Reverse Flow: Flip-Flopping the U.S. Economy

One feature of economic systems, as in ecosystems, is the flow of resources from one region to another.   For instance in an ecosystem, nutrients flow up the food chain.  If pollutants get into the system, they flow that direction too and concentrate in the top predators.  Rivers flow downhill, winding wherever the ridges and ravines of the landscape guide them, carving out their paths as they go.  In economic systems, money and wealth also flow through winding, complex paths.  Economic systems are human constructions, although the more complex they become the less direct control people have over them, for good or for ill.  People and organizations regularly intervene in the flow of resources in an attempt to redirect their flow.  Sometimes they do this with an eye toward the common good, but other times with an eye to personal gain.

There is an interesting history of redirecting the flow of rivers.  One of the more famous cases is the Chicago River, which used to flow into Lake Michigan.  As the city and its industry grew, the river became more and more polluted, and its toxic flow into Lake Michigan put poisons into the water supply of Chicago.  Eventually, a plan to reverse its flow through industrial canals so that it eventually flowed into the Mississippi Basin helped preserve the waters of Lake Michigan.  Of course, it means the sewage and pollution flowed somewhere else.

The Soviet Union, known for its massive statist vision of industrial progress, long debated and planned for reversing a portion of the flow of Siberian rivers whose waters were "wasted" by emptying into the Arctic Ocean.  Regions with growing industry, agriculture, and population could use the water better for the benefit of the Union.  The internal debates dealt not only with the methods and costs of water transfers, but also on the affect on the climate, especially in the northern regions.  Many argued that the reversal of waters would lead to a shorter growing season and colder winters.  Eventually the plans were dropped, although the mayor of Moscow has revived the idea to reverse a portion of the flow of the Ob river to serve other regions.

China has planned numerous water redirection proposals in order to deal with its growing industrialization and population needs.  Russia fears dams and canals in China will bring desertification to some of its important industrial and agricultural regions.  India and Bangladesh face even greater fear of ecological and economic damage from a plan to divert water from the Tsangpo-Brahmaputra River to the Yellow River.  Some of the most densely populated regions of the world are watered by the Brahmaputra, which flows east along the northern side of the Himalayas in China before turning south, then west through Nagaland and Bangladesh.  China's plan would send much of this water north and east, eventually thousands of miles away into Bohai Bay off the Yellow Sea, not far from Beijing and in the direction of Korea.

The point of talking about river reversals is that in each of these cases, some who had the capacity to redirect the flow of water did so, although not necessarily to the benefit of all who could be affected.  As China and India compete for industrial growth, and as each deals with a history of population growth, water becomes an ever more precious commodity.  The capacity to control the flow of this resource can become a path to survival and prosperity for some, and for impoverishment and death for others.  Even the powerful central administration of the Soviet Union could not amass the social and political power within the nation-state to reverse the flow of water resources according to its vision of a new society.  The Chicago River's transport of sewage benefits many people, but pollutes the Mississippi River basin and potentially many urban and rural water supplies as it crosses Illinois.

Various parties, even those who claim to believe in free markets, are constantly evaluating the flow of resources in the economy and trying to think of ways to redirect the flow.  It is fairly accurate to conclude that those who insist on doctrines of the free market conveniently interpret freedom to be their own freedom while limiting the freedom of others.  They organize, spend, lobby, and manipulate to bend the laws governing economics in their favor and against the interests of those they consider their opponents or adversaries.  Many seek monopolistic structures whereby they can become the de facto market regulators in place of government regulation, or with the assistance of government regulation. 

An examination of the economic policy changes and their results in the forty years since 1980 ends up looking much like reversing the flow of rivers.  Paul Krugman's column, "The Old Enemies," of a week ago spurred me to see this comparison.  Here is an excerpt.

If you really want to know what’s going on, watch the corporations.

How can you do that? Follow the money — donations by corporate political action committees.

Look, for example, at the campaign contributions of commercial banks — traditionally Republican-leaning, but only mildly so. So far this year, according to The Washington Post, 63 percent of spending by banks’ corporate PACs has gone to Republicans, up from 53 percent last year. Securities and investment firms, traditionally Democratic-leaning, are now giving more money to Republicans. And oil and gas companies, always Republican-leaning, have gone all out, bestowing 76 percent of their largess on the G.O.P.

These are extraordinary numbers given the normal tendency of corporate money to flow to the party in power. Corporate America, however, really, truly hates the current administration. Wall Street, for example, is in “a state of bitter, seething, hysterical fury” toward the president, writes John Heilemann of New York magazine. What’s going on?

One answer is taxes — not so much on corporations themselves as on the people who run them. The Obama administration plans to raise tax rates on upper brackets back to Clinton-era levels. Furthermore, health reform will in part be paid for with surtaxes on high-income individuals. All this will amount to a significant financial hit to C.E.O.’s, investment bankers and other masters of the universe.

Now, don’t cry for these people: they’ll still be doing extremely well, and by and large they’ll be paying little more as a percentage of their income than they did in the 1990s. Yet the fact that the tax increases they’re facing are reasonable doesn’t stop them from being very, very angry.

Nor are taxes the whole story.

Many Obama supporters have been disappointed by what they see as the administration’s mildness on regulatory issues — its embrace of limited financial reform that doesn’t break up the biggest banks, its support for offshore drilling, and so on. Yet corporate interests are balking at even modest changes from the permissiveness of the Bush era.

From the outside, this rage against regulation seems bizarre. I mean, what did they expect? The financial industry, in particular, ran wild under deregulation, eventually bringing on a crisis that has left 15 million Americans unemployed, and required large-scale taxpayer-financed bailouts to avoid an even worse outcome. Did Wall Street expect to emerge from all that without facing some new restrictions? Apparently it did.

His comments made me look back again to refresh my memory of the tax rates of the federal income tax.  In preparation for war and in time of war, during the late 1930s through the 1950s, marginal tax rates for those earning high incomes stayed around 90%.  Those earning and amassing great wealth were expected to pay most of it back into the system to support military families, war efforts, road building, crime prevention, agricultural infrastructure, small business support, unemployment, assistance to the poor--including children, widows, and others.  It was only fair that a system which prospered because of the hard work of the masses would structure a downward flow of resources from those who were benefiting most from the economy toward those on whose backs those benefits had grown, and to those who were most vulnerable to the harsh effects of economic processes.

It would be remiss not to remind readers that the lower tiers of everyone's income are taxed the same.  As a person's income rises, the higher tiers of that income become taxed at higher rates.  For most of the twentieth century, the federal tax rates had many tiers.  As one's income rose, one paid a lower tax rate on the lower amounts, then progressively higher rates on the additional amounts.  It made for complicated math, but it made good sense for trying to strengthen the entire economy.  There are still several "tax brackets," but the percentage differences are much smaller than they used to be.

In the prosperous 1960s, the top marginal tax rate declined to the 70% range, where it remained until 1981.  Having moved beyond World War II and the Korean War, having repurposed industry away from the build-up of conventional war materiel, the U.S. revised the taxation system to allow those at the top of the economy to retain three times as much as they previously had of their marginally high incomes.

