Ferguson, MO and Isaiah 64:1-2

On By T. Carlos "Tim" AndersonIn Commentary12 Comments

Thanks to Rozella White, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) Director for Young Adult Ministry, for her November 24th FB post on the ELCA Clergy page calling forth commentary and protest concerning the Michael Brown/Darren Wilson grand jury decision. I wrote the following in preparation to preach (in English and Spanish) on Sunday, November 30, 2014 at St. John’s/San Juan Lutheran in Austin, Texas. What follows is not a word-for-word transcript of my preaching that day (preaching is, or at least should be, a “live event”), but the basis of my thinking for what went into the message that became vocalized.

Almost 30 years ago, I lived for two years in South America. Not only did I learn Spanish and get a thorough introduction to generalized Latino culture, I also learned what was to be one of my main vocational callings: to be a missionary to white folks. Missionary, of course, is an old-fashioned word. It’s meaning, however, is still pertinent in the 21st century world. It’s my mission to bring an important message to people with whom I share common experience and understanding. It’s not that I’m superior to those receiving the message or endowed with special talents; initially and significantly transformed by what I saw and experienced in Perú, that transformation continues as I’ve worked in dual language ministry for close to 25 years in Texas.

2019 will mark the bleak 400th anniversary of the beginnings of slavery in the territory of what is now the United States. Slavery came to an official end in 1865, but its effects still linger. Unarmed Africans/blacks have suffered – including death – under the power and hegemony of whites in these lands since 1619 when the first African slaves came to colonial Jamestown. Michael Brown’s case is sadly a continuing thread in a long narrative. Where I live – Austin, Texas – Larry Jackson, an unarmed black man, was killed during a struggle with white police officer Charles Kleinert in July of 2013. Kleinert has subsequently been indicted for the death of Jackson; his trial has yet to start. Austin – the city that oozes cool vibe with all of its events and attractions – has had a number of similar incidents in the past decade where unarmed young men of color (yes, some involved in criminal activity) have lost their lives on the other side of a police weapon.

Thankfully we live in an ordered society, buttressed by law. Police forces are a necessary part of that order derived from law. We are grateful for those who serve in law enforcement, yet we also recognize that a society that has a long history of prejudice and racism, such as ours, can produce a jaundiced law and order. An order based in injustice is no order at all for a class of persons deprived of power. The power of the dominant race or class must be kept in check; power without accountability leads to domination. Ferguson, Missouri is a community of some 21,000 souls – almost 70% black and 30% white. Its police force of fifty-three consists of three black officers and fifty white officers. Ferguson is one of many ethnically minority communities in the US policed by majority white forces.

I’ve heard white folks say over the years: “Slavery is a distant memory – can’t they (blacks) get over it already?” “The civil rights era has helped transform American society – enough with the protests and riots.” “Now that we have a black president, it’s an equal playing field for all and the age of affirmative action should be over.”

This society has made great strides, socially, over the centuries. Yet, the further we go forward, new light shines to expose many other issues and concerns that need attention and correction. As theologian Reinhold Niebuhr proclaimed decades ago, there is progress as time marches forward, a progress in both human potencies – evil and good. Many things are much better than they used to be, but not all things. America is not yet a society devoid of prejudice or racism.

Many people – not just whites – are upset that some in Ferguson responded to the no indictment decision of November 24th with protests and riots that included the burning of buildings and destruction of property. More than a generation ago, non-violence prophet Martin Luther King Jr. condemned riots as self-defeating and socially destructive. However, he also understood why an oppressed minority would resort to rioting: he called it the voice of the unheard.

Isaiah 64:1-2, similarly, is the loud and strong call of a minority voice in search of justice. Here’s a concept that is very difficult for many white American Christians to grasp and understand. Bible stories and histories are told in a minority voice – a voice that lacked societal power in the days of the Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, and Romans. The Israelites and the early Christians that speak, respectively, in the Hebrew and Christian testaments did not speak from a place of political, social, or economic power. They spoke from a place of minority status. Isaiah 64 – from the heart of Israel’s Babylonian exile in the 6th century before Christ – is only understood from a minority perspective, a perspective with which many white Americans are unfamiliar.

