Conclusion: Social Action as Christian Apologetic ![]() Simply, affluent suburbanites, despite a claim to a higher work ethic or a more developed sense of responsibility, didn’t do it on their own; they had help along the way. (I know, many do not like to hear this, but no less truthful.) On the one hand, the non-poor’s social construction of reality, which they now experience as everyday life, allows them to benefit, not just from the market, but also from past actions of government that laid much of the groundwork for continued prosperity. On the other hand, the concentration of poverty in central-cities is not simply about laziness, slothfulness, or even personal sin. (I assume the non-poor who benefit from the current structure and mediating institutions are just as much “sinners” as those living in geographic areas of concentrated poverty.) Indeed, much of what is in place and experienced now as normal arose from various forms of racism and redlining practices, as well as “the concentration of subsidized housing projects” that, as Duany, Plater-Zyberk, and Speck observed in their Suburban Nation, “destabilized and isolated the poor, while federal home-loan programs, targeting new construction exclusively, encouraged the deterioration and abandonment of urban housing.” The fact of poverty and the reality of those affected by it in the central-cities could not have happened any more effectively if it were actually planned and implemented with malice. Without the aid of government policies and subsidies, as well as municipally empowered zoning laws and discriminatory business policies, the foundation for exurban wealth in America might not have happened. Rather than lamenting this inequitable state of affairs, participants, including many non-poor Christians, have been encouraged to rejoice in the “prudence” of such strategies and the institutions, capitalism and the “mythical” market, that sustain them. The modern, non-poor suburban dweller is the heir of such socially constructed forces.
Emil Brunner once remarked, “For every civilization, for every period of history, it is true to say, ‘show me what kind of gods you have, and I will tell you what kind of humanity you possess.’” For the Christian and Christian community it is: Show me what kind of association you have with those living with the effects of poverty, and I will tell you what kind of god you worship. The reality of everyday life is that Suburban life and its enablers—the free market and human acts of power—are often at odds with the gospel, especially a gospel that has been formed by the idolatry-poverty juxtaposition. For the non-poor Christian, this is an idolatrous mode of living and does not offer a biblically defensible apologetic for the God revealed in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 *adapted from chapter 5 of my book, Wasted Evangelism: Social Action and the Church's Task of Evangelism
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A duplicitous, self-righteous double standard in the “burbs![]() Often, non-poor Christians respond to the poor as those who are living in a socially constructed reality that is mostly alienated from those living with the effects of poverty. The non-poor Christian’s participation in non-urban life causes a need for continuous reaffirmation for a biblical plausibility for their own social-location, one which alienates rather than connects them to the economically vulnerable. Without a sociological imagination, many non-poor Christians are not fully aware of their own socially constructed exurban reality, nor how it has been formed, which can lead to duplicitous, self-righteous double standards toward the poor. Often arguments rest, not on biblical grounds, but realities constructed by everyday life outside concentrated areas of poverty, namely the ability of the non-poor to have taken the “opportunities” presented in their socio-economic system to develop wealth and prosperity. The poor in the cities only need to do the same. Equal opportunity, not equal distribution of wealth is just, they reason. But this is not a fair picture, for the so-called “opportunity” has had a history and an opportunity that has been largely absent from social-locations with the most concentrated poverty, a consequence that is more akin to the injustice described by the prophets than simply the results of a good Christian work ethic and the invisible hand of the market. The exurban non-poor benefit from histories and institutions that have developed in favor of the suburbs and, for the most part, at the expense of central-cities—for decades. The shift from urban to suburban came with an intentional redistribution of efforts and transactions ranging from Federal subsidies to government policies to perceptions of urban and non-urban life. The ability to enjoy prosperity today, especially in upwardly mobile exurbia, is built on socio-economic transactions that have contributed to the current socially constructed reality of many non-poor (not just a good work ethic).
