Words'nTone

Furthermore, current upwardly mobile non-poor who live outside central-cities are the beneficiary of a change in how home ownership was made possible. As early as the 1930’s Federal regulation began to restructure the home buying process to allow for lower down-payments and longer term-mortgages. The principle of amortizing loans made it possible to borrow on long lengths of time for more affordable, smaller monthly payments. Later, after WWII other Federal Housing Authority (FHA) policies helped to structure home ownership to be very attractive and easier to obtain, specifically crafting regulatory guidelines for subdivisions on the outskirts of urban centers, the first fruits of what was to become suburbs. In effect, the government, through legislation and acts of congress—primarily through the FHA and Veterans Administration in particular—disproportionately encouraged new home ownership in the suburbs rather than fixing or rehabilitating older structures in urban centers.

Eventually the sociological pressures stemming from the end of WWII, the “released pent-up demand for starting families and buying consumer goods,” a housing shortage in the central cities, along with the availability of low-cost mortgages for new homes, and mass production techniques in the housing industry (obtained by mirroring techniques developed by the Armed Forces during WWII) kept costs affordable contributed to a rapid expansion of the suburbs. The shift in regulatory policies for long-term-little-down mortgages, government subsidized development of major highways for access in and out of central-cities, the GI Bill (a government provided education training program), and other Federal aid to the newer exurban regions made prosperity possible as we know it today. The power of zoning laws, not the invisible hand of the market, were set in place to protect the preferences and influence of those with power, along with affluent developers, “advertisers of home-related products, women’s magazines, the Federal Housing Authority, and bank officials, sought to make the sharpest possible contrast between the private, comfortable, safe, and protected environment of the suburbs and the open, competitive, dangerous, and seductive world of the central cit. The “invisible hand” had and continues to get help—sometimes through lobbying efforts via the government, sometimes through creative marketing, sometimes through elite-celebrity-status-trends makers, and/or non-free market, politically empowered zoning codes. Growth and decline, increase and decrease, expansion and contraction, growth in one area at the expense of another area—all unavoidable within a socio-economic system that prizes “progress” and is supported by greed, desire, and the ultimate goal of “the Suburban Way of Life. As an empirical fact, the capitalistic system, along with its handmaidens the “market” and the desire for upward-mobility, has ignored its central-cities and promoted life in the burbs as the ultimate goal of prosperity, the only path to growth.

The non-poor didn’t do it on their own
Simply—the more affluent suburbanite, despite a claim to a higher work ethic or a more developed sense of civic responsibility, didn’t do it on their own; they had help along the way. On the one hand, the non-poor’s social construction of reality which they now experience as everyday life allows them to benefit from past actions of government, not just the market, that laid much of the groundwork for continued prosperity. On the other hand, the concentration of the poor and poverty in central-cities is not simply about laziness, slothfulness, or even personal sin. (I assume the non-poor who benefit from the current structure and mediating institutions are just as much “sinners” as those living in geographic areas of concentrated poverty.) The fact of poverty and the reality of those affected by it in the central-cities couldn’t have happened any more effectively if it were actually planned and implemented with malice. Without the aid of government policies and subsidies, as well as municipally empowered zoning laws and discriminatory business policies (such as banking red-lining), the foundation for exurban wealth in America might not have happened. Rather than lamenting this ugly state of affairs, participants were encouraged to rejoice in the ability and prudence of such strategies and the institutions—not the government but capitalism and the mythical market—that enabled them. Certainly the market helped and capitalism rewarded those who could afford to move out of the cities and relocate in the suburbs. Let’s face it, postwar capitalism had a bias toward the suburbs and a bias against central cities. The modern, non-poor Suburban dwellers are the heirs of such socially constructed forces.

The problem for the non-poor believer, living in such a history and current social location, experiences only a partial reality, that is the present model for socio-economic progress and prosperity, and objectifies his or her world as what is the correct way and true, and thus biblical. This is a defective social construction, namely idolatry, which the non-poor Christian experiences in everyday life. However, the prophets warned of God’s judgment upon those who created economic structures that benefited some and excluded others, that paved the way to prosperity for some and generational poverty for others. The non-poor accept a world that is duplicitous, limiting the historic and current benefits of a socio-economic system to those the market blessed. Furthermore, the reality of everyday life, which is the acceptance that Suburban life and its enablers the free market and human acts of power, sustains an everyday life at odds with the Gospel, especially in how the Gospel has been formed by the relationship between idolatry and the issues of poverty.