“Would that you rip open the heavens and come down!” Exile had ripped apart Israel socially and economically. Israel was justifiably mad at Babylon, God, and itself. The raw anger of the prophet’s voice is undeniable. Many of us – regardless of skin color and socio-economic status – have felt this same type of rage and anger as individuals when suffering through one of life’s many tragedies: loss of a loved one, divorce, an injustice. I remember when my three children were quite young, and the personal feeling of parental responsibility that burdened my heart. I can remember feeling potential rage toward God if anything were to happen to one or all of them. Was I justified in pre-loading my anger toward the heavens? Of course not – but sometimes rage is our only recourse when we are confronted with an event that overpowers us (or in my case, the fear of its overpowering potential). Every single one of us, most likely, can personally relate to such a scenario.

The prophetic voice in Isaiah 64, however, was not an individual voice. It was a voice that spoke for the people – for the community. It was a shared experience – the pain, indignation, and humiliation of exile. And here’s where the understanding of Isaiah 64 gets difficult for American whites (defining the term as those who have at least two or three generations of forebears in the country; the circumstances of immigrants – regardless of color – are fraught with obstacles). For more than 400 years, America has been a society where the locus of social power has resided with whites. Barring isolated individual cases, whites as a people have not experienced the social trauma involved with racial bigotry, prejudice, and discrimination. When my son – blonde and blue-eyed – was growing up in Austin, Texas, I didn’t sit him down and tell him the dos and don’ts of dealing with police officers. Maybe I should have done so, but it never occurred to me at the time. Do black and Latino parents – who are my co-workers and neighbors – have the same experience with their sons and daughters? They do not – I have verified it in conversation with them – and out of necessity they have to have the conversation of conduct in the presence of law enforcement with both their daughters and sons.

We who are law-abiding white folks have lived our whole lives under and within a system that, generally speaking, has worked. Go to school, work hard, and stay out of trouble is an effective formula for many. We need to understand, however, the very same formula and system has not worked the same way for many of our minority brothers and sisters. Black men are six times more likely to be jailed than white men. The poverty rate hovers around 25% for blacks (as it does for Latinos) and only 10% for whites. It is time not only to question a system that works for some and not for all, but to change it.

The season of Advent would have it no other way. “Oh, that you would come down and fix our very lives and the structures that govern them, O Lord!” For too long, we in the American church have been complacent with the message of Jesus’s coming among us as one only of personal redemption for personal sin. This is to be expected from a majority voice comfortable with the system as is. We confine Jesus’s work to the personal realm, and rob the larger society in which we live of the message’s greater effect. Jesus was and is a missionary to this world; his message is life-changing not just for individuals, but for people groups and societies. This Advent, let us see with new eyes and hear with new ears – Jesus comes not just to save us from our personal sin, but to take on societal sin and its consequences as well. He comes that joy, peace, and hope be real not just for some, but for all. God’s kingdom will have it no other way. Amen.

 

These blog posts reflect the views that I share in my book Just a Little Bit More: The Culture of Excess and the Fate of the Common Good, published in May 2014. It’s available at all the usual haunts, including Amazon. I write under the pen name T. Carlos Anderson; click here to read the humorous and entertaining story about the genesis of the unique pen name.

Black Friday Eve – I mean, Thanksgiving

On By T. Carlos "Tim" AndersonIn Excerpts1 Comment

The hallmark shopping day that is called Black Friday threatens to subsume the previous day, still known as Thanksgiving. Perhaps Thanksgiving needs to be put on some type of endangered holiday list. The following excerpt from Just a Little Bit More: The Culture of Excess and the Fate of the Common Good describes the dominant culture in the US since the early 1980s: the confluence of commerce, materialism, and consumerism. It’s like a religion in the sense that it is of “ultimate importance.” It’s been a good religion providing food, clothing, shelter and employment for many, but when it goes too far (as exemplified below), this religion breaks bad and damages societal common good.