Starting in the 1980s, the top tax rates dropped drastically.  The reasoning was that so many tax loopholes and exemptions existed, the people in the highest brackets were mostly avoiding paying those rates.  If loopholes and exemptions could be eliminated, then maybe they would end up paying their fair share with lower tax rates.  Ever since that time, people whose income is higher than 80% of the nation have paid a significantly lower portion of their income in taxes.  Yet they have grown to pay a larger share of the total federal tax bill because their incomes have increased four times faster than the lower income portion of the population.

Thus the last part of the twentieth century witnessed changes in the flow of resources within the U.S. economy.  Ross Perot's famous "giant sucking sound" was redirecting the flow of wage income away from U.S. workers and toward overseas workers, not merely in the Americas, but also in China and other Pacific economies, and even a few African economies.  On the taxation front, the wealthiest U.S. taxpayers now had to pay only half of the percentage of their marginally higher incomes than had previously been the case.  A major policy for redistribution of wealth was fully underway, with the help of government policies on trade, taxation, and labor.  But these were not the only massive wealth transfers happening.  Another regulatory change also redirected the flow of resources.

Usury caps had for centuries helped to prevent overconcentration of wealth among a few.  Keeping interest rates at relatively low levels slows the transfer of wealth from the lower-income groups toward the wealthy lords of finance.  As interest rates rise, debtors find it harder to get out of debt.  The history of sharecropping, company towns with company stores, tenant farming, and other such systems illustrates again and again that the power of lenders has to be held in check for the benefits of the economy to accrue in a fair and just manner.  Usury laws imposing interest rate caps are one of the best methods to do this.  But around 1980, a series of changes in law eliminated the regulation on interest charged by banks, credit card financiers, and other financial institutions.  The massive growth of consumer credit, the housing bubble, and many more destructive trends have led to huge transfers of wealth from average workers toward a financial elite through bonuses, short-term gains, and eventually through bailouts of the banking, finance, and insurance industries.

On one side, changes in tax policies reduced the flow of resources toward shared benefits and the common good.  In the middle, the flow of resources to U.S. workers stopped growing or declined, as wages flowed overseas.  On the other side, the income of low- and middle-income people began to flow into profits for the financial industry through a system designed to keep people perpetually in debt through high interest rates, exorbitant fees, and deceptive policies.  Like reversing the flow of a river, the resources stop going where they used to.  Instead, they go elsewhere to benefit a few and harm others.  This is not an argument for never meddling.  It is an argument for making decisions with the good of all people in mind.  That is what the biblical teachings on economic life tell us:  put in place economic structures that will prevent permanent indebtedness, harsh economic class divisions, and rewards for manipulating money markets.

Isaiah and Economic Justice 9: Blinded by Greed

Isaiah 9:8-16

The Lord sent a word against Jacob,
    and it fell on Israel;
and all the people knew it—
    Ephraim and the inhabitants of Samaria—
    but in pride and arrogance of heart they said:
“The bricks have fallen,
    but we will build with dressed stones;
the sycamores have been cut down,
    but we will put cedars in their place.”
So the Lord raised adversaries against them,
    and stirred up their enemies,
the Arameans on the east and the Philistines on the west,
    and they devoured Israel with open mouth.
For all this his anger has not turned away;
    his hand is stretched out still.
The people did not turn to him who struck them,
    or seek the Lord of hosts.
So the Lord cut off from Israel head and tail,
    palm branch and reed in one day—
elders and dignitaries are the head,
    and prophets who teach lies are the tail;
for those who led this people led them astray,
    and those who were led by them were left in confusion.

The ninth chapter of Isaiah begins with a familiar advent passage.  It celebrates the end of oppression and the coming of a wise and just ruler.  This ruler will be born for greatness and receive titles of honor such as "Prince of Peace."  Peace, Justice, Righteousness--this is the way of God which Isaiah announced.

The second half of the chapter warns the reader not to expect this blessed revolution just yet.  Even though judgment has already begun to befall the people of Israel and Judah, the leaders and the elite have not listened.  It is just as chapter 6 said.  They will look but not understand.  Having felt the sting of judgment, the people in charge decided to "speak their blessing into existence."  Against all evidence, they said they would build fancier houses and restore their woodlands with even more luxurious trees.

As the earlier chapters of Isaiah have shown, the only way they will build fancier houses and enrich their lands is by further oppressing the poor.  They have not sought to know the Lord better and to understand what would please God.  They have not comprehended God's love for justice.  All they have thought is that they deserve to live the high life, so they will do what it takes to get back to it.

Again, the misleaders have appeared.  Elders, dignitaries, and prophets who teach lies have led the whole nation astray.  They are bringing on the judgment of God, not listening to the faithful message which calls Israel to be a nation in which all people share in the bounty of God's creation.

After the quoted text, Isaiah hits the hard part of the judgment.  It deals with the suffering inflicted on the whole people.  Some have created unjust structures and benefited from others' hardships.  The others were left with confusion.  Judah's leaders had build an unjust and corrupt system.  Such a system comes from the basest motives of selfishness, lust, and greed.  In a world designed around selfishness, lust, and greed, everyone is trying to gain an advantage and use whoever they can to fulfill their insatiable corrupt desires.

Further toward the end of the chapter it says that they devoured their own kin.  Manasseh and Ephraim fought each other, and they both turned on Judah.  Scheming, stealing, fighting, killing--the sins of oppression grow ever more evil and deadly.  Everyone pays the price, even widows and orphans who did not bring it on themselves.  Any sign of weakness gives someone else permission to crush and plunder.  That is what will happen when Assyria and Babylon get ready to pounce.

What Isaiah is describing happens in our workplaces.  It happens in our neighborhoods.  It happens on the City Planning Commission, at the country club, in the board room, at the elite restaurants.  It happens anywhere that people stop thinking of the vulnerable and start thinking of ways to leverage their connections to gain from the unsuspecting and unrepresented.

Isaiah and Economic Justice 8: Watch Out for Immanuel

Isaiah 7:14-17, 23

Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign.  Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel.  He shall eat curds and honey by the time he knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good.  For before the child knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land before whose two kings you are in dread will be deserted.  The Lord will bring on you and on your people and on your ancestral house such days as have not come since the day that Ephraim departed from Judah—the king of Assyria. . . . On that day every place where there used to be a thousand vines, worth a thousand shekels of silver, will become briers and thorns.

Isaiah 8:5-8

The Lord spoke to me again:  Because this people has refused the waters of Shiloah that flow gently, and melt in fear before Rezin and the son of Remaliah; therefore, the Lord is bringing up against it the mighty flood waters of the River, the king of Assyria and all his glory; it will rise above all its channels and overflow all its banks; it will sweep on into Judah as a flood, and, pouring over, it will reach up to the neck; and its outspread wings will fill the breadth of your land, O Immanuel.

Isaiah 8:9-10

Band together, you peoples, and be dismayed;
     listen, all you far countries;
gird yourselves and be dismayed;
     gird yourselves and be dismayed!
Take counsel together, but it shall be brought to naught;
     speak a word, but it will not stand,
     for God is with us.

