Jim Wallis published a book called God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets it Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It earlier this year. I loved the title. I bought it back in February but only got around to reading it a few weeks ago.
I have followed the workings of Jim Wallis and Sojourners from afar over the years. They are a community that takes their faith seriously. They have advocated for the poor in Washington, DC, where they are located. They have sought solutions to national and international social justice issues as well. I don’t think anyone can doubt their commitment to the good news of Jesus Christ.
That said, I was disappointed with the book. I expected something more innovative, but these are the same well-worn ideas I have been reading from the Evangelical Left for a quarter century. The sudden rise in Wallis’ popularity and the book has less to do with something new being said than with a media that is so ignorant of the complexities of religious life in America that they have never “found” Wallis.
The book is 374 pages, and I will not address every argument he makes. I share many of Wallis’ concerns about the poor, race relations, and the dangers of an “American Empire” mindset. Republicans have been largely absent without leave on the first two and are always vulnerable to the latter. I think President Bush was struggling to find innovative solutions through faith-based and government partnerships, but the devil was in the details. When it became difficult, Republicans disappeared again. What I want to do here is address what I believe are fatal flaws in Wallis’ perspective that will prohibit the development of a new way forward in Christian witness.
Jubilee
Conservative Christians are frequently criticized (and rightly so) for reading what they want to read out of scripture. The following passage by Wallis is a textbook example of how the religious Left does the same thing:
Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor,” and opened up his own ministry by proclaiming, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (which was a direct reference to the Jubilee Year in the Hebrew Scriptures where, periodically, the debts of the poor were cancelled, slaves were set free, and land was redistributed for the sake of equity.) (15-16)
Wallis is referring to the Jubilee code in Leviticus 25. All three claims in his parenthetical statement are wrong.
“The debts of the poor were canceled” – There were no debts to be canceled. Leviticus 25:13-16:
13 In this year of jubilee you shall return, every one of you, to your property. 14 When you make a sale to your neighbor or buy from your neighbor, you shall not cheat one another. 15 When you buy from your neighbor, you shall pay only for the number of years since the jubilee; the seller shall charge you only for the remaining crop years. 16 If the years are more, you shall increase the price, and if the years are fewer, you shall diminish the price; for it is a certain number of harvests that are being sold to you. (NRSV)
The effect of the Jubilee Code was to limit lending and borrowing. If an Israelite fell on hard times, they could lease their land and labor to another Israelite. The sale amount (not loan) could not exceed the number of crops to be harvested between the time of the loan and the next Jubilee. Labor could be leased out similarly. (Lev. 25:50) Thus, the land and labor leases expired when the Jubilee came around every forty-nine years. (I wrote several posts on the Jubilee code starting on August 2 if you want to read more.) There was no lending or debt involved here.
“Slaves were set free” – Israelites were not permitted to buy and sell each other into slavery. They could only enslave people from non-Israelite peoples. These slaves were not subject to the Jubilee code. Leviticus 25:39-42:
39 If any who are dependent on you become so impoverished that they sell themselves to you, you shall not make them serve as slaves. 40 They shall remain with you as hired or bound laborers. They shall serve with you until the year of the jubilee. 41 Then they and their children with them shall be free from your authority; they shall go back to their own family and return to their ancestral property. 42 For they are my servants, whom I brought out of the land of Egypt; they shall not be sold as slaves are sold. (NRSV)
“Land was redistributed for the sake of equity.” – The Jubilee Code says nothing about a redistribution of land for the sake of equity. Scripture declares that God is the ultimate owner of all there is. God desired that each Israelite family has a share in the inheritance God was giving the nation. For that reason, the land could not be sold into perpetuity. It could only be leased for a fixed period between Jubilees.
Land and labor were the two means of production for the Israelites. The Jubilee code ensured that despite hard times or personal failure, no family would permanently be disposed of their means of production. There was no redistribution of livestock from one who had produced much to those who had produced little. There was no redistribution of crops from one who had produced many to those who had produced few.
Many cite the prophet’s condemnation of the wealthy as a sign that material goods should be equal. The prophets railed against ill-gotten wealth combined with a callousness to poor people. The wealthy joined “house to house and field to field,” dispossessing fellow Israelites of their land, essentially making them sharecroppers. (Isaiah 5:8) This directly violated how God said he wanted each Israelite to share in the inheritance, not a redistribution of wealth because of inequality.
Wallis accuses the religious right of selective use and misuse of scripture. I agree, and I find it appalling. However, I find it no less so when the religious Left reads what they want to get out of it into scripture. If we are truly to move beyond left and right to a unified Christian witness, we must start with the authority of scripture and be willing to bring ideology into conformity. Any other use is a denial of scripture’s authority.