Furthermore, current upwardly mobile non-poor who live outside central-cities are the beneficiaries of a change in how home ownership was made possible. Even before WWII, Federal regulations began to restructure the home buying process to allow for lower down-payments and longer term-mortgages. The principle of amortizing loans made it possible to borrow on longer lengths of time for more affordable, smaller monthly payments. Later, after WWII, other Federal Housing Authority (FHA) policies helped to structure home ownership to be very attractive and easier to obtain, crafting regulatory guidelines for subdivisions on the outskirts of urban centers, the first fruits of what was to become suburbs. In effect, the government, through legislation and acts of congress (the FHA and Veterans Administration in particular), disproportionately encouraged new home ownership in the suburbs rather than fixing or rehabilitating older structures in urban centers. The sociological pressures resulting from the end of WWII, the “released pent-up demand for starting families and buying consumer goods,” a housing shortage in the central cities, the availability of low-cost mortgages for new homes, the mortgage-interest tax credit, mass production techniques in the housing industry all contributed to a rapid expansion of the suburbs. The shift in regulatory policies for long-term-little-down mortgages, government subsidized development of major highways for access in and out of central-cities, the GI Bill (a government funded education/training program), and other Federal aid to the newer exurban regions made prosperity possible as we know it today. Zoning laws and affluent developers, not just the invisible hand of the market, protected the preferences of those with power. Furthermore, advertisers of home-related products, women’s magazines, the FHA, and bank officials all sought to make, as Robert A. Beauregard explains in When America Became Suburban, “the sharpest possible contrast between the private, comfortable, safe, and protected environment of the suburbs and the open, competitive, dangerous, and seductive world of the central city.” The invisible hand had and continues to get help—sometimes through Federal, State, and municipal efforts; sometimes through creative marketing; sometimes through celebrity-trend makers; sometimes by politically empowered zoning codes. Growth and decline, expansion and contraction, growth in one area at the expense of another area—all unavoidable within a socio-economic system that prizes “progress,” supported by desire for upward-mobility (and, too often, greed), promote the ultimate goal of “the Suburban Way of Life.” It is an empirical fact, the system and its mediating institutions ignored its central-cities and promoted life in the “burbs” as the ultimate goal of prosperity, all for the gods of growth, progress, and the new. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 *adapted from chapter 5 of my book, Wasted Evangelism: Social Action and the Church's Task of Evangelism
![]() I am reading or have read recently a number of books that seek to explain how we arrived at our very distinct demographic and mostly ethnic divisions that exist today—urban, suburban, and now exurban. (I will leave the rural landscape for others who have studied it more adequately.) Amid these books I am also learning how we have developed a functionally dependent class, mostly non-white, that live and try to survive in the most dense urban areas of our country. Much of what I have read affirms my own writing on the subject, which found its way into chapter 5—“Idolatry and Poverty: Social Action as Christian Apologetics”—of my book, Wasted Evangelism: Social Action and the Church’s Task of Evangelism. Below is a three-part adaption of the latter subsections of this chapter. Idolatry promotes a defective social reality for the non-poor Christian In his Nature and Destiny of Man, Reinhold Niebuhr observed that idolatry is making the contingent absolute, something relative into “the unconditional principle of meaning.” Luke Timothy Johnson points out that, when we consider something as ultimate, this is worship, not just what our lips or cultus ritual render, but in the exercise of our freedom in service to that which we consider absolute and unconditional, and, thus, derive our significance. It is, however, not just an image fashioned with gold and silver that provides the danger and potential of idolatry, for the Bible is clear, such man-fashion idols are no-things (Isa 41:21–24; 44:10; Ps 115; 135; Acts 14:15; 1 Cor 8:4; 10:19; Gal 4:8). Johnson reminds us that “important idolatries have always centered on those forces which have enough specious power to be truly counterfeit, and therefore truly be dangerous: sexuality (fertility), riches, and power (or glory).” It is the body of knowledge that accompanies the object and the habits of service in worshipping the objects (i.e., idols) and, then, the social and cultural habits that follow that develop an everyday “world,” with meaning and definitions for relationships (repeated action, mundane habits), that objectifies reality and maintains significance and plausibility (its symbols and corresponding institutions). Our socially constructed world, then, is reality formed by our service of worship and sustained (validated) through the habits and experience of everyday life.