Isaiah 8:13-14

But the Lord of hosts, him you shall regard as holy; let him be your fear, and let him be your dread.  He will become a sanctuary, a stone one strikes against; for both houses of Israel he will become a rock one stumbles over—a trap and a snare for the inhabitants of Jerusalem.

Isaiah 8:17-18

I will wait for the Lord, who is hiding his face from the house of Jacob, and I will hope in him.  See, I and the children whom the Lord has given me are signs and portents in Israel from the Lord of hosts, who dwells on Mount Zion.


Chapters 7 and 8 revolve around the fear of impending war and the sign of Immanuel.  All the way back to the canon of scripture, Christians have read the Immanuel saying in 7:14 as a promise of the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ.  There are many intertextual reasons to read it that way, and I would not want to disagree with that reading.

However, when we overlay the Christological interpretation of Isaiah with sugary sweet images of a sanitized and quiet baby Jesus ("no crying he makes"), we are likely to forget that there are multiple levels of meaning in a text.  Attentive reading of chapters 7 and 8 within the whole range of the opening chapters of Isaiah ought to stir up more than the "Aaaaawwwww" that a newborn baby elicits from us.

First of all, before the coming of Jesus and the theological interpretation of his life by the church, people who read these chapters did not apply them to Christmas.  There was no Christmas during those half a dozen centuries.  I do not doubt that the text can take on Messianic significance, but Jesus' behavior and words depicted in the Gospels ought to make clear to readers that there was a great variety of opinion concerning just what the Messiah would be, how the Messiah would come, and what the Messiah would do.

Second, the identity of the sign of Immanuel in these passages remains ambiguous.  One vector of interpretation can move toward a figure who by God's power would restore justice.  These sayings about the child seem to indicate a delay.  This is what the early Christians saw in this text as a Christological foreshadowing.  Yet the abundance of meaning in the text is striking.  It goes on to indicate that God will send a leader to deal with the rumors of war between Syria, Israel, and Judah.  It seems to be saying that the King of Assyria is this leader.  God with us can mean the devastating invasion of the Assyrian army.

It is not a prosperity gospel text.  It says that when God is with us, the result can be the destruction and disappearance of massive wealth, to be replaced by weeds: briers and thorns.  This judgment is not only for Judah, but also for Israel, Syria, and all the nations.  Continuing in their injustice, their warmaking, their pillaging of one another, their greed--these ways will lead to their destruction.  They can scheme, plan, gird up, and pronounce, but God is with us and nothing they do will stand.


God is with us, but we are apparently mistaken if we expect that God's presence entitles us to blessings.  God may turn away from us in disgust at our unjust, uncaring use of possessions.  As Jeremiah says, just because the Temple is in Jerusalem does not mean that corrupt people are protected by some sort of high-tech force field.  The God who is with us is the one we ought to dread when we have trampled the poor, put their spoils in our houses, taken their dwellings, and built idols of opulence.

Getting back to the Christological and Messianic reading of the text, we have to remember that Jesus' birth was not in the Mayo Clinic Obstetrics wing.  It was in a cattle barn.  He started out in a refugee family, living among people as an immigrant.  The king tried to kill him before he could grow up.  And even when he had grown up into his Messianic calling, the people in power quickly figured out that he was not what they wanted as a Messiah.  He had too much critical to say about oppression.  He wanted people with excess to realize that it did not belong to them, but to the poor.  He talked about instating the Jubilee practices.  So all the Gospels tell us that very early in his ministry, the powerful began to plot to kill him.

What I'm getting at is that God with us was not good news to Herod.  It was not good news to the rich young man.  It was not good news to scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees, Zealots, and Herodians.  It was not good news to Rome.  Zaccheus saw and understood this good news.  So did Matthew, Peter, and Mary.  But when the council, the rulers, the wealthy, the powerful, the clergy, politicians, and the high and mighty got their national guard and army to arrest and execute him, the ones who saw hope in the sign of Immanuel had to have patience and wait to see what would come.

So if you hear Immanuel is going to be in town, you'd best watch out.

Isaiah and Economic Justice 7: Not Seeing the Writing on the Wall

[I'm trying to put aside the distractions and get back to more regular writing again.  Entry 6 in this series appeared on February 16.]

Isaiah 6: 5-13

And I said: “Woe is me! I am lost,
     for I am a man of unclean lips,
     and I live among a people of unclean lips;
yet my eyes have seen the King,
     the Lord of hosts!”
Then one of the seraphs flew to me, holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs.  The seraph touched my mouth with it and said:
“Now that this has touched your lips,
     your guilt has departed
     and your sin is blotted out.”
Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying,
“Whom shall I send,
     and who will go for us?”
And I said, “Here am I; send me!”
And he said, “Go and say to this people:
‘Keep listening, but do not comprehend;
     keep looking, but do not understand.’
Make the mind of this people dull,
     and stop their ears,
     and shut their eyes,
so that they may not look with their eyes,
     and listen with their ears,
and comprehend with their minds,
     and turn and be healed.”
Then I said, “How long, O Lord?”
And he said:  “Until cities lie waste
     without inhabitant,
and houses without people,
     and the land is utterly desolate;
until the Lord sends everyone far away,
     and vast is the emptiness in the midst of the land.
Even if a tenth part remain in it,
     it will be burned again,
like a terebinth or an oak
     whose stump remains standing
     when it is felled.”
The holy seed is its stump.

The calling of Isaiah the prophet in the temple, when he saw the Lord high and lifted up is a well-known passage.  Moreover, in the modern mission movement, the response, "Here am I.  Send me," is a key point of missiological reflection.

Many readers remember the rest of the passage in chapter six, but it is not as familiar.  Moreover, for those who struggle with intellectual conundrums concerning predestination and free will, the text is sometimes troubling.  It says that Isaiah's job is to give this message of judgment, which the previous chapters have shown to be based on economic injustice, but that people will not listen.  In fact, it seems to say that Isaiah does not want them to listen and understand.

Frankly, I find little justification for the kind of interpretation which claims that there is some sort of necessary period of destruction that has to happen before the people will get the message.  It is not necessary in any philosophical sense that this time of destruction must come.  So God is not stopping their ears or muddling their reasoning.  Nor are they part of some historical determinism which must pass through requisite stages before arriving at a new condition.

What Isaiah's calling warns him about is that even though people begin to see evidence of their injustice and their downfall, they will continue to assert and believe that they do not need to change.  It is saying that people who see the failure of their systems and structures will look upon it and then demand to continue doing the same thing, or even to do more of the same kind of thing as the way out of the problem.

If foxes have been guarding the hen house, then lets put foxes in charge again.  If deregulated banks, deregulated trading in financial instruments, mortgage writing with no attention to the future, and usurious interest practices have gotten us into a mess, it seems logical that some changes need to come.  Yet many call for leaving it all the same, or getting government even farther away from its duty to protect those with less power and money.