Duplicitous, Self-Righteous Double Standards in the Burbs
Since much of the economic resources and those tending toward a conservative view of Government and Christianity live outside of the concentrated centers of poverty, the following focuses on the social-location of non-poor Christians who live within suburbia.  My concern here is three-fold: 1) First, non-poor Christians are often not fully aware of their own socially constructed reality in the suburbs, its origin, that is, how suburban life came about; 2) second, the socially constructed reality sets up the non-poor Christian to be duplicitous and live by a self-righteous double standard; 3) third, the non-poor Christian’s participation in the suburban way of life, capitalism in general, and the free market system causes a need for continuous reaffirmation for a biblical plausibility of their social location.  Non-poor Christians respond as those living in a socially constructed reality that is alienated from those living with the affects of poverty.  “Without a sociological imagination” linking social location to history, the exurban non-poor, including the Christian, cannot properly understand who they are and why they act and think as they do.  In order to see the impact of idolatry on how non-poor Christians respond toward obvious biblical texts concerning the poor, a review of the so-called objective reality known as the suburbs is needed.

Often the argument rests, not on biblical grounds, but on the ability of the non-poor who have taken the opportunities presented in our capitalistic, free market socio-economic system to develop wealth and prosperity.  The poor in the cities only need to do the same.  Equal opportunity, not equal distribution of wealth is justice. But this is not a fair picture, for the so-called “opportunity” has had a history and an opportunity that has been largely absent from urban-dwellers (i.e., the locale of most of the concentrated poverty), a present consequence that is more akin to the injustice described by the prophets than simply the results of a good, solid Christian work ethic and the free market.  The task here is to briefly expose the misinformed road to prosperity for the non-poor and the non-poor Christians who co-benefit from the same socio-economic system and enjoy the current institutions that sustain such prosperity.

The exurban non-poor benefit from the structures, institutions, and economies that developed in favor of the suburbs and, for the most part, at the expense of the central-cities—for decades.  The shift from urban to suburban came with a committed redistribution of efforts and transactions ranging from Federal subsidies to government policies, including perceptions of urban and central-city life and the goal of prosperity being the American suburban way of life.  The ability to enjoy prosperity today, especially in the upwardly mobile circles of exurbia, is built on a number of socio-economic transactions that have contributed to the current socially constructed reality of many non-poor.  Since the end of WWII, Suburban development has been “celebrated while urban decline was explained away as inevitable.” The “industrial cities’ obsolescence” and the flourishing of the suburban way of life, for many, has been “a sign of progress rather than as a national defect,” even necessary for continued economic growth.  As the last World War concluded, America began experiencing one of its most prosperous eras of its history, rising to be one of the most affluent nations in the world.  Throughout the post-WWII era, “Jobs were plentiful and wages were on the rise.  Young married couples were confident enough of the future to flee apartments in the cities for homes with mortgages in the suburbs.” At the same time, “the industrial cities were undergoing precipitous decline.” American urban-centers, along with its infrastructures and economies, were failing and residents who could afford leave for the suburbs in great numbers.  The industry clusters, particularly manufacturing firms that supported much of the urban population, closed up and left for “more favorable locations.” Jobs left the central cities en mass and there was negligible workforce development supportive of those who could not afford to leave.  Urban-municipalities became overly burdened with a dwindling tax-base and an ever-increasing demand and need for services.  The Post-War era was not “a temporary deviation from unrelenting expansion” of outlying areas, suburbs, and the periphery of city-centers; it was more than an ‘optical illusion’.” This began a long-term, epic change, “a sharp and possibly permanent shift in the country’s pattern of urbanization” that would create two, almost alien segments of society, with two distinctively estranged realities.