However, to understand fully the non-poor’s everyday reality, it is simply “not enough to understand the particular symbols or interaction patterns of individual situations.” It is how the “overall structure or meaning” within “these particular patterns and symbols” are experienced. As we seek to apply the gospel that is embedded with texts regarding idolatry (e.g., the overwhelming number in Mark’s own gospel) and, as well, texts indicative of relationships toward the economically vulnerable, it is important to understand how the social-location experienced by many non-poor Christians was formed and its implications for their (i.e., the non-poor) participation in the outcomes of this social-location. Religion once offered an integrating principle that helped provide a “life-world” that was “more or less unified.” But, modern life not only provides a less unified everyday life, now religion often aligns itself with the socio-economic forces that help sustain the plausibility of our faith, which can then inoculate the non-poor Christian from the idolatrous forces embedded in their social-location. Over time new symbols and signs (lawns, yards, gated communities, commutes and highways, social status, shopping malls, upward mobility, the market, double-entry accounting, etc.) that permeate the social-location the modern non-poor Christian experiences as everyday life compete with biblical symbols (e.g., the words of God, the cross, redemptive-historical acts of God in history, etc.). Johnson reminds us, “Prior to any action or pattern of actions we might term ‘Christian’ is a whole set of perceptions and attitudes, which themselves emerge from a coherent system of symbols, and an orientation toward the world and other humans, which we call Faith.” In fact, the very habit of experiencing the fragmented, often unintegrated social-locations over and over everyday might feel like freedom bestowed by our socio-economic system, but actually weakens the plausibility of biblical faith to inform our home world. Non-poor Christians are in danger of idolatry when finding themselves in need of affirming “this worldly” system and its institutions as God-given in order to be at home, plotting their lives on the societal map provided by social institutions rather than biblical discipleship in order to relate—comfortably, plausibly, securely—to the overall web of acceptable meanings in society. As Berger in Homeless Mind points out, because of the plurality of social worlds—work, school, play, third places, highways, commutes, home, shopping, church—in modern society “the structures of each particular world are experienced as relatively unstable and unreliable.” The separated sectors of our social world are rationalized and relativized, forcing the non-poor Christian to justify religiously this worldly system and institutions in order to feel less exposed and vulnerable and more relevant and secure. After decades of political alignment and religious justification, for the most part, the non-poor Christians living in the suburbs now feel at home.
Here are eight books On My Table for early 2018; the first four listed, I have already begun reading:
![]() When the cliché is used, “Wise men still seek Him,” an accompanying question should also be considered, “and where do wise people find Him?” This is what the actual Christmas story is answering in the Gospel, is it not? The pageantry of American Evangelical Christmas tells us he, that is Jesus, is found amid the sparkle, high energy, glitter of showmanship, and architectural theater often called “at a church's Christmas service” (or Christmas season special event). The wise magi of the East sought Jesus, the new king indicated by that eastern star, first in the king’s palace (i.e., Herod’s palace). Although a natural and, perhaps, expected place for them to look, they were wrong, nonetheless. What they found, instead, in that palace, where power is expected to reside, was the new-born king’s betrayer and usurper. “Where” they actually found Him—per Matthew’s Gospel, which is a reflection on God’s Word through the prophet Micah (chapter 5)--was amid the weak, poor, insignificant, small little town of Bethlehem, for which the prophet told us, didn’t amount to much. (It couldn’t even raise enough soldiers to protect itself—a point of the Micah 5 passage).
