Class on Sunday.

Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and a divided
household falls ... (Luke 11: 17, RSV).

Martin Luther King, Jr., once said, and it is still true, that 11:00 A.M. on Sunday is the most racially segregated hour of the week in U.S. Christendom. What is much less often noticed or spoken about is that this is also an hour in which income and wealth function to separate U.S. Christians file into different spaces even as they assume they share a common understanding of God. There is, of course, a connection between racial identity and economic well-being in this country, as I will point out below. But it is also true that at the moment the children of God gather to be the church, though separated by racism, we separate ourselves again by income and wealth.

Some might say that this is only "natural" since people tend to go to churches that are geographically close. The Roman Catholic tradition of the parish is mirrored by the Protestant tradition of attending a local church--even if that means a church of a different denomination. This lure of the local, however, only begs the question. Why are U.S. Christians so comfortable with economic inequality and the assumption that levels of income and wealth naturally create comfortable commonalities and uneasy differences? The racist phrase "being with one's own kind" functions again to separate humanity into "kinds," this time by income and wealth.

How We Divide Ourselves

What "kind" are you, or I? What distinguishes your kind, or my kind, from their kind? A look at the economic geography of the U.S. will help us to see the divisions. But we need to remember that this is a geography that we create by our actions, our lack of action, and the assumptions that justify both. I am using the corporate "we" to mean the prevailing common sense of our society; the taken-for-granted norms by which people are expected to live.

The first characteristic of our economic geography is that we permit the U.S. economy to consistently produce the highest levels of economic inequality among all the wealthy, advanced nations of the world. We also allow that inequality to grow when other modern nations take actions to maintain or diminish their own levels of inequality. (1) Some data from the Economic Policy Institute's annual publication, The State of Working America, will add details to this economic landscape.

(i) Income Growth: "Between 1979 and 2000 ... the real income of households in the lowest fifth (the bottom 20% of earners) grew 6.4%, while that of households in the top fifth (the top 20% of earners) grew 70%, with the top 1% achieving real income gains of 184%." The average income of middle-income (the center 20% of households), married couples with children increased by 24% from 1979 to 2000, but this was due to the addition of wives' employment income. Without that, even these families would have seen only a 5.1% increase in their average income. (2)

(ii) Income Distribution: "Once all income sources are taken into account, including capital gains, the extent of income concentration at the end of the last business cycle was remarkably high by historical standards ... In 2000, the top 1% held 21.7% of total income, compared to 22.5% in 1929." (3)

(iii) Wealth Distribution: "... in 2001 (the most recent data available) the wealthiest 1% of all households controlled over 33% of national wealth, while the bottom 80% of households held only 16%." (4)

(iv) Stock Ownership: "While 48.1% of households had no stock investment [in 2001], another 11.8% had less than $5,000 of stock, leaving only 40.1% of all households with $5,000 or more in stock assets." (5)

(v) Distribution of Stock Value: "The top 1% of stock owners held 33.6% of all stocks, by value, while the bottom 80% of stockholders owned just 10.7% of total stock value in 2001." (6)

Inequality of income and wealth in the U.S. is also shaped by racism. In 2001, the median Black household had a net worth (sum of all family assets minus all family liabilities) that was only 10% of the net worth of the median white family. (7) Black median family income was 61.6% of white median family income and Hispanic median family income was 61.5% of white. (8)

The second characteristic of our economic landscape is that we permit our lives and our family time to be increasingly dominated by the demands of the economy. The average number of hours that family members devote to employment annually has increased 11% since 1975. (9) In 2002, U.S. workers worked more hours per year (1,815), on average, than did the workers of all other modern nations except Australia (1,824) and New Zealand (1,816). (10) We have already seen above how economic conditions have drawn mothers into the formal workforce. The stress that arises from parents trying to juggle work and family responsibilities is now a common topic in popular magazines and talk shows. Yet, so-called family friendly corporate policies do not reduce the hours that employees are expected to be on the job. In fact, with computers, fax machines, and cell phones, many employees are often expected to be "on the job" even at home. Moreover, studies show that the most flexible policies are rarely available to the average worker but function as perks for higher management. (11)