Tax Cuts for the Rich
Concerning the Bush tax cuts, Wallis writes,
An economic stimulus package should have had as its goal to immediately “stimulate” the economy by providing emergency assistance for those families in greatest jeopardy – who, in fact, are most likely to spend the money. Instead, 80 percent of the House package benefited corporations and the wealthiest taxpayers, who are in least jeopardy and least likely to spend the money. That failed the tests of both common sense and unity. (102)
Wallis' explicit assumption here is that redistributing money from the wealthy to the poor will enable the poor to spend more, thus stimulating the economy. Two things must be separated here: Helping the poor and stimulating the economy.
When people at the bottom rungs of the economic ladder experience hard times, a compassionate society will address their material needs. Redistribution of income to lower income people in crisis may be the best way to assist people in crisis. However, redistributing income to the poor has minimal impact on a recessionary economy.
The Great Depression of the 1930s was the biggest economic collapse in the nation’s history. President Hoover raised marginal tax rates for the highest tax brackets from 25% to 63%. President Roosevelt continued the trend by elevating the rate to 79% a few years later and to 91% in the early 1940s. Many credit Roosevelt’s works programs for reviving the American economy. The fact is that the economy of 1941 was only marginally better than the economy of 1933, and tax revenues were still 10% less, despite massive redistributions of wealth and government spending. The economy actually recovered during World War II. What happened?
When people at the bottom of the economic ladder get increased income, how do they spend it? They usually spend it on food, shelter, clothing, utilities, and other necessities of life. They don’t buy big-ticket items, industrial equipment, or build new factories. Where does the money the poor receive come from? It comes from the wealthy via government taxation. A substantial amount of the money appropriated from the wealthy is consumed by government bureaucracy and overhead before it ever gets to the poor.
What do wealthy people do with “extra” money? Put under a pillow? Bury it in a hole in the backyard? No. They invest. They buy stock in companies or lend it by purchasing bonds or depositing money at a lending institution. If you decrease the money for buying stocks, corporations find it hard to raise money for capital improvements (i.e., state-of-the-art equipment, better facilities, new processes, etc.)
Similarly, less money at lending institutions means the same number of corporations will be chasing a shrinking pool of dollars. That competition drives interest rates higher, making many corporations less likely to borrow. Corporations conclude it is more profitable (at least in the short run) not to expand or improve but keep running deteriorating old equipment and facilities beyond their productive lives. In fact, it could be more profitable to run facilities to the point of obsolescence and then cease production. Raising or borrowing capital for improvements might not be profitable.
During the 1930s, the government took money out of the hands of the wealthy, which is the same as saying the government increased the cost of raising capital. Money was given to the less wealthy to stimulate the economy. Manufacturers found using existing equipment well beyond its intended life was more profitable. There was little demand for new equipment or facilities, leaving industries that produced big-ticket items and those that supported them without the demand for goods and services. Roosevelt kept redistributing money to the government and the poor expecting that government purchases and spending by the poor (as opposed to the wealthy, as Wallis notes, who are “the least likely to spend money”) would stimulate the economy. It didn’t.
What saved the economy was the impact of World War II. The government began buying munitions for the Allies and, eventually, its soldiers. This meant radical expansion and improvement in the American industrial capacity. It necessitated an expansion of the labor force giving many people, including women, jobs. However, since so much capacity was needed for war production, very little was available for consumer goods. With more people making money and fewer things to spend money on, many people bought bonds and deposited money at lending institutions. When the war ended, there was a dramatically improved industrial infrastructure, low interest rates because of so much money on deposit, and a glut of experienced labor ready to meet the deferred demand for consumer goods. Improved capacity, lower capital rates, consumer demand, and low labor costs set an economic boom in motion. Redistribution of wealth from the wealthy to the poor had minimal or no impact on stimulating the economy.
Whether we look at the tax cuts for the highest earners by Harding and Coolidge in the 1920s (56%-25%), Kennedy and Johnson in the 1960s (91%-70%), Ronald Reagan in the 1980s (70%-28%), or George W. Bush in 2001 (39.6%-33%), the economy grew in the following years. Many fault the Reagan tax cuts for the growing inequality in the US. However, the growth in inequality started at least by the mid-1970s, well before the tax cuts. And inequality has remained relatively constant since the Bush tax cuts four years ago. There is not a clear connection between tax cuts and inequality. (Click for more on income inequality.) However, each recent tax cut has increased the percentage of the tax burden paid by the top 1% of earners. The top 1% paid 19.3% of income taxes in 1980 but paid 34.3% in 2003. Similar results have been seen in other countries (Click for more about top payers.)
Even though there are sound reasons to believe that high tax rates on the wealthy weaken the economy and, therefore, the prosperity of all, the political Left often derides low tax advocates as apologists for greed. They also seem to have an implicit zero-sum-game mentality that says wealth only comes at someone else’s expense. (I find this particularly true of the seminary trained who fail to appreciate that zero-sum economics was the default assumption of cultures, including biblical ones, until just the past few centuries.) Economics is an imperfect science, and we must always be cautious not to read what suits us into our analysis, but greed and envy are not confined to the wealthy. It is just as possible that many who want high taxes for the wealthy envy their success. I understand that many who would raise taxes have little concern about the poor and great interest in punitive actions toward the wealthy, even if it damages the economy and harms the poor!