Whether listening to speakers at Dick Armey funded rallies, to Sarah Palin turning a wave of fame into a cash bonanza, or to Glen Beck making it all up as he goes along (such as claiming any church which talks about social justice is not a real church), many have believed that any kind of reform is in some way a plan to destroy the nation.  Another way to see and not understand is to put the same people in charge of the U.S. Treasury and the Economic Advisers who oversaw the housing bubble and 2008 crash and claim they never realized it was coming.  Or Congress and others keep listening to the heads of major financial institutions say they have to pay big bonuses to keep "talented" employees who "wheeled and dealed" us into a recession.  At a time when rational and moral impulses would lead toward fair and practical regulations of the financial system, many cry out against it.  They see, but they do not understand.  They hear, but do not comprehend.

If they have their way, then the cycle of bubble and bust that has dominated the US economy since the 1980s will continue, and eventually worse results will lead to greater devastation than the Great Recession of our time.  Then, the voice says, they will get it. 

But it does not have to be that way.  Prophecies of judgment are contingent, and can be avoided if people change their ways.  If not, someone else will figure out a way to take advantage of the weakness of a powerful economy, and all will come crashing down to be rebuilt.

Even then, God has not abandoned the people.  Even the stump of a tree can be the seed of redemption.

Lift Every Voice and Sing

Last weekend at the Shaw University graduation we sang, as always, "Lift Every Voice and Sing." Fore some time now, I have been able to sing this song without checking the printed words. When I first began teaching at Shaw in 1994, it was a song with which I was only vaguely familiar. At our convocations and commencements, roughly three times a year, I got practice singing this James Weldon Johnson anthem.

The words of this song have inspired many writers in Black studies. Various phrases have become book titles, such as "Lift every voice" or "Stony the road we trod." Singing it as a white man in the midst of people of African descent has certainly stirred reflection on the different point of view my skin color and heritage casts on the lyrics. No line more consistently stands out to me as being sung with a different meaning by me and the person next to me than, "We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered." White or black in the U.S., the generations have trodden a bloody path, but the relationship to the bloodshed is not the same. That's part of singing this song for me.

Shaw University is the place I learned to sing this song and learn its significance. The 2010 commencement is the last time I will sing it together with my colleagues at Shaw. I pray that what I have learned will continue to grow in me as I move on in my pilgrimage.

Fair Wages and Florida Tomatoes

I joined the campaign to get Kroger to work with the CIW to insure that the tomatoes they sell are picked by people who are paid a fair wage. Some of you have been working on this campaign for several years, dealing with Taco Bell, McDonald's, Burger King, and others. Sojourners contacted me about the Kroger effort, so I used their model letter and added some thoughts of my own. Here is what I sent. I hope many of you will also write to Kroger.

I am a regular Kroger shopper at the 1802 NorthPointe Dr. store in Durham, NC. I like your store brands and your selection of produce. I use the Kroger Plus card and tolerate the self-checkout system.

Twenty-four years ago when my first child was born, we spent the last few evenings waiting for the onset of labor by walking in the Kroger store near downtown Grand Prairie, Texas, including the night before he was born. So I am a fan of Kroger stores.

One of the favorite foods in our family is the tomato. At Kroger, I buy heirloom tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, tomatoes on the vine, locally grown tomatoes, and more. We keep them stocked for sandwiches, salads, and snacks.

As a Christian and a conscientious consumer, I want to be reassured that the workers who pick the tomatoes sold in your stores are paid fair wages and have decent working conditions. I therefore ask The Kroger Company to partner with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) to guarantee that tomato growers are compensated and treated fairly.

I believe everyone is created in the image of God and deserves to be treated with dignity. Yet Florida's tomato pickers currently have to harvest more than 2.5 tons of tomatoes to earn minimum wage for a 10-hour workday. Some pickers have even been held in modern-day slavery rings. I encourage The Kroger Company to work with CIW in confronting and overcoming such horrible exploitation.

Getting this issue resolved to make life more just for tomato pickers has been slow. Targeting Mt. Olive Pickles to help the cucumber pickers was more focused. But tomatoes are not distributed with a national brand. Only the grocery stores and restaurants have the national influence that can change the way tomato pickers are treated.

I have so far participated in boycotts of Taco Bell, McDonald's, and Burger King in the process of getting them to insure that they buy tomatoes from sellers who have paid the pickers a fair wage. I have returned to each chain to buy food in response to their partnership with CIW.

I would rather not boycott Kroger, but this issue is very important to our family. I hate paying premium prices at Whole Foods for products that are not any better than those at Kroger, but I will do it. I hate shopping at the crowded, lower quality Food Lion stores, but I will do it if your much larger national chain will not do your part for the tomato pickers to have a better life.

Please don't make me do this. I know that you have worked with unions for workers in the past, and I hope you will recommit yourself to giving workers a voice and a chance.

Yum Brands, McDonald's, Burger King, Whole Foods, Subway, and Bon Appetit are already partnering with the CIW to improve wages and to uphold a code of conduct for fair working conditions, including zero tolerance for any form of modern slavery. I urge The Kroger Company to do the same.

Evangelism and Evangelicalism

I read an interesting post on the "Call and Response" blog from the Faith and Leadership program at Duke Divinity School. Louis Weeks wrote about the accessibility and usefulness of the term Evangelical among Presbyterians and mainstream Protestants. He took note of what he sees a changes in the way that many Protestants view the word.

To some extent, he is describing a certain blurriness of the previously demarcated border between more conservative and more liberal Protestants, Presbyterians in particular. I agree that this concept is in flux among Protestants (and among some of a new generation of Catholics, too), so I offered my own thoughts on the way that Baptists (should I say baptists?) have use and understood the terms evangelism and evangelicalism during my lifetime. Here is what I had to say.

Growing up among Baptists, there was ambivalence about the term evangelical because it implied certain views of church and state which depart from the free church tradition. They liked the term evangelistic, however, and pressed us all to learn to tell our testimony and the plan of salvation whenever the grace of God presented the opportunity.

Yet in both uses of the term, one describing a verbal witness seeking a verbal response (evangelism) and the other describing adherence to a version of Reformed confession with a biblicist or fundamentalist flavor, seem to me to be theological misdirections.

What is evangelism? We all know to answer that it is sharing the good news. The next question which arises must be, "What is the good news?" I would offer that like much of modern North American theology, the concept of evangelism has been domesticated and perverted by modern Western culture.

As John Perkins noticed in the 60s and 70s, most churches he encountered had a very narrow view of "the gospel." One thing that was certain in the dominant streams of theology, especially among many evangelicals, was that the gospel was NOT about the social conditions of human existence. Jim Crow and widespread poverty were something else, perhaps related to missions, but not to the gospel. The "real" work of the church was the gospel of personal forgiveness and eternal life.

This is only a piece of the gospel. Perkins says we must bear the whole gospel to the whole person and the whole community. To see this holistic picture, I recommend looking to the Gospels to see what Jesus was talking about when he used the word "euangelion." Luke 4 is one of the key examples: good news for the poor, liberty for the oppressed, a path to wholeness for the marginalized lame, blind, and vulnerable, and a troubling challenge to the injustices of the day. This kind of good news makes clear that God is at work for the good of humanity whom God loves, in this life and the next.

We need to recover these words for the church, but we need a richer, biblical understanding of them or recovering them will merely perpetuate the shortcomings of the domesticated, malformed churches of the age of the modern nation-state.