As many books are now documenting, the gap between the care needs of children, the sick, and the elderly and the resources of families to provide that care is growing dangerously--especially for low-income families. Yet, "we as a nation have failed to respond, leaving a rapidly widening gap between working families' needs and the combination of high workplace demands, outdated social institutions, and inadequate public policies." (12) Affluent families can compensate by buying services and products that ease the time stress caused by work-family tension: childcare services, home cleaning services, restaurant meals, and so forth. Affluent families are, in essence, buying the services and products that are provided by lower paid parents who cannot themselves afford to ease their own time burdens with similar purchases.

The stress of balancing the increased demands of the economy with the important responsibilities of family and community life is intensified by racism. Because Black and Hispanic workers earn lower average wages than white workers, their families must work many more hours than white families to achieve a similar level of income. For example, in 2000, middle-income Black and Hispanic families worked 500 and 584 more hours, respectively, than did white middle-income families. This is the equivalent of 12 more full-time weeks of work for Black families and 15 more full-time weeks for Hispanic families. (13)

A third economic characteristic is that we are a society that chooses to accept a high level of poverty in our midst despite having the highest per capital income of the advanced countries (when measured by purchasing power). In recent decades, we have chosen to allow much of the benefit from economic growth and increased productivity to flow to the wealthiest families while the incomes of the poorest stagnate and decline. Our official poverty rate in 1973 (11.1%) is about the same as in 2000 (11.3%). However, there is a general consensus that the official poverty rate ($18,660 for a two-parent family with two children in 2003) is much too low. Using other measures to analyze family budget needs, the Economic Policy Institute suggests that twice the official threshold is a more accurate estimate of what families need to satisfy basic needs. Using that measure, the actual poverty rate in 2000 was 29.3%. (14) Using the standard methodology for international comparisons (that share of households whose income is 50% or less of that nation's median household income), the U.S. has the highest level of poverty of the 17 advanced countries with which it was compared. It also has the highest rate of child poverty, the second-highest rate of elder poverty, and the highest rate of long-term poverty. (15) At the same time, we allow our corporate executives to be compensated at rates far higher than their counterparts in other advanced countries.

Again, racism places a heavy burden of poverty disproportionately on families of color. In 2003, the poverty rate for whites was 10.5%, but for Blacks and Hispanics it was 24.4% and 22.5%, respectively. When the twice-official poverty thresholds measure is used, almost half of all Black families are poor and slightly more than 50% of all Hispanic families are poor. Using the official poverty thresholds, 34.1% of Black children and 29.7% of Hispanic children were poor in 2003. (16) Many families of color constantly face Depression-era economic conditions.

In all racial groups, women are the poorest of the poor. In 2003, 26% of employed white women earn poverty-level wages compared to 15.1% of white men. Among Blacks, 33.9% of employed Black women earned poverty level wages compared to 26.2% of Black men; 45.8% of employed Hispanic women earned poverty level wages compared to 35.7% of Hispanic men. It should come as no surprise to us, then, that the poverty rate for families headed by a single mother is much higher than that for families headed by a single father or families with two parents. However, the poverty rates for Black and Hispanic families headed by a single mother are almost three times that of white single mother families. (17)

How We Explain This to Ourselves

I heard it said once that if you want to know the values of a person, watch how they use their time and their money. If there is some truth in that for individuals, there may be even more truth in it for assessing institutions and societies. And if religion is, at a minimum, a narrative that provides us with an understanding of life and its value and an ethic for living in concert with the value of life, then watching how we and our society use money and value the use of time may provide us some insight into what we truly believe.

For example, Jim Wallis, a Christian evangelical, has recently argued that the Federal budget is a moral document. It expresses the values of our nation. He has then charged that the Federal budget adopted for 2006 is immoral! Why? Because the budget attempts to reduce the Federal deficit by cutting billions of dollars from programs that directly affect the poorest among us while making permanent tax cuts that primarily benefit the wealthiest of us. Wallis concludes, "A budget that scapegoats the poor, fattens the rich, and asks for sacrifice mostly from those who can least afford it, is a moral outrage. These budget priorities would cause the prophets to rise up in righteous indignation, as should we." (18) But we do not. Our representatives find this budget ... reasonable.