Securing Home, Adjusting Our Signs and Symbols
Luke T. Johnson reminds us that, “Idolatry comes naturally to us, not only because of the societal symbols and structures we ingest from them, but also because it is the easiest way for our freedom to dispose itself.” This understanding of the function of idolatry is captured well by Berger and Luckmann, who have demonstrated that “reality is socially constructed.” However, to fully understand “the everyday reality” of human beings, it is simply “not enough to understand the particular symbols or interaction patterns of individual situations.” It is the “overall structure or meaning within which these particular patterns and symbols” are experienced. As we seek to apply the significance of texts that present Laws, land-stipulations, warnings, and judgments regarding our relationship and social action toward the poor and economically vulnerable, it is important to understand the social life-world experienced by the non-poor, how it was formed, and how non-poor Christians participate in the outcomes of this social location.

Religion once offered an integrating principle that helped to provide a “life-world” that was “more or less unified.” Modern life not only provides a less unified everyday life, now religion often aligns itself with the socio-economic forces that give meaning to such everyday life that inoculate the Christian from the idolatrous forces embedded in the social-location and its institutions. Over time different symbols and signs, rather than religious (or biblical) permeate the various social-locations the modern non-poor experiences as everyday life. In fact the very habit of experiencing the fragmented, often unintegrated social-locations over and over everyday might feel like a freedom granted by our socio-economic system, but weakens the plausibility our faith forming a true “home world.” We, then, find ourselves in need of affirming a “this worldly” system and its institutions in order to be at home, even as Christians. The individual, then “plots the trajectory of his life on the societal ‘map’” provided by such institutions and apparent freedoms in order to relate—comfortably, plausibly, securely—to the overall web of acceptable meanings in the society. “Because of the plurality of social worlds in modern society, the structures of each particular world are experienced as relatively unstable and unreliable.” Consequently the institutional order undergoes a certain loss of reality. The security comes on objectifying the subjective reality. The separated sectors of our social world are rationalized and relativized, forcing the non-poor Christian to religiously justify “this worldly systems and institutions” in order to feel less exposed and vulnerable and more relevant and secure.

Although there is some movement among younger evangelicals to embrace social action, much is simply a political realignment rather than truly counter-cultural expression of faith (“justice issues are trendy and participation gives good feeling”) and alien or detached from actually poverty (“they get to go home to the suburbs after their social action is done for the day”). Nonetheless, for the most part, the non-poor evangelical Christian living in the suburbs, benefiting from limited government and the promise of upward mobility, feel at home in the burbs, a life sustained and enabled by capitalism and the free market. After decades of political alignment and religious justification, the remedy for the alienation and loneliness and self-doubt of modern, segmented life is democratic freedom and capitalism—all biblically text-proofed.

Here, I am concerned with the non-poor Christian’s social location, particularly those participating in non-urban life, and how the idolatry-poverty framework can help to inform and form the concept of discipleship and evangelism (i.e., the demonstration and proclamation of the Kingdom’s presence). It is not necessarily how Pentateuchal and prophetic ethical texts apply to our modern social location, but how the inter-play between idolatry and the issues of poverty relate to those who ought to be informed and formed by the Gospel and the inaugural presence of the Kingdom of God. And then, how the Christian and the Church community apply that significance to life in the public arena.

Idolatry pushes us into a defective reality
The Old Testament story-line through narrative, psalmists, wise-sayings, and the prophets is, for the most part, a story of the tension between the faith and worship of Israel and the presence and pressures of idolatry. P. C. Craigie defines “idolatry” as “The worship of an idol or of a deity represented by an idol.” The Bible’s wide range of terms for idols and idolatry allow the concept to be taken to mean both the worship of images and the worship of foreign gods, making both senses valid. The first direct prohibition against idolatry (Exodus 20; Deut 5) was associated with God’s revelation of Himself to Israel, a “self-disclosure” through words rather than images and the Sinai redemptive event, which “constituted a paradigm” of God’s continued self-disclosure. The severe exclusion of worshiping images (i.e., symbols and signs) or serving other gods before Yahweh was “to maintain a continuing consciousness among the Israelites that their God is different from and incomparable to the pagan gods” (cf. Isa 40:18-26). Although much of the ethical content of Israel’s faith is similar to the surrounding ANE religions, this is one of the most striking contrasts to Israel’s neighbors, namely the religion of Israel prohibited the use of images in the worship, in the passing on of knowledge of God, and, very importantly, in regards to Israel’s relationship with God, to others, and to the land.