Why 10% in 10% Is Enough?

My friend and colleague Dan Rhodes posted an article on the "10% Is Enough" campaign over at the "Call and Response" blog of the Faith and Leadership program at Duke Divinity School. In a few paragraphs, he offered an brief overview of the campaign and some of the reasoning behind it. One comment chastised him for not providing an adequate analysis of the economics of consumer credit, its risks, and its basic operational principles. Dan gave a good response, acknowledging that in the short piece he could not cover everything. He also added some additional historical economic factors which are necessary to keep the discussion from pretending to be merely a technical discussion of "laws of economics." I am including here some comments I added to his post.

For centuries, banks were very profitable businesses operating under usury caps. Why are banks in our day so much more inept? Not all banks in the world charge high interest rates for credit. Why are US banks so much more inept at doing business?

We know that "risk" is calculated using benchmarks and tables and actuarial information based on certain assumptions. Of course, the assumptions may include demographic data and statistical probabilities that many can agree upon.

These assumption also include an assumed "cost of doing business" that includes the irrational exuberance of contemporary stockholders wanting short-term profits, the arrogance of CEOs with 8 figure packages, and big bonuses for executives known as "talent" who helped to bring about the economic crash. Consequently, none of the big banks is willing to name a rate of interest they believe to be too high. When asked by Congress if 36 % was too high, not one bank president would answer.

Wells Fargo/Wachovia recently introduced a new "product" for its customers. They will advance money at the end of the month to help a customer get through. Down the street from the bank, the little storefront calls this a "payday loan." Wells Fargo/Wachovia offers this "service" for an annual interest rate of 120%.

So if the banks want to be forthcoming about their cost of doing business, and if they will consider outside analysis of where they are spending frivolously, then we will be in a position to discuss what rate it would take to keep credit fair for customers, profitable for banks, and safe for everyone.

Different Regions View the President Differently

I don't pay much attention to opinion polls. I certainly don't think they are the clearest way to the truth. Yet they can be worth thinking about at times. I am more inclined to look at them when a trusted source passes them on to me.

I get regular reports from Chris Kromm of the Institute for Southern Studies. He is good about finding material that much of the press ignores. He also publishes good investigative studies.

Here is some disturbing research from a polling source that he reported on the way that citizens view the performance of President Obama.

Region	Favorable	Unfavorable	No Opinion
Northeast	89	8	3
South	26	70	4
Midwest	61	37	2
West	60	38	2
Rest of USA	69	29	2

He added that the South has the highest percentage of African Americans, and that African Americans continue to overwhelmingly (95%) give favorable evaluations of the President. That makes the figures from the South even more stark. Only a tiny part of the Favorable ratings are among whites in the South, yet in other parts of the country whites much be responding very differently. I find it hard to believe that the economic and political interests of whites (conservative, moderate, or liberal) are so different in the South than in other regions. That makes it seem that race must be the deciding factor in this data.

Sometimes we think we are making progress on race. But then again . . . .

Consumer Reports and Health Care

I suspect that almost all my readers have at some time turned to a reliable source for information about the safety, reliability, and value of a home appliance, a car, an electronic device, a computer, a packaged food product, or even a mutual fund. One such source stands out for its fairness, thoroughness, independence, and reliability: Consumer Reports, published by the Consumers Union. We know their ratings by the familiar circles:
On the other hand, we have also probably made choices based on a friend's preference, celebrity association, or what "a guy who knows a guy" said. Some of those choices have come back to bite us. That's why we learned to go to a reliable source.

So when the internet, the airwaves, the cable networks, and the water cooler talk is full of all kinds of ridiculous claims about health care reform, we need a place to turn. Some say the proposals will solve all our health care problems. Does anyone really believe that? Others say to adopt these proposals will set us on the path of becoming like Soviet Russia. That is also preposterous. So where can we go to hear from someone who is looking out for consumers? Glen Beck? Ken Olbermann? I don't think so. Both of them are trying to sell us something, to get their fingers in our wallets.

That's why when the Consumer Union provides a report on health care reform, I am interested. They are not trying to play with my emotions or trick me with a sleight of hand. They have in mind specific proposals that can help consumers, and others that can hurt us. They tell about both.

And the Consumers Union says that key elements of health care reform will make a big difference to help the masses of us who are drowning in rising health costs. Take a little time to look at what they say about requiring insurance companies to do things such as

• "Spend at least 85% of your premium on health care (at least 80% if you buy an individual policy or get your plan from a small employer), or rebate you the difference." That would stop them from robbing consumers to pay huge executive salaries.
• "Openly compete against each other for your business based on better care and price."
• "Clearly list what they charge, and what they cover, so you can easily comparison shop on the Internet."

They go on to say, "Of course, the industry is terrified that these controls will stop their greedy practices. Maybe that’s why they’ve been spending millions on lobbying and scary ads to make sure you don’t get these and other guaranteed benefits in the health reform bill." For specific information about how the current proposals will keep costs down, look at their paper on Oversight of Insurance Companies, Control Over Costs.

For more good information, go see their proposals about health care reform at their Consumer Reports Health website.

Isaiah and Economic Justice 6: Upside-Down World

Isaiah 5:20-23

Ah, you who call evil good
...and good evil,
who put darkness for light
...and light for darkness,
who put bitter for sweet
...and sweet for bitter!
Ah, you who are wise in your own eyes,
...and shrewd in your own sight!
Ah, you who are heroes in drinking wine
...and valiant at mixing drink,
who acquit the guilty for a bribe,
...and deprive the innocent of their rights!

One of the great theological truths of Christian and Jewish faith is the sinfulness of humanity. With all our limitations, we seek, with the typical humans Adam and Eve, to behave as if we are unlimited in our capacities, as if we could claim the place of God.

Human beings are limited creatures. We exist in time and space with limits. We can't be everywhere. Our lives are short compared to human history, and we can't be in all eras. Our limitations in time and space contribute to a circumscribed capacity for knowledge. While we may stretch our thinking across centuries through reading and conversation, we will not have all knowledge.

Caught in these limitations, human beings afflicted by the misdirected desire for control, for domination, for limitless pleasures, and many other temptations, abuse the good desires that should draw us toward a life of beloved community. We create corrupted cultural visions of social existence in which some must dominate others, bending the masses to their will, rather than cultural visions of mutual benefit, love, and justice. Enclosed in our moments of time, we claim that what exists here and now is what must be. We twist rationality to justify the wealth of a few and the suffering of many as divinely ordained.

That's what Isaiah saw when he said that the economically powerful call evil good and good evil. When the stock market drops because unemployment has dropped below six percent, the financial elite is calling good evil. When a company's stock rises because they dissolve agreements to pay pensions or eliminate medical benefits for workers, that is calling evil good. Too often, public discourse aims to convince us that we live in "Oppositeland." In Oppositeland, it may seem bad to you that real wages are going down for decades, but if you were smart like these economists and financiers, you would see that the multitudes are better off with less. In Oppositeland, if you send troops overseas to invade other countries, that is the work of the Department of Defense, not the Department of War. You think it is dark in here? No, it is light. Losing your job is bitter? But we got our bonuses, so it must be sweet. The banks got a bailout so we could boost the economy. So we boosted the economy by keeping the money for our own executives and shareholders, even though you still don't have a job. We always do what is right because what is right is what we do.