Internationalism
Anyone who has studied American history understands our checkered past. From slavery, to the extermination of Indian peoples, to the imperialism of Teddy Roosevelt, to countless uses of military force in support of repressive “allies” throughout the Twentieth Century, we have had our share of shameful interventions with other cultures. Our intentions in these events have varied from noble to despicable. We have to be ever-vigilant against future transgressions.
We also must acknowledge that some noble American interventions have been on the world stage. World War I, the defeat of fascism, the defense of South Korea, the defeat of global communism, and several smaller interventions like Grenada or Kuwait testify to more noble uses of military power.
Wallis writes:
President Bush and his administration have repeatedly said the fact that the principal argument for going to war with Iraq has turned out to be false doesn’t matter. There was not “imminent” or “urgent” threat from chemical or biological weapons, and Iraq wasn’t developing a nuclear threat, as was clearly claimed before the war.
The best explanation is that intelligence was manipulated and selectively reported to justify a worst-case scenario that had previously been arrived at on political grounds. The worst explanation is that the case was fabricated. Either way, the president of the United States misled the American people into going to war. 122
I find passages like this throughout the book a disappointing acquiescence to a political strategy of discrediting the President, not an honest analysis of the events.
The President did not say the primary reason for going to war was weapons of mass destruction. Nor did he say that Iraq was behind the 9/11 attacks. He said Iraq was an aggressive player in the training and support of terrorism who had not complied with the Gulf War ceasefire. It was Iraq who ended the ceasefire, not the United States. The (apparently mistaken) evidence of nuclear weapons emphasized the determination of Hussein to inflict terror. Nuclear weapons or not, that determination was real and unchecked because of the UN's inability to achieve compliance with ceasefire terms. Because of 9/11, the President maintained tolerance of terrorism had to be curtailed.
We may differ about whether the US should have taken the action it did in the way it did. We may disagree about what constitutes a just war or if there is such a thing as a just war. Fine. Let’s have that conversation. But let’s be honest about events surrounding what has happened.
I especially find the statements in the second paragraph above revealing. With all due respect, the best explanation is that the President and his advisors looked at the intelligence in front of them and concluded, as did every other major player on the world stage (including opponents France, Germany, and Russia), that Iraq was a major player in terrorism and badly wanted WMDs if they did not already have them; That the President and his advisors acting on incomplete and conflicting information (as is true every time such decisions have to be made) did what they thought was in the best interest of the American people, and ultimately the world, including Iraq. That Wallis is unwilling to allow for this assumption says more about his bias than it does about the events. (Sojo News releases which I have received, also indicate Wallis and friends have been more than eager to join the “Bush Lied” bandwagon, which may energize some followers, but I believe will ultimately ghettoize their influence and diminish their prophetic voice.)
Wallis’ best long-term solution to future crises like the one with Iraq? Quoting John Howard Yoder, Wallis suggests an international police force:
In the police function, the violence or threat thereof is applied only to the offending party. The use of violence by the agent of the police is subject to review of higher authorities. The police officer applies power within the limits of a state whose legislation even the criminal knows to be applicable to him. 165.
He suggests the world needs a “police force” to intervene in such crises, and all nations, including the US, should be subject to those police powers. Who would the police force’s actions be subject to? Wallis has in mind the UN.
Wallis is repeatedly critical of US intentions and actions but uncritical of the United Nations. He is silent about the hopelessly corrupt “Oil for Food” program. He is silent about Security Council members France and Russia, who were making billions of dollars off Iraqi contracts violating international law (and may have opposed action in Iraq for these reasons.) He is silent about the fact that many nations that make up the United Nations have little respect for democracy and the rule of law. Yet so low is Wallis’ estimation of American democracy and values that UN authority is preferable to American sovereignty.
There is no doubt that much cooperative work can be done and is being done through UN entities. It is also clear that American power has been abused and will be again. But there is no evidence that the UN can be trusted with the kind of authority he suggests and much evidence to suggest the contrary.
Conclusion
If you want a good summary of political thought from the Evangelical Left, this book is for you. If you are looking for a new way forward in how to think as a Christian about emerging social policy issues, I would look elsewhere. Jim Wallis is a man of conviction and action, as evidenced by his years of leadership with the Sojourners community. He documents his attempts to find alternative solutions to the Iraq War before it happened. I salute his efforts to live with integrity in what he preaches. Still, I find his biblical analysis deeply flawed, his economics confused, and his solutions utopian. For that reason, I will be looking elsewhere for new ways forward.
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