It seems reasonable to imprison the individual who steals your wallet and to raise the salary of the individual who eliminates thousands of jobs by which men and women have sustained their livelihoods and created communities. It seems reasonable to allow companies to pay poverty-level wages to a quarter of the workforce and to increase the median wage (cash plus bonuses) of CEO's 79% between 1989 to 2000 so that the average pay of a CEO reached 300 times that of an average worker. (19) It seems quite understandable that companies must shift more and more of the cost of healthcare and retirement benefits onto workers who have seen their income, in real dollars, decline over the last three decades. Affluent people would be aghast if litter was blowing freely across their lawns and toxic waste burned its way through their gutters. But affluent neighborhoods routinely send their debris and the toxic wastes from their hospitals and production processes into the neighborhoods of the poor; richer countries send theirs into poorer countries. It makes economic sense. (20) Debating what the minimum wage should be, or whether there should be a minimum wage, seems reasonable. But there is no debate about the moral limits of accumulating wealth. That the 225 richest people in the world have a combined wealth of over $1 trillion--as much as the annual combined income of the poorest 47% of the earth's population--seems reasonable. That the basic needs of all the earth's people could be met and maintained by adding just 4% of that amount annually to what is currently spent elicits no prophetic outcry. (21)

Given this economic geography, David R. Loy and Harvey Cox have suggested that the true religion of the U.S. is not Christianity, or any other of the traditional religions, but "the market." (22) What they mean by this is that we increasingly accept the logic and values and necessities of the free market system as our way of understanding life and its values. Making decisions that are cost-effective in all areas of life seems "natural." It has become hard to imagine why anyone, or any business, or our society, would make a decision that could not be justified economically. But when the value of a product and a person can be summed up by the price (wage) that they can command in the market and when what makes economic sense is sufficient justification for what would otherwise be morally questionable activities (paying poverty-level wages, reducing funding for the health care of the poor while reducing the tax rates of the most wealthy, for example), we must have learned a new religion, what I would call "Capitalist Christianity." Stephen Webb illustrates what I mean. He writes, "Capitalism, Christianity, and democracy are sufficiently intertwined that pulling one out of the equation might leave all three undone, to everyone's detriment." (23) In other words, good Christians should be good capitalists. More bluntly, he writes, "The Kingdom of God might be ushered in by bankers and businesspeople...." (24) In other words, good capitalists are bringing about what Christians pray for each Sunday: "Thy Kingdom come."

How We Know God

I hope all these numbers and percentages have not caused your eyes to glaze over! Economic talk can be intimidating. But so can God-talk. What I want to stress is the relationship between these two languages. Our economic experiences and how we have learned to interpret them provide us with an understanding of life itself, its meaning and values. And that understanding becomes part of the knowledge base from which we read and interpret Scriptures, pray, and experience a sense of the Holy. I sometimes joke with my students that the one Bible verse everyone I meet is able to quote accurately is "The poor you always have with you ..." (Mt. 26:11; Mk.14:7; John 12:8). What is never quoted is a verse from Deuteronomy. After describing the three-year tithe and the seven-year release from debt, the Lord says, "But there will be no poor among you (for the Lord will bless you in the land which the Lord your God gives you for an inheritance to possess), if only you will obey the voice of the Lord your God, being careful to do all this commandment which I command you this day" (Dt. 15:4-5). The New Testament verse is easily used to justify our economic differences. A mass of humanity becomes simply "the poor" that nothing much can be done about, except some voluntary charity. But the First Testament passage closes the gap by recognizing that how we use our resources and distribute them creates or eliminates poverty in our society.