These are the words of those who are wise in their own eyes. The live in luxury, drinking their $20, $50, and $100 bottles of wine. They gain status by having certain bottles in their wine cellars. They throw cash around with politicians to make sure that their unjust economic practices are perfectly legal. They praise the free market when they never really want it to be free. They write the rules to protect themselves and cry for a bailout when they mess it all up. If someone says that a free market means that the ones who messed up the credit system should bear the costs, they say, "No, we can't bear it, and the entire economic system will collapse." So is the free market good or evil? I guess it depends on what it is doing to you.

The NRSV starts these statements with "Ah!" The KJV translation may be more helpful in this case to give the effect: "Woe unto them . . . ." Oppositeland's rulers had better listen. Woe is on its way. Some people of Thessalonica, who had vested interests in Oppositeland, said that Jesus' followers were "turning the world upside-down." In Ephesus, the economic elite organized to protect their wealth against Paul's message of good news of the Way, brought to those who had previously set their hopes on handcrafted gods. As many preachers have said in my hearing, Paul was bringing a message to an upside-down world: God has shown the Way to get the world turned right-side up.

I'll quote another singer this time, Ken Medema, Flying Upside Down.

All of your life you have been learning
Every kind of way to get ahead.
"You've got to build yourself a future."
Those are the words your daddy said.

Now there is another calling.
It's telling you to change your mind.
It tells you finding leads to losing.
It tells you losing lets you find.

Turn it over; turn it 'round.
Raise the humble; free the bound.
Down is up, and up is down.
Does the world look different to you
When you're flying upside down?

The bottom line of your survival:
You'd better take care of number one.
You don't want to hurt nobody,
But you're gonna do what must be done.

There's a message on the wire,
And you've ignored it in the past.
It says the least will be the greatest;
It says the first will be the last.
Yeah, the first will be the last.

Turn it over; turn it 'round.
Raise the humble; free the bound.
Down is up, and up is down.
Does the world look different to you
When you're flying upside down?

Economic Justice: Blaming the Unemployed

Ever since the famous tirade from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange last summer, there has been a veneer of respectability for the argument that claims entitlement for the financial industry and its beneficiaries and blames the unemployed "losers" for the economic crisis. Ever vigilant to find poor reasoning in writing about the economy, Dean Baker makes note of a column in the New York Times for continuing this pattern of blaming the victim.

First, Brooks highlights a disturbing statistic:

Don Peck reports that last November nearly a fifth of all men between 25 and 54 did not have jobs, the highest figure since the labor bureau began counting in 1948.

This level of unemployment reveals that much is not right with an economy built on wage-paying jobs.

Then, he goes on to talk about the toxic effects of unemployment.

Long-term unemployment is one of the most devastating experiences a person can endure, equal, according to some measures, to the death of a spouse. Men who are unemployed for a significant amount of time are more likely to drink more, abuse their children more and suffer debilitating blows to their identity. Unemployed men are not exactly the most eligible mates. So in areas of high unemployment, marriage rates can crumble — while childbearing rates out of wedlock do not.

A period of economic prosperity built on a dotcom bubble or a housing bubble is highly deceptive, because under the guise of broad prosperity, wealth may be increasing for a few and declining for most. What appears on paper as wealth becomes a means of massive wealth transfer. When the bubble pops, the paper wealth is gone for those who did not get their payoff early. The collapse of paper wealth then sets the entire economy into a downward spiral, and the workers are the ones who lose their jobs, their health insurance, their retirement pensions, and their opportunities. Whatever debts they have incurred, based on the assumption of steady income, become impossible to pay off. Then, they lose their homes.

Brooks does not focus his attention on these issues of financial management and speculation which created the conditions for a crash. Baker points out that he grasps after a cause rooted in the workers.

For decades, men have adapted poorly to the shifting demands of the service economy. Now they are paying the price. For decades, the working-class social fabric has been fraying. Now the working class is in danger of descending into underclass-style dysfunction.

I guess this is how many people believe it all works. Family farmers lost their farms because they adapted poorly to the shifting demands of the monopolistic practices of agribusiness (subsidized by government). U.S. industries laid off their workers and shut down because they adapted poorly to the shifting demands of sweatshop industry and wages of desperation. Now working men are to blame for adapting poorly to an economy in which financial experts played fast and loose with their fiduciary responsibilities toward the common good. And now that they are so stupidly unemployed because of their moral failures, they will begin destroying their families.

John Stossel gets on the bandwagon by blaming California's bankruptcy on labor contracts which provide pensions for retired workers, a system set up to be self-perpetuating. This has been the trend of the past decade: to see that the money set aside for pensions could become money in the hands of overpaid executives and stockholders bent on short-term gain. So Stossel lets the critics of labor win the day as they pretend that workers' retirement pay is causing the economic crisis. How about blaming golden parachutes and bonuses for credit default swaps? Go back and get that money, not the money promised to people who put in three decades or more keeping the economy running.

I'll give Dean Baker the last word here.

Working class men are ill-prepared to deal with the effects of incredible economic mismanagement that has made them its primary victims. It has been conscious policy of David Brooks and his peers to weaken welfare state supports, making income and well-being almost entirely dependent on employment. Now, because David Brooks' highly-educated peers are incompetent economic managers, millions of working class people (disproportionately men) are facing extended periods of unemployment.

Haiti's Debt

The ONE Campaign delivered again on what they are very good at.

They mobilized the masses influence world leaders concerning a critical issue affecting the poorest people on the globe. Many of us join them in the prayer and hope that wealthy nations and institutions will contribute to Haiti's recovery by forgiving debts.

Keep up the good work.

Isaiah and Economic Justice 5: Forcing People from Their Homes

Isaiah 5:8-10

Ah, you who join house to house,
...who add field to field,
until there is room for no one but you,
...and you are left to live alone
...in the midst of the land!
The Lord of hosts has sworn in my hearing:
Surely many houses shall be desolate,
...large and beautiful houses, without inhabitant.
For ten acres of vineyard shall yield but one bath,
...and a homer of seed shall yield a mere ephah.

The foreclosure crisis in which we are wallowing in our time is not the first one ever to happen. Isaiah brings it up as one of the main issues of economic injustice in his day. We know how the system works. Some people who have control of large amounts of money finance home construction and offer homebuyers mortgage loans by which they can move into a house before they can pay for it. If all does not go according to plan, the homebuyer may lose everything, including the home. All the while, the creditor was making money hand over fist from the interest on a long-term loan.

Mortgage loans and interest are not inherently evil. In a prosperous economy they can give workers access to home ownership with enough time to earn the money and pay for a home. Yet when the economy is not so strong, the system can lead to disaster for the homeowner. Moreover, when an economy moves step-by-step down a path of greed and injustice, homeowners may be put at a great disadvantage, shifting more and more risk onto them.