 

Thanksgiving Day, November 24, 2011, was the day that a number of big American retailers—Kohl’s, Target, Best Buy, and Walmart—extended the biggest shopping day of the year, Black Friday, with a prelude. Their doors would open at 10 p.m. Thursday night and stay open through Friday.* The big, bloating turkey and trimmings meal that begets tiredness be damned; employees would need to report to work early Thanksgiving evening to prepare for the onslaught of shoppers.

That evening at a Walmart in Los Angeles, a woman doused fellow shoppers with pepper spray in order to get her hands on one of a few discounted Xbox video-game players available. The woman was accused of “competitive shopping,” using the spray to gain preferred access to merchandise in various parts of the store. She left after making her purchases; twenty people were eventually treated for minor injuries from the pepper spray. A Los Angeles police lieutenant described the melee as “customer versus customer shopping rage.” That same evening in six additional states other retailers witnessed similar violence.

Research shows that the same area in the brain is stimulated and rewarded when the following tasks are involved: making money, having sex, getting a good deal, and using cocaine. Dopamine receptors in the primitive brain light up when one “scores”—financially, sexually, or chemically. In one study, laboratory rats, when wired to receive electrical stimuli in the dopamine centers of their brains, opted to continually press a lever facilitating the stimulus—this “hit” eventually became more important than all other activities, including eating and drinking: death by dopamine. We humans are infinitely wiser than rats, but the options that titillate our lizard brain dopamine centers are more expansive as well. Thankfully, Black Friday Eve—rather, Thanksgiving—comes only once a year.

*Malls are following the trend to open their doors on Thanksgiving for shoppers, cooperating with the big retailers to essentially annex the holiday for commercial purposes. Chapter 5 of Just a Little Bit More further explores the role of malls in what I call America’s mythic religion.

 All rights reserved by T. Carlos Anderson and Blue Ocotillo Publishing, 2014.

Click here to purchase Just a Little Bit More: The Culture of Excess and the Fate of the Common Good. Paperback, $14.95. You will be redirected to the Blue Ocotillo Publishing website. JaLBM, admittedly, is not as much fun as an Xbox, but the lessons therein might inspire an Xbox-loving reader to consider ventures beyond the world of virtuality.

Click here if you prefer to purchase paperback from Amazon. Ebook available on Amazon, iBooks, and Nook.

Migration Between the Haves and the Have Nots

On By T. Carlos "Tim" AndersonIn Commentary1 Comment

So . . . now that the 2014 mid-term elections are over, what is to be done about immigration policy in the US?

Branko Milanovich’s treatise on inequality, The Haves and the Have Nots, stands out because of its decidedly non-polemical tone. What a breath of fresh air to read a book that doesn’t have an agenda, other than to inform about its subject – in this case, economic inequality and its social consequences. Robert Reich also writes on the topic of inequality, but from a decidedly left-of-center viewpoint. I appreciate Reich’s work, but he’s mostly “preaching to the choir.” I imagine most folks who don’t agree with his politics ignore his work. Milanovich, on the other hand, shares insights useful for political partisans on either side of the middle divide. Milanovich’s views on immigration are especially clear-sighted and discerning.

Milanovic hails from Serbia; he now lives and works in the US. He’s an economist who has worked for the World Bank; he has taught at the University of Maryland and Johns Hopkins University. I appreciate and like his “outsider” viewpoint; he’s lived in different parts of the world and sees a larger picture of it. His World Bank experience (as an economic researcher) impresses the reader without losing the reader in overly complicated arguments or formulas.

Milanovich covers numerous important issues related to inequality: social mobility, globalization, income distribution between countries and world regions. And speaking of the word inequality: as a researcher looking for study funding sources, Milanovich has discovered (pgs. 84-85) that it’s acceptable to research the elimination of poverty, especially when charity is a potential solution; but much less acceptable to research the causes of inequality, because of the implication that the power structures in place (that produce inequalities) need fixing.

