By R. William Carroll
Recently, from the pulpit, I issued a call to our parish to raise significant funds, beyond those in our parish budget, to support our ministries that feed the hungry. In the past year, we have added support to the Good Earth Hunger Mission, a new ministry led by a parishioner, which is growing food locally to support area hunger ministries. Our thought was to begin to address the systemic causes of hunger, a global food system that presupposes an oil-based economy (both for transporting food and for making petroleum based fertilizers), a point which was driven home for us by a local organic farmer at a sustainable agriculture workshop at the Mt. Grace Appalachian Ministries Conference, co-sponsored by the Dioceses of Southern Ohio and West Virginia. We want to continue to meet immediate need but begin to think more systematically about the interdependence of social and environmental justice.
My point of departure in the lectionary was Psalm 149:4: “For the LORD takes pleasure in his people, and adorns the poor with victory.”
The context of my remarks came from some statistics cited in the Winston-Salem Journal:
A blizzard of pink slips pushed the jobless rate from 5.7 percent in July to 6.1 percent in August, the Labor Department reported yesterday.
Worried about the economy and their own business prospects, employers cut payrolls by 84,000 in August, marking the eighth straight month of losses.
So far this year, a staggering 605,000 jobs have vanished — slightly less than the population of Alaska. The economy needs to generate more than 100,000 new jobs a month for employment to remain stable.
A separate report showed that a record 9.2 percent of American homeowners with a mortgage were either behind on their payments or in foreclosure at the end of June.
Both sets of statistics are staggering. The mortgage figures point to the effects on Main Street of the crisis that is affecting Wall Street as well. There were nods of approval in the congregation when I noted that things are even worse in Ohio (and certainly in Athens County, where I serve) and that they have been for some time. As I observed in the sermon, these statistics are confirmed by the witness of our local hunger ministries and homeless shelter, which are seeing an increasing number of requests for assistance from people who would have previously thought of themselves as comfortably middle class. It is going to be a VERY hard winter.
In this article I want to do something that I didn’t do in the pulpit. (Don’t worry. I’m getting round to it.) My sermon’s purpose was to awaken us to local need and local response. But that is always insufficient. We also need to be politically engaged. Politics is (or can be) a means to address matters of mutual concern, the common good, which the framers of our republic, in the Preamble to the Constitution, called the “general welfare.”
Now, I believe passionately that preachers should avoid advocating parties or candidates from the pulpit. Not only is this the law, but it shows profound respect for the wisdom and conscience of the People of God, a respect that must be maintained if we are to be true to our baptismal ecclesiology. And so, even though I have some strong views about politics and the current presidential and congressional elections, I adhere to the law.
At the same time, though, I think it is the duty of those of us who are responsible for proclaiming Christ to draw attention to the real issues in this election. Surely, the central issues include those concerning war and peace, human rights (where do the candidates stand on torture?) and the rule of law, health care, and the economy.
At the same conference I mentioned above, the keynoter, Tupper Morehead of the Diocese of East Tennessee, who is my brother in Christ and in the Third Order Franciscans, spoke about what he calls “Jesus economics.” He noted that “the Church has the authority to preach Jesus economics in the churches of Appalachia.” We also have the authority to preach this economics in our cities and suburbs. We should take it to the streets, and proclaim it, by word and example, in town and country alike. The Reign of God preached by Jesus has social implications. In it, the first are last and the last are first.
First and foremost, as we cast our vote in November, we must remember the needs of the poor, who lack their daily bread and who are being forced out of their homes. The Republican Party and Democratic Party, and their respective nominees, offer very different perspectives on economic policy. Third party candidates differ even more greatly. They differ on taxation, on the relative roles of markets and regulation, and on what kind of social “safety net” they would offer to the poor among us. All would argue that their policies, in the long run, will create more general prosperity for the American people, and presumably for others around the world.
Christians have a non-negotiable imperative to assess these policy proposals carefully. And, although people of good will may differ about which approach will be most beneficial in fixing an economy in crisis, we have a moral obligation to keep the needs of the poor front and center. Christians can’t approach an election asking “What’s in it for me?” They must always ask themselves, “How does this affect other people?” and especially “How does this affect God’s poor?”
“For the Lord takes pleasure in his people, and adorns the poor with victory.”
The Rev. R. William Carroll serves as rector of the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd in Athens, Ohio (Diocese of Southern Ohio). He received his Ph.D. in Christian theology from the University of Chicago Divinity School. He is a novice in the Third Order of the Society of Saint Francis.