COMMENTARY: Loathing the poor’s less about morals than money

c. 1996 Religion News Service (Tom Ehrich is an Episcopal priest, author and former Wall Street Journal reporter living in Winston-Salem, N.C. Contact Ehrich via e-mail at journey(at)interpath.com.) (UNDATED)”The welfare system,”I heard a politician say,”is a disgrace to our Judeo-Christian principles.” Interesting thought. Not exactly true, but interesting. I think he means this: A welfare […]

c. 1996 Religion News Service

(Tom Ehrich is an Episcopal priest, author and former Wall Street Journal reporter living in Winston-Salem, N.C. Contact Ehrich via e-mail at journey(at)interpath.com.)

(UNDATED)”The welfare system,”I heard a politician say,”is a disgrace to our Judeo-Christian principles.” Interesting thought. Not exactly true, but interesting.


I think he means this: A welfare system that encourages dependency and rewards slackers violates American values of self-reliance and individualism. Our free-market capitalism is grounded in an ethic of no-work, no-eat, with the notable exceptions that those who have investments are allowed to eat heartily without doing any further work, those who could raise certain crops earn money for not doing so, those who build sports stadiums receive public money, and a whole lot of us seek tax breaks and government subsidies wherever we can.

But what does any of this have to do with”Judeo-Christian principles?”Does this politician know that early Christian settlers in America lived communally, highly dependent on one another? My own Puritan ancestor helped to build the first fence at Milford (later Newark) in New Jersey Colony. He did his share, not because he was necessarily a generous soul, but because he had to. Helping each other was a condition for owning property.

Does this politician know that Christian movements in the western colonies also were communal in nature? Everyone worked; I doubt that slackers were tolerated. But the ethic underlying their communities was one of mutual reliance, not self-reliance. How else could a pioneer get land cleared or a barn raised?

Later immigrant groups formed mutual-support systems centered in their churches and synagogues. They provided food, money, jobs, child care, political clout and housing, all in the name of religious solidarity.

Look at the settling of modern Israel. Hostile neighbors have forced Jews to live in a mutual dependency that Americans in their detached homes, locked doors and don’t-bother-me attitudes might find bizarre.

More to the point, does this politician know what the Jewish and Christian scriptures say about welfare? If he did, I doubt that he would be encouraged.

The Old Testament tithe, for example, was a welfare system, designed to benefit”aliens, orphans and widows.”Harvests were seen as coming from God, not from self, and therefore must be shared. Boaz was praised for leaving grain in the field for Ruth, even though she had done nothing to earn it. The prophet Amos condemned Israel and Judah because the wealthy secured their ease at the expense of the poor.


In ancient Israel, Jews felt a fundamental obligation of hospitality _ an obligation so strong that Lot was willing to hand his virgin daughters over to a mob in Sodom rather than have his guests abused. Israel was tribal, not ruggedly individualistic, to the extent that a widow’s brother-in-law had an obligation to help her bear children.

The early Christians abandoned property ownership altogether. They lived in communes, where each did what he could and was given what he needed. Jesus allied himself with the needy and victims and encouraged his followers to do the same. His ethic was one of radical sharing, without regard to calculation or logic.

Paul took his stand with the”poorly clothed and beaten and homeless,”not with the powerful or honored. He said we cannot build our lives on a foundation of”gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay or straw”or with the works of our hands. Even Paul’s much-quoted phrase _”Anyone unwilling to work should not eat”_ had to do with delays in the second coming and how communal living might not be feasible, rather than some ethic of welfare.

I don’t rise to defend our welfare system in its current form. Even recipients of welfare agree it’s a mess. Political leaders have work to do. But simply turning off the spigot and then saying that”Judeo-Christian principles”justify compulsory self-reliance don’t square with the Word itself or with much of Christian tradition in America beyond a latter-day middle class property-owning ethic that seems 99 percent culture and only a nod to Scripture.

Besides, if the spigot is turned off for one, maybe it should be turned off for all. The biggest beneficiaries of government aid, after all, aren’t lazy welfare recipients, but the elderly, all those who get tax breaks (including churches) and the politicians themselves.

The issue isn’t Judeo-Christian principle. It’s power. As the mad bomber in the movie”Speed”says,”I’m afraid it’s all about money.”


MJP END EHRICH

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