As I said, his views on migration are especially enlightening. As we know, globalization makes the world smaller in a number of ways, including the awareness of living conditions across the globe. Migration is stimulated when the materially poor see (mostly via TV) how the materially well-off live. Since the 1980s, median income differences between individuals in the richest and poorest countries has increased; and, as we also know, large-scale migration is not legal or politically acceptable in the richer countries. But, Milanovich cautions, as long as these economic and social differences exist, migration will be a reality. “In the long run the antimigration battle cannot be won – if globalization continues” (p. 163). Political rally cries to “seal the border,” while expedient (for some) to win an election, don’t get at root causes. As an example, migration to the US from Mexico has slowed considerably since the 2007-08 economic swoon. Because of the recession and consequent slow economic recovery, the incentive to migrate has dissipated for many Mexicans. (The migration of Salvadorians, Hondurans, and Guatemalans – many of these children – is an altogether different story and situation.)

Milanovich argues for an approach that is as much against the grain as it is commonsensical: “Either poor people’s incomes have to be raised in the countries where they currently live, or they will come, in ever-greater numbers, to the rich world” (p. 164). We typically don’t think in this direction – we typically think we (or me) first and let others fend for themselves. But as globalization advances, the peoples of the world are more interconnected than ever before. Milanovich says that today the terms local poverty and global inequality are interchangeable. This wasn’t the case fifty or sixty years ago, before the current era of excess (beginning in 1980) became entrenched. Milanovich further cautions: “High levels of inequality make global chaos more likely” (p. 162).

So, will we have new legislation concerning immigration policy in the US? We’ll probably have to wait for awhile . . . in the meantime I recommend reading Milanovich’s book and considering some statistics, arguments, and insights that you won’t find in many other places. The cause for better immigration policy, among other things, will be lifted up.

 

These thoughts can be read in greater detail and development in my book Just a Little Bit More: The Culture of Excess and the Fate of the Common Good, available on Amazon and at the Blue Ocotillo Publishing website.

Branko Milanovich, The Haves and the Have-Nots: A Brief and Idiosyncratic History of Global Inequality, Basic Books (2011).

Just a Little Bit More Updating / Writing and Marketing Processes

On By T. Carlos "Tim" AndersonIn CommentaryLeave a comment

Just a Little Bit More is now available on Amazon and the usually suspected places. What a journey – it was more than three years ago that a crazy idea invaded my soul telling me to write a book. To see this idea in book form and now categorized as a leading seller in Amazon (Kindle) categories “World History 21st Century” and “Economic History” is gratifying, if not mystifying. Of course, Amazon aids its own marketing processes with its various categories and sub-categories of descriptions; the categorizations facilitate the search process of finding a book, however, and no help is needed from the Dewey Decimal System. Guess how many books Amazon makes available to its online shoppers? A mere 8 million print books, and over 1 million ebooks. Yikes.

I’m very grateful to all those who have supported me thus far in the book writing, producing, and marketing processes. You are a formidable group; I’m indebted to each one of you. Those who read all 200 plus pages of the “small font” first edition (close to 300 folks) get gold stars for having done so. The consensus was in early and its lead position is unchallenged: the next edition must have a larger font size! Since I’ve been reading theology and non-fiction (almost) exclusively for twenty-five years, I’m quite accustomed to small font reading. (By way of comparison, check out best-selling The Black Swan by Nicolas Taleb – it’s the same font size as JaLBM‘s first edition.) I was happy to respond favorably to the feedback; the second edition of JaLBM is now available – larger font size and forty more pages with the exact same content. The ebook is available as well – font size variable! Thanks to ACTA Publications -Chicago for picking up JaLBM for national distribution; Blue Ocotillo, in collaboration with ACTA, remains the publisher of record for JaLBM.