Reinhold Niebuhr, in his Nature and Destiny of Man observed that idolatry is the making of that which is contingent absolute, something relative into “the unconditional principle of meaning.” Luke T. Johnson points out that when we consider or ascribe something as ultimate, this is worship, but not just what our lips or cultus practice render, but in the exercise of our freedom in service to that which we consider absolute and unconditional, and thus derive our significance. Whatever we may claim as ultimate, that is my god, which “rivets my attention, centers my activity, preoccupies my mind, and motivates my action.” It is, however, not just the wooden object or image fashioned with gold and silver, that is provides the danger of idolatry, for the Bible is clear that such idols are no-things (Pss 115; 135). It is the body of knowledge—the basis or meaning and worldview—that accompanies the object that is worshipped and, as well, the social and cultural habits that follow in developing an everyday world with meaning and definitions for relationships—repeated action, ritual and mundane habits—that objectifies reality and maintains significance and security. Our socially constructed world, then, is our reality formed by our service of worship through the habits and experience of everyday life. It is idolatry when anything other than the Biblical God is the object of such service.

Johnson reminds us that “The important idolatries have always centered on those forces which have enough specious power to be truly counterfeit, and therefore truly be dangerous: sexuality (fertility), riches, and power (or glory).” Idolatry is the seeking of something powerful enough to give us meaning, yet controllable enough for it to be my being, my life, my worth. What makes idolatry attractive—and dangerous—is its “claim to manipulate ultimate power; the folly of idolatry lies in the fact that any power which can be manipulated cannot be ultimate.” Idolatries are socially constructed—our affection is placed in an “ultimate power” or what is perceived as absolute is objectified through reinforced routines of daily life, making “the relative absolute, the contingent necessary, and the end-all that which is neither end nor all.” The result is constructs a distorted reality for the Christian. Our whole orientation can be in apposition to the reality of the inaugurated presence and affects of the Kingdom of God. As far as biblical revelation and the Christian is concerned, “Idolatry [is] the Big Lie about reality.” This is equally true of economic realities and social-locations that form our everyday habits as non-poor, evangelical Christians as it is of those who worship multiple gods in other world religions. This is why simply aligning one’s Christian faith with a political party or even with a socio-economic system is ultimately idolatrous.

I know I need to finish up my last thread (on coveting), but the need to work on my paper for the up-coming ETS meeting in mid-Nov is an all encompassing project. In this “new” thread, I am floating up some trial balloons and ideas on one of the section. I am dealing with the issue of the non-poor’s socially constructed world, and the implications it has for co-participating non-poor Christians, particularly regarding the issue of poverty.

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Moving from ancient text to application (Old Testament ethical texts regarding the poor and poverty) can be very difficult, especially as we consider how such texts are to inform and form Christian discipleship concerning those affected by poverty. At the risk of over-generalization, approaches to tend to align with political views and party affiliations, as well as comfort levels and economic social-locations: Republicans and the politically conservative tend to read capitalism, free markets, and individual charity as biblical solutions; democrats and the politically liberal tend to lean toward the State as the responsible guarantor to provide the means for caring for the poor. Both appeal to Scripture; both argue their solutions are biblical. As I have argued, however, both certainly have merit and find some proof-texted support, but neither takes into consideration the biblical juxtaposition of idolatry and poverty, nor our own human capacity to participate in the idolatrous patterns of our own social location and both overlook the idolatries of our own political or social alignments.

Shifting the center for discussing the issues of poverty to discipleship and evangelism helps to focus our attention on the social-location of non-poor Christians and how they are respond to the poor and how they can challenge idolatry. This is particuarly important since the sacred text is primarily concerned with informing and forming God’s community. This being the case, in light of biblical discipleship, the non-poor Christian must recognize his or her social location and resist the affects of idolatry that have informed and formed their own reality.

