A faithful economy

The Great Depression of the 1930’s is always somewhere in our American rear view mirror. It has receded from time to time, as in the economic boom times of the 1990’s, but there is always that lurking fear it could catch up with us again.

As markets tremble in August of 2011, fears of another “Great Depression” loom.

A CNN poll conducted in June found that nearly half of Americans (48 percent) “say that another Great Depression is likely to occur in the next year—the highest that figure has ever reached.” If not an actual “depression,” the market plunges of early August have given rise to concerns that we are on the brink of a “double-dip,” recession, that is, the return of a recession economy in less than three years.

Sadly enough, not only are we making all the same economic mistakes today that gave rise to the crash of 1929, and then prolonged it during the Great Depression of the 1930’s, like unregulated boom times and then the failure to sufficiently invest in a recovery, we’re making all the same religious mistakes.

In the 1930’s, most people failed to heed the depth of the critique of the economy and of religion by Reinhold Niebuhr, the thundering Protestant theologian who sought a return to “Christian realism” in the 1930’s in order to bring about a new Social Gospel that reckoned with the reality of evil. Instead, in the Great Depression, the only sector of American Protestantism that actually grew was the “sectarian” type that emphasized individual conversion and the imminent return of Jesus in a Rapture.

Indeed, end-times religion prospered during the Great Depression. In the depression years, Jerald C. Brauer, well-known church historian, observes, it was the fringe religious groups, calls sects, that grew, especially those who were preaching that end-times were upon the country. The Adventists, a Protestant sect that “believed in the immediate return of the Lord Jesus Christ,” he notes, were “to be found on every street corner passing out their paper, The Watchtower.”

This is, of course, exactly what is happening now. Harold Camping recently (and incorrectly) predicted the end of the world for May 21, 2011, making him 0-2 for end of the world predictions. Camping, of course, could accurately be described as a sectarian.

Even more in the “mainstream” than Camping, however, is the kind of call to repentance and the threat to the nation of the failure to repent that was the main text of Governor Rick Perry’s recent Texas prayer event, “The Response.” Perry’s prayer and bible reading presentation fit into the sectarian framework of individual repentance leading to salvation. This also fits the Niebuhrian critique. While a host of problems from poverty to division in families and nation are decried, very little is actually being done in terms of social justice to correct these conditions, as in Governor Perry’s state of Texas, as I have written.

These ‘end of days’ or individual salvation approaches to religion in tough economic times are part of what Reinhold Niebuhr critiqued during the Great Depression. He also was very hard on the ‘just do what Jesus did’ approach of his liberal friends.

I celebrate the principled Protestants and Catholics who have been struggling to stand up for the poor in our country and surround them with a “Circle of Protection. The direct attacks on their work show that it is very effective. Yet I believe this kind of moral reasoning is insufficient to deal with the deep and systemic problems that undergird the conditions that are inexorably driving the poor into destitution and the middle class into poverty in this country, year after year. For this we need tough critique of the systemic nature of economic injustice that Niebuhr did so well from a biblical and theological perspective.

Niebuhr argued for a much broader critique of economic inequality that could not adequately be addressed by the application of the teachings of Jesus. Evil and selfishness endure in our society in a systemic, not just an individualistic way. That why simply substituting charity for government programs that deal with economic inequalities in a broad and systemic way can sound like kindness and end up enabling the cruelest kinds of systemic injustice.

I have been doing a reading class with some students this summer on a “New Social Gospel.” We have read again the great works of Reinhold Niebuhr and his wisdom seems particularly important to craft a faith response to these times of rapidly increasing economic inequality and a callous disregard of the sufferings of the poor and middle class.

Niebuhr argues, in effect, don’t look to the rich and powerful to come up with solutions to social ills. Those who are wealthy and powerful in a society will always delude themselves that they are doing what is “best” for the country. Niebuhr minces no words on this. “The moral attitudes of dominant and privileged groups are characterized by universal self-deception and hypocrisy.” (p. 117) This will not go away, no matter how much ‘morality in politics’ people promote. No, what is necessary, according to Niebhur, for ethics in the public square, is both to recognize the political realism of the “inevitability and the necessity of social struggle” while at the same time, the “obligation to check their [human communities] own egotism, to comprehend the interests of others and thus to enlarge the areas of co-operation.” (p. 275)

This reality of the enduring conflict between human self-interest and human compassion and co-operation is the biblical and theological message we need today, as in was needed in the 1930’s, for our religious communities and social organizations to actually help create a more decent world for ourselves and our children. It is perhaps not a message that will fill stadiums, but it is realistic faith perspective we can live with.

Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite  | Aug 8, 2011 3:51 PM