For instance, in an economy in which health costs have risen rapidly and growing numbers of workers become uninsured or underinsured, one illness or injury can lead to loss of income, loss of job, enormous debt, mortgage foreclosure, and bankruptcy. The bank adds another house. In another case, when businesses export jobs overseas and leave entire towns and neighborhoods without opportunity for earning a wage, people lose their homes. The lender adds house to house. When industrial farms use their political influence and polluting ways to undercut hard-working farmers, old family homes, farms, and lands are lost. The wealthy add house to house and add field to field. Entire towns, neighborhoods, and subdivisions may be emptied of occupants, until the foreclosed homes occupy all the land and there is no room for anyone else. The wealthy financiers are left alone to live in the midst of the land.

So around Phoenix and Las Vegas, in Los Angeles and Seattle, in Florida, Ohio, and Michigan, surely many large and beautiful houses are without inhabitant. The gimmick in such a system is to "get mine, and get out." Many mortgage bankers believe they have done this. For insurance, they got the government to bail them out so that whatever they lost in the crash was reimbursed to them out of our pockets. But at some point, somebody has to bear the cost of getting mine and getting out. Isaiah says that the cost will ripple to the point that the productive economy will diminish to near nothing.

The point is to fix this before it gets so bad. Find a way to get people into homes and keep them there. An economic system can't stand on this kind of self-serving injustice.

Narrating the Story of Consumer Debt in the US

An interesting narration of the story of how consumers in the US came to be so heavily in debt appeared recently in the group blog Credit Slips. Kevin Leicht points out that real wages peaked in 1976. Since that time, the economy based on mass consumption has shifted its funding from good wages to open credit. As workers faced the exportation of industry, the decline of wages, and the shift from paying workers to paying executives, the economy depending on consumption had to find a way to keep its engine turning. Credit cards and borrowing were the replacement of a decent wage. Of course, this system ultimately took on the same characteristics of feeding on the very people on whom it depends.

This unsustainable economy has become a smash and grab system that will keep producing bubbles from irrational exuberance. The inevitable crashes will repeat as long as the idiotic assumption remains that a just economy is one in which the few are free to bleed the many until a "market correction" solves the problem. A better economy cannot come without some form of consumer protection which places guardrails and lane markers on the economic highway. Otherwise the behemoths will continue to "take their half in the middle" and push everyone else in the ditch.

Isaiah and Economic Justice 4: Misleaders

Isaiah 3:12b-15

O my people, your leaders mislead you,

….and confuse the course of your paths.

The Lord rises to argue his case;

….he stands to judge the peoples.

The Lord enters into judgment

….with the elders and princes of his people:

It is you who have devoured the vineyard;

….the spoil of the poor is in your houses.

What do you mean by crushing my people,

….by grinding the face of the poor? says the Lord God of hosts.

Isaiah 3:18-24

In that day the Lord will take away the finery of the anklets, the headbands, and the crescents; the pendants, the bracelets, and the scarfs; the headdresses, the armlets, the sashes, the perfume boxes, and the amulets; the signet rings and nose rings; the festal robes, the mantles, the cloaks, and the handbags; the garments of gauze, the linen garments, the turbans, and the veils.

Instead of perfume there will be a stench;

….and instead of a sash, a rope;

….and instead of well-set hair, baldness;

….and instead of a rich robe, a binding of sackcloth;

….instead of beauty, shame.

Isaiah 3 continues to point out the instability of the conspicuous wealth of the powerful in Israel. One part of the chapter comments on the wealthy women who love to show off their finery while constantly shopping for more. But this is not strictly a criticism of women. It is about one of the visible features of a system in which the wealth of has grown so far beyond the level of human need that it becomes primarily a measuring rod within a competitive structure of status and power.

In this text, it is the most powerful, the same ones who by social delegation should be most responsible, who receive the greatest attention. The leaders have brought about this problem. The elders and princes have brought the nation to this desperate economic situation, yet they do not even see the problem. They lie to themselves and to everyone else to justify a system organized around fulfilling their insatiable greed. Of course, what they are doing is right since it is working for them; moreover, if what they are doing is right, it is by their logic good for all.

At the heart of their sin is deception. They mislead the people, and ultimately come to believe their own deceptions. They foment confusion about economic matters which anyone should be able to understand. They create technical language and lengthy regulations full of caveats and qualifications in order to conceal their intentions. They work in backrooms to strategize the path to their self-interest, then dress it in empty platitudes of the common good. We might recognize this in the marketing of subprime mortgages. We might hear echoes of their deceptions in the cunning secrecy of credit default swaps. We may know of what they speak in the hidden fees and traps of consumer credit. We may continue to hear the deception in the claim that capping interest rates will make it impossible to loan money to lower-income people, as if high interest rates are transforming them into becoming more creditworthy.

The prophet does not mince words. The vineyard image bears rich significance here. First, it is a symbol of a prosperous and good life. To have a thriving vineyard is to be blessed with wine at one’s table as well and with a valuable product for trade. But equally importantly, a vineyard is an image of Israel as the Lord’s planting and cultivation of a people (5:1ff). God has tenderly and conscientiously cared for the vineyard. But rather than Israel blossoming and bearing rich fruit as a people, the ones who should have cared for the vineyard have stripped it bare and left it in ruins.

The image gives way to a very concrete indictment. After saying they have devoured the vineyard, the prophet explicates the symbolic language. Their fullness and fatness comes from despoiling the poor. Their wealth is the product of oppression. Their mansions are framed and decorated by the rightful possessions of the poor. Their wealth is not derived from their virtue. Their only expertise is in being good criminals and hiding their crimes. This is what God despises.

Ultimately, the prophet claims that their appearance of greatness is ephemeral. They will lose it, and this oracle spares no detail. Perfume, sash, hairdo, robe, and all other trappings of beauty will soon be gone. In their place will come a stench, a raggedy piece of rope, a hairless head, sackcloth for clothing, and shame. This kind of economic system cannot sustain itself. Moreover, God demands justice. A prophet must rise up to speak the truth.

One last quotation from the Bruce Cockburn song, “Call It Democracy,” may help us see.

See the paid-off local bottom-feeders

Passing themselves off as leaders.

Kiss the ladies. Shake hands with the fellows:

Open for business like a cheap bordello,

And they call it democracy.

Isaiah and Economic Justice 3: Oppression and Idolatry

Isaiah 2:7-9, 18, 20-21

Their land is filled with silver and gold,

....and there is no end to their treasures;

their land is filled with horses,

....and there is no end to their chariots.

Their land is filled with idols;

....they bow down to the work of their hands,

....to what their own fingers have made.

And so people are humbled,

....and everyone is brought low—

....do not forgive them!

The haughtiness of people shall be humbled,

....and the pride of everyone shall be brought low;

and the Lord alone will be exalted on that day.

On that day people will throw away

....to the moles and to the bats

their idols of silver and their idols of gold,

....which they made for themselves to worship,

to enter the caverns of the rocks

....and the clefts in the crags,

from the terror of the Lord,

....and from the glory of his majesty,

....when he rises to terrify the earth.

