime expression of faith. Therefore, they believe we have a burden as believers/chosen people (is there a difference?) to reconstitute the legal, political and social hierarchies of our country to reflect God's grace. This often includes another chance for wrongdoers (anti-death penalty), grace for law-breakers (amnesty for immigrants), and support for the needy (from a pool of tax revenue). We disagree not about the importance of charity and grace to the Christian walk, but about how we as Chosen People (a People or individuals?) are to steward this calling.

Ultimately, we disagree about what we are each responsible for on Judgment Day. To what extent will our shortcomings of personal obedience include sins of omission---NOT taking care of brothers and sisters we did not know, --NOT acting to reconstitute the nation to provide more for others at the possible "expense" of oneself, --NOT standing up for the people who get little respect in society because they have a history of social or institutional "sin." Many 'Righters assume that the fact that this world is "Fallen" releases us from the responsibility of redeeming the state, foreign policy, the economic system, and the reality of social stratification. Many 'Lefters assume that personal obedience to the Holy Spirit within us is only a very small part of, or sometimes even a handicap from, our collective responsibility to use the legal system to foster social amnesty or grace. (Whoever owned resources/capital in the last generation or under the old "legal" paradigm, 'lefters would say, should not have a better chance at owning them in the next generation. In fact, the old legal paradigm should be changed to re-level the playing field.)

It seems to me that all sides of the spectrum (for there are obviously more than two) are afraid of the redeeming power of the Holy Spirit. We are afraid of what the Holy Spirit can change in us as individuals, and afraid of what the Holy Spirit can call us to as a community, a nation, a planet. For, on both the individual and collective levels, responding to the Holy Spirit will likely mean sacrifice of a great deal of our sense of entitlement, pride, self-righteousness, judgmentalness, selfishness, personal ambition and idolatry of personal success.

What's the matter with Kansas is not that social values have deceptively thwarted the "true" politics of social and economic interests. I'm actually quite excited that we have begun to rethink our individual political participation outside of what others call our socioeconomic interests. For, the free market dogma upon which our modern economic system has been built falsely presupposes that all of us have the same "interest" in maximizing our wealth. I submit that this claim of Adam Smith on our human nature is actually but a socially constructed choice. Should Christians value wealth creation as much as people outside the faith? We have to keep rethinking how we are to be in the world but not of it.

How in the world did euphemistic "Kansas" come up with sexuality, reproduction and marriage as the most important Christian values? This evidence is pretty revealing of the shallowness of our perception of how Christianity is defined next to all other (sectarian and secular) belief systems. We should be embarrassed of ourselves, but not overcome with the pride of shame. It's time, I think, to admit to our own shortcomings as a Christian community and rethink what it really means to be our brother's keeper in a world we are not in but of.