While I agree that there is an absence of a systematic, comprehensive Evangelical reflection on politics and public life, my concern about developing a Christian political or even public philosophy is that such endeavors tend to align with existing political structures (right or left, liberal or conservative) and current socio-economic systems rather than a subversive confrontation to existing idolatries. The development of a public philosophy can lead, then, “to contradicting, confusion, ineffectiveness, even biblical unfaithfulness, in our political work.” Defending the status quo. Christians will be Democrats, republicans, and independents, all depending on how one was raised, who their friends are, how they view government, etc. A political philosophy would be somewhat be akin developing a rationale for a system of this world, which, we are not to love nor align ourselves with. Evangelicals ought not develop such a philosophy that would affirm a particular party-platform or advocate for a particular economic system, it seems to me distinctively Christian ethical responses cannot develop such “this worldly” philosophy, for it is the realm of discipleship and evangelism through which we apply a Christian philosophy of the public. More so, we ought to develop biblical views on the public square, and especially on how our wealth and economics affect the poor. We need a discipleship that has public conponent that takes in all of Scripture, and the full weight of the Gospel. As evangelicals it is our responsibility to advocate for the poor, not promote simply political solutions.

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From the working draft, “Idolatry and Poverty: Where the Private vs. Public Isn’t Enough.”

I again apologize for not being very “postee” these days. I am feverishly working on my paper for New Orleans in mid-Nov. But after working on a section on “Idolatry, a Defective Construction of Social Reality,” I couldn’t help pass on a paragraph from another paper (I am referencing in this paper) on the subject of Evangelical Interest in the public square. For what it’s worth:

Raymond Knighton, in his report on the “Social Responsibility of Evangelization” to the 1974 Lausanne Committee for World Evangelism, alluded to what Colin Morris wrote in Include Me Out, “If the church turns a blind eye to the injustices around it, the world will turn a deaf ear to everything else the church tries to say.” Knighton concluded his report, “Social action is simply obedience to the command of God” and is part of the evangelizing task of the church. Os Guinness, in his report to the same committee on “Social Responsibility,” rebuffed the church’s tendency to concentrate on minor and private issues to the “virtual ignoring of major principles and issues” related to justice, mercy, violence, race, and poverty. Elsewhere Guinness writes that the “highest American good is more than the struggle over who gets what, when, and how.” Not a bad comment for the church to absorb. Often involvement in politics for the church is limited to issues that threaten its existence or its status quo. Being convinced that Christ is Lord over every part of life, including the public square, should draw the church outward. However, on the other hand, there is a tendency to think of faith and the Christian experience exclusively in individualistic terms (e.g., as a ‘personal’ relationship with Jesus Christ). From this perspective, church-life, including discipleship, becomes vague and privatized, and society at large becomes invisible. The rise in political interests and public square activities among conservative churches does not necessarily reflect “a shift from a protective goal to a redemptive goal but an increase in the perceived level of threat.” Renewed attention by the evangelical church to the public square can represent, actually, an increased desire to protect the status-quo of the church in American life. The injustices in the public square that are of interest to conservative churches are those that are perceived as threats to the adherents’ lifestyles, economic comfort, and theological plausibility. In other words injustices that are “not personally threatening” receive “much less of their attention.” In fact, there might be a threat to the church’s and the Christian’s socio-economic comfort if the poor are “in their midst” or if the church-goer’s taxes, let alone “tithes,” are utilized to advocate and care for the poor.

Yes I know I haven’t finished the thread on “Coveting” and its been a while for any post. Between work (which is the season for our Federal Head Start grant submission and updating our Community Needs Assessment), my teens’ (yes, they are all teens now--all three in the house) transition back to school, and my time-consuming research and writing for my paper on Idolatry and Poverty (to be read mid-November in New Orleans), I have had little time to pop on the PC and be witty and creative. Stay tuned. I will begin posting parts of my paper, and as well finish up on the “Coveting” threat. Meanwhile, feel free to browse around the site--maybe entertain one of the book reviews or CommonPlace comments. Until. Peace.