Where are you seeking Jesus, the Messiah, born King, who will usurp all competitors to your allegiance? It matters where you seek Him, for where you find Him matters—for finding him puts everything at risk, for the powerful, elite, and the affluent-dependent, even the christendom-dependent, will seek to stop this humble king from disturbing their power, from taking their possessions (and don't be fooled, you are their possession). Those in power will most assuredly attempt to stop him from destroying their reign over realms under their control (and, again, don't be fooled, you are under their control). Perhaps, this is why the original Christmas story and the post-script of those seeking long ago from the east is told: Jesus, heaven’s king, sent by the Father of all creation, is found where all is already lost, marked for death.
Where do you find the new born King? Think more deeply about Christmas. I spend as much time reading as I can. I don't read fast anymore. Mostly slow, reflective, and way too much musing on the author's thoughts sending me into my own streams on consciousness. There are a few books on working on now that don't make this list and a few "on the table" to start, which I feel have the makings of important books for me to read or finish reading (see the up-coming post on "What's On My Table to Read in 2018"). The order is arbitrary and does not suggest which is the #1 or #10. Nor of these books the only ones I read in 2017; but they are the ones that have most impacted my thinking, challenged my Christianity (really my attachment to christendom), and motivated me toward church ministry and being faithful in my call as a church planter in the Hill community of New Haven, CT. I highly recommend these books for your 2018 reading . . .
![]() Here are the top 5 most read (clicked anyway) Wasted Blog essays posted in 2017. Thank you all for taking the time to read my crazy streams of consciousness. I am concerned that we have a divided wider-church along political agendas, demographic lines, institutional maintenance (and yes, sometime protection), and power-centers. Often it seems the sides and advocates on one side have a thick gospel and a rather thin ecclesiology; while the other has a thick ecclesiology and a thin gospel. My intention is to show the biblical links between evangelism (and the gospel) and the issues of poverty, which include racism, the issues of personhood, the role and responsibilities of the church, and christian discipleship. I seek a thick gospel and a thick ecclesiology. This has nothing to do with balance; for biblically, I do not believe you can have one without the other. My Wasted posts and Wasted Quotes reflect my thinking and sometimes (patience is needed at this point by the reader) the process of my thinking on the subjects related to Wasted Evangelism. In the end, it is my hope to engage the Bible fairly and the Wasted subjects with deep biblical and theological reflections. And, some honest questions and observations thrown in as well. Thanks for a great Wasted year and for reading my Wasted Blog posts.
King Herod's role in the Christmas narrative reminds us: Don’t be fooled by power’s kindness. Nor, should we be deceived or taken captive by power’s rhetoric that simulates our faith or about its care for all of humankind. Herod’s words from Matthew's Gospel remind me of how Paul Johnson concluded his book, Intellectuals:
Those with (and/or in) power, whether thrones, government (elected, junta, coup d'état, or inherited), or even the powers that are exercised through business, do not take challengers to their power lightly. They give the allusion of love for humanity and, too often, feign worship to disguise their real intent: control any possible insurrection of their power. Both Christians on the right and the left should be aware of this bent of power's intentions. Power is never, ever a friend to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Never. Ever. Think more deeply about Christmas. Chip M Anderson is the author of Wasted Evangelism: Social Action and the Church's Task of Evangelism. A deep, exegetical read into the Gospel of Mark. All royalities go to support his church planting ministry in the Hill community of New Haven, CT. The book or its e-formats can be found on Amazon, Barns'n Nobel, (and most other online book distributors) or through the publisher, Wipf & Stock directly.
Here are two readings of "Journey of the Magi," both needing to be heard. Take the time. One is TS Eliot himself reading his poem; the other by Denis Adide, who gives it current visual to the poem.
Denis Adide reading of the Journey of the Magi >> TS Eliot reading Journey of the Magi >> |
AuthorChip M. Anderson, advocate for biblical social action; pastor of an urban church plant in the Hill neighborhood of New Haven, CT; husband, father, author, former Greek & NT professor; and, 19 years involved with social action. Archives
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