Isaiah 2 links together the sins of idolatry and economic oppression. A major theme of prophetic literature is the distinction between the Lord and the gods of the nations. The people of Israel are called to be a sign of God’s purpose for humanity throughout the world. They are blessed so that through them, all nations will be blessed. At the heart of such blessing is to know that the Lord is a good and just God. Therefore, the prophets often write that God will act “for the sake of my name.” “Name” is not strictly an arbitrary label applied to an object here. It is more like the idiomatic English use in the phrase “my good name.” God has a reputation to uphold, and if God’s people display to the world a society built on social oppression and violence, then it seems that the Lord is just one more prejudiced tribal deity looking to help out some cronies.

One aspect, then, of idolatry is the devotion to gods who one hopes to manipulate for personal favor or gain. The idolatry of Israel involved worshiping gods who might deliver protection from a worker’s uprising or a competitor’s advantage. Such gods might offer an exchange or a deal—in return for worship and obedience, a bumper crop to be sold for unjust gain. These gods might offer to increase the landholdings of their devotees, giving tacit blessing to driving the poor from their lands through sharecropping and usurious practices. The Lord is not willing to be known as the god of this kind of people. The Lord will not be tossed in with the gods of oppressors. The Lord will not be manipulated.

Another aspect of idolatry is its link with self-centeredness and pride. One criticism of the idols in this oracle is that they are themselves the creations of human hands. People are bowing down to worship products of their own making. What they are worshiping is not a god in any traditional sense. They are, as Adam and Eve, longing to become gods themselves and usurp the place of the Lord. Having plenty of gold or silver allows them to commission and purpose beautiful sculptures of deities. It is a reminder of the way that the people at Mt. Sinai brought their wealth to Aaron to shape for them a god of their own making.

This oracle cites their haughtiness and pride as the seed of their downfall. They rationalize their self-idolatry on the basis of their treasures and military might. They believe that their appearance of wealth and power means that they are in charge of their own destinies. But soon, these illusions, so perfectly visible in the mansions and idols of silver and gold, will become useless. Instead, they will flee to the caves and cliffs, finding their delusions of deity have become worthless.

Those who believe their ill-gotten gain is salvation have much to learn about the Lord, who is just, holy, and good.

Again, a few lines from Bruce Cockburn, “Call It Democracy,” offer a contrapuntal melodic line.

Sinister cynical instrument

Who makes the gun into a sacrament—

The only response to the deification

Of tyranny by so-called "developed" nations'

Idolatry of ideology.

North, South, East, West—

Kill the best and buy the rest.

It's just spend a buck to make a buck.

You don't really give a flying f---

About the people in misery.

IMF (dirty MF)

Takes away everything it can get,

Always making certain that there's one thing left:

Keep them on the hook with insupportable debt.

Isaiah and Economic Justice 2: The Blood of the Poor

Isaiah 1:12-18

When you come to appear before me,

....who asked this from your hand?

Trample my courts no more;

....bringing offerings is futile;

....incense is an abomination to me.

New moon and sabbath and calling of convocation—

....I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity.

Your new moons and your appointed festivals my soul hates;

....they have become a burden to me,

....I am weary of bearing them.

When you stretch out your hands,

....I will hide my eyes from you;

even though you make many prayers,

....I will not listen;

....your hands are full of blood.

Wash yourselves;

....make yourselves clean;

remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes;

....cease to do evil,

....learn to do good;

seek justice,

....rescue the oppressed,

defend the orphan,

....plead for the widow.

Come now, let us argue it out,

....says the Lord:

though your sins are like scarlet,

....they shall be like snow;

though they are red like crimson,

....they shall become like wool.

Isaiah 1 functions literarily as an introduction and a preview. It provides insight into the complaint that the Lord has against Israel. Unlike the Former Prophets’ focus on temple loyalty, this oracle challenges the whole practice of temple worship. Temple worship is pointless and useless in the eyes of God if it is not accompanied with a life worthy of God.

Much of the language is general, speaking about sin and evildoings, yet there are a few specific indications of what these sins consist in. The first example comes in describing their posture of prayer, with hands stretched out to God. God will not look upon them or listen to their prayers because their “hands are full of blood.” Whose blood does is on their hands? Where have they found to drench their hands in blood? It is the blood of the poor.

The powerful and wealthy who frequent the temple with displays of public piety are the ones who are oppressing the poor. They come to the temple convinced that their prosperity comes from God’s favor. They are so mixed up about who God is that they want “the day of the Lord” to come quickly (see 5:18-19). They are sure that whatever God is about to reveal will be for their benefit. They completely misunderstand what it is to be the people of God.

How can we be sure it is these people and this evil that Isaiah is addressing? A few lines further the oracle gets specific again. After telling the audience of this oracle to wash and cease to do evil, a list of actions makes the message very clear. “Seek justice. Rescue the oppressed. Defend the orphan. Plead for the widow.” This first chapter draws attention to the evil that is making God detest temple worship. The people with bloody hands are unjust. They are oppressing their sisters and brothers, or benefiting from oppression and standing by while the weak and marginalized go hungry, are beaten, lose their homes and possessions, fall sick, and die. In a well-recognized trope, the orphan and widow are held up as the “poster children” of the vulnerable among Israel. Isaiah is confronting the violent system of economic oppression.

A few lines from a contemporary prophetic text by Bruce Cockburn, “Call It Democracy,” may help to elucidate what is at stake in this passage.

Padded with power, here they come—

International loan sharks backed by the guns

Of market-hungry military profiteers,

Whose word is a swamp, and whose brow is smeared

With the blood of the poor;

Who rob life of its quality;

Who render rage a necessity

By turning countries into labour camps,

Modern slavers in drag as champions of freedom.

Isaiah and Economic Justice 1: Introduction

With occasional discipline, I have been reading a few verses from Isaiah to start my workday, starting from the beginning of the book. I have been struck by the way that economic oppression was the key target of Isaiah's message.

Of course, I had seen this sort of theme in Isaiah before, especially from chapter 58. But through most of my life as a scripture reader, I was not inclined to notice the centrality of themes of economic justice. The stories in the narrative sections of the Old Testament, the Former Prophets, emphasize the temple worship and sins of idolatry, and few readers are skilled in linking prophetic texts to the quick summaries of history included in Samuel and Kings.

A careful reader might notice at times that the Former Prophets take a position against relying on violence for power and against abusing the common people. Yet even the stories of Solomon, Rehoboam, and Jeroboam tend to shift attention away from the rise of slave labor and princely wealth and toward the relation of the king to the temple.

Modern readers are not inclined to think of economic injustice when we think of idolatry. We are too schooled in the marketplace model of faith, wherein there is a competition for members among various enterprises hawking religion. In this model, we quantify success by numbers of converts added to lists, and we diminish the fruition of conversion in moral formation and community transformation.

But this look at Isaiah is reminding me that if we are true worshipers of the Lord, then we must learn to recognize the economic injustices that offend our God. Toward that purpose, let me make note of a few examples in my reading thus far. I make no claim to be comprehensive. In the coming days I will post comments on the following texts: Isaiah 1:12-18; Isaiah 2:7-9, 18, 20-21; Isaiah 3:12b-15; Isaiah 3:18-24; Isaiah 5:8-10; Isaiah 5:20-23; Isaiah 8:1-4; and Isaiah 10:1-2. All selections are from the NRSV.