http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/susan_brooks_thistlethwaite/2008/08/no_atheists_in_recessions.htmlProfessor, Chicago Theological Seminary
Rev. Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite is professor of theology at Chicago Theological Seminary and senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. She was president of CTS from 1998-2008.
No Atheists in Recessions
Apparently there are no atheists in foxholes or in recessions. The Washington Post survey of low-wage workers in the United States reports that the "vast majority of those polled said religion or their faith in God plays an important role in helping them through financial straits."
This is a very American definition of the Christian faith--individualistic, pietistic and not applied to a religious view of the economy as a whole. A more profound biblical and theological perspective would give the American people greater resources with which to understand the causes of these hard times. But Americans no longer know their bible or their theological roots and thus have a very thin religious read of this economy.
For Americans faith has been reduced to individual piety. As Stephen Prothero so well documents in his book, Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know--and Doesn't, many trends have conspired to make Americans very religious while at the same time almost completely ignorant of the biblical and theological sources of their faith that they could use to come to a larger understanding of God, their lives and their society. In the 19th century, an evangelical revival swept the country, "The Second Great Awakening." This phenomenon shook religion loose from its biblical and theological roots and made it into something you felt. Then the Social Gospel liberals at the turn of the 20th century finished off liberal knowledge of bible and theology and turned religion into "good works." Finally, the post-WWII boom in church attendance convinced the mainline churches that faith itself, without bible and theology, was good enough. This has produced the individualistic approach to faith that we see today across the spectrum of religious belief and we see reflected in this survey.
Thus Americans have few biblical or historical religious resources to apply to their current economic situation and they have to soldier on alone, as best they can. And they are trying and trying hard. In fact, far from being a "nation of whiners" about their declining economic situation, as McCain co-chairman Phil Gramm opined, Americans are amazingly enough more inclined to blame themselves for their difficulties in hard times. The survey indicates that although workers feel increasingly squeezed, "just 3 in 10 low-age workers blame their employers for their plight, while 6 in 10 said they are responsible for their own financial situation." And yet these low-wage workers are still convinced that "people can get ahead by working hard."
In fact, actually reading the bible would present a very different faith approach to the current economic situation of low-wage workers in the U.S. Many of the biblical prophets, for example, railed against the way in which the economy of their own times was a set up to keep the workers poor and not pay them fairly for hard work. Take Amos: "Hear this, you who trample the needy and do away with the poor of the land, saying 'When will the New Moon be over that we may sell grain, and the Sabbath be ended that we may market wheat?' skimping the measure, boosting the price and cheating with dishonest scales, buying the poor with silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, selling even the sweepings with the wheat." (8:4-6)
The economists tell us that growth should be our measure of economic prosperity. But growth at the bottom and the middle has felt like a recession to 59% of Americans (CNN poll) since late 2007. In truth, the economy at the bottom has been in a recession for a long time now.
Amos would give us a different read. In Amos' time and in our own, there are actually two economies, one for the folks at the top and one for those at the bottom. In the last five years, America's rising productivity has been achieved by holding down wages and using part-time workers with no benefits to boost the bottom line. While the low-wage worker may be able to buy cheap goods at Wal-Mart ("buying the needy for a pair of sandals"), he or she still doesn't have any savings, healthcare or a retirement plan. People live from paycheck to paycheck. All it took was for one more dose of greed in the mortgage market ("skimping the measure and boosting the price and cheating with dishonest scales") for the economy to take an overall downturn.
The Christian faith should both 'comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.' Right now, all faith seems to be accomplishing is comforting the afflicted, but the comfortable are just fine with their own experience of Jesus. Long-term this may change; you cannot forever hide the fact that productivity in this economy benefits only a few at the expense of the many.
It's getting crowded in that recession foxhole. When it gets too crowded, it may occur to Americans at the bottom, and to the middle class folks tumbling down the economic scale, that they could get more help from their bibles than just a vague 'spirituality.' It may be that this is a good time for all Americans to read their bibles and reflect that it is God's demand that "justice shall roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream." (Amos 5:24)
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Posted by Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite on August 11, 2008 8:16 AM
More Posts About: Mainline Protestant
Apologies for the poor formatting, wicked cold.
-Cindy in Fort Lauderdale
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