Tex Sample is a pastor, a professor, and a writer who has researched the differences that affect the inability of "respectable" churches to minister with those who do not share their middle- and upper-income and cultural status. The religion of successful business and professional people grows out of a lifestyle based on a strong sense of individualism and a devotion to career as a central source of meaning and achievement in life. Sample writes: "... their views attribute the events in society to the work of individuals. The most complex, systematic social forces are 'explained' as the work of self-reliant individuals." (25) Respectable religion accommodates itself well to the demands of the economy: the righteous (honest, hard working, sober, disciplined) prosper. Thus, sanctification is attested to by what is commonly called "success." And success is a product of individual effort and living a controlled, disciplined life.

What happens when such respectable Christians encounter those workers and their families who live the reality of working-class lives: monotonous work that does not provide enough income or status, the constant threat of job loss, the stress of day-to-day coping with not enough, inadequate or no health insurance, having to say "no" to your children because you cannot afford what they see others having. What happens when those barely hanging on and those losing out, those who daily take orders, give respect, and experience failure, meet up with those who give orders, get respect, and experience success? Or, as Sample might put it, what happens when the religion of winning meets in others the reality of losing?

He answers: "... it is not that the cultural middle lacks compassion, but rather that it lacks social compassion." (26) The focus of most mainline, "respectable" churches on individualism creates an inability to recognize the connection between personal pain (or success) and public policies that support and benefit some at the expense of others. The compassionate response of this Christian individualism is to reinforce the necessity of adopting the worldview and values of this class: right dress, right language, self-discipline, optimism and persistence despite the reality of limits, and the gospel of individual control over most of life's events. Charity, limited by the fear of being "taken," becomes the primary Christian response of respectable people to those on the losing side of our economic choices. The effects of the divisions we have created economically become themselves the justification for the divisions we have created economically.

We have chosen to serve an economy that produces great wealth and outrageous inequalities, persistent and broad poverty, and demands to be served before all other human relations. Only those who suffer the consequences of these choices can reveal to "us" the true nature of our religion. Learning to see through their eyes will be a process that can only be described as "conversion," the appropriation of a new vision of a new heaven and a new earth. It is, of course, a very old vision; one in which there will be no poor among us. Then, as people stream from north, south, east, and west to one Table, we will know the full, radically inclusive character of God--and for the first time, worship in spirit and truth.

Notes

1. Lawrence Mishel, Jared Bernstein, Sylvia Allegretto, The State of Working America 2004/2005 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005), 383.

2. Ibid., 2, 104.

3. Ibid., 3.

4. Ibid., 10.

5. Ibid.

6. Ibid.

7. Ibid., 285.

8. Ibid., 48.

9. Ibid., 100.

10. Ibid., 414.

11. Gloria Albrecht, Hitting Home: Feminist Ethics, Women's Work, and the Betrayal of 'Family Values'" (New York: Continuum, 2002), 84-91.

12. Jody Heymann, The Widening Gap: Why America's Working Families are in Jeopardy--and What Can be Done About It" (New York: Basic Books, 2000), 6.

13. Mishel, Bernstein, and Allegretto, 101-102.

14. Ibid., 12.

15. Ibid., 407-409.

16. Ibid., 315-319.

17. Ibid., 131-133, 320.

18. Jim Wallis, "Immorality of the Bush Budget," posted on March 9, 2005 at http://www.alternet.org/story/21426/

19. Mishel, Bernstein, Allegretto, 213-214.

20. Larry Rasmussen, Earth Community Earth Ethics (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Press, 1996), 75-89.

21. Cynthia Moe-Lobeda, Healing a Broken World: Globalization and God (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2002), 28.

22. David R. Loy, "The Religion of the Market," Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Vol. 65, #2 (summer, 1997): 275-290; Harvey Cox, "The Market as God," (March, 1999): 18-23.

23. Stephen Webb, American Providence: A Nation with a Mission (New York: Continuum, 2004), 57.

24. Ibid., 126.

25. Tex Sample, U.S. Lifestyles and Mainline Churches: A Key to Reaching People in the 90's (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1990), 114.

26. Ibid., 123. See also Sample, Blue-Collar Ministry: Facing Economic and Social Realities of Working People (Valley Forge, PA: Judson Press, 1984) and Sample, Hard Living People and Mainstream Christians (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1993).