I also know that some have had to “chew on” JaLBM a few pages at a time. Yes, it does cover some history and development of ideas. Thanks to those of you who wrestled with the issues and ideas presented and gave me your feedback. Special thanks to fellow author Jud Smith who told me, over dinner, that as an entrepreneur and business owner, he approached my work with some skepticism and trepidation. What would a first-time author who works as a pastor have to add (besides the predictable “love your neighbor”) to the societal conversation about work and economics? In the end, however, Jud says he was “converted” to the idea that capitalism – as it is now – can do much better. Special gold stars go out to three JaLBM readers of the first edition. Lee White, who (without being specific) is most likely more chronologically gifted than you are, said the font size was “no problem!” Lee says she remembers, as a young girl, Rockefeller and FDR being discussed at the family table in east Texas as her family lived and worked through the Great Depression and its consequences. Kevin Byckovski of Austin – one of the first to finish reading JaLBM in May, the month it came out – simply said “well-researched and easy to read.” Kevin shares a common trait (being an engineer) with one of my brothers, Mike Anderson, who says he polished off JaLBM in three days this past summer while on vacation. Smart guys in more ways than one!

Pastor Brad Highum and the folks at Abiding Love Lutheran Church in Austin enthusiastically took on JaLBM as a book study for six Sunday mornings this past summer. Their input was instrumental in helping put together JaLBM study guides for similar groups and book clubs. Brad reports that one of the classes this past summer started out with a participant comment: “Pastor, this isn’t light reading.” Brad responded with a pastoral wink of the eye and aplomb: “It’s not a light topic.” Social inequality and its causes, the persistence and reemergence of poverty in the US, and how to understand and uplift the common good – these are topics important to every single one of us. We typically have trouble talking about these topics with one another (watch a televised political debate or bring up these topics at the family Thanksgiving dinner – ha), without falling into the predictable red and blue ruts. Political solutions, yes, are needed and welcome – but the hyper-partisan ambiance currently in vogue mitigates mightily against these possibilities.

JaLBM, with help from the study guides, gives the opportunity for adult conversation – free of accusations and demonizing – while broaching these important topics. Why should the hyperbole (most of the time accurately described as such) spouted about on MSNBC and FOX News dictate our thinking and debate on these crucial issues? If you are a member of a faith community (church, synagogue, temple) or part of a book club, I hope you will consider JaLBM as a book to read, study, and discuss. And if so, may the ensuing conversations be fruitful and beneficial to our shared common good.

While I am a pastor of a Christian (Lutheran) congregation, and look at the world through the eyes and understanding of a specific faith tradition, I didn’t write JaLBM as a faith manifesto. The book is imbued with theological perceptions, but it doesn’t use overtly theological language. It’s not meant to be read only by people of faith. It’s meant for societal conversation at the broadest and deepest levels. Thanks to fellow writers (and golfers) Michael DiLeo, Matt Cohen, Bruce Selcraig, and Kevin Robbins for steering me on the right path in terms of intended audience. Conversation between people who are different (in terms of political persuasions, faith and/or cultural traditions, socio-economic levels) is imperative as it conversely dissipates in our midst.

A colleague (Joaquin Figueroa) recently wrote me: “As you say, this story is an old history, but not very well known. It’s about a few enriching themselves at the expense of the many. And the worst of it – the few think they are doing the many a favor. I hope a lot of folks read your book.”

 

For a personally inscribed copy of Just a Little Bit More: The Culture of Excess and the Fate of the Common Good, go to Blue Ocotillo Publishing.

Amazon has the paperback and the ebook. iTunes and Nook also carry their versions of the ebook.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ebola in Dallas, Health Care, and an Interconnected and Shrinking World

On By T. Carlos "Tim" AndersonIn Commentary2 Comments

Liberian national Thomas Eric Duncan travelled to the US on a tourist visa, arriving September 20. He came to visit his companion, Louise Troh, and their son. Many suspect Duncan lied when leaving Monrovia (Liberia’s capital) on September 19, claiming on a governmental health form issued at the airport that he had not had contact with someone stricken with Ebola. Multiple reports claim that a few days earlier in Liberia, Duncan had helped carry a seriously ill pregnant woman to the hospital (Duncan’s nephew, Josephus Weeks, denies these reports.) Whether Duncan suspected the woman of having Ebola or malaria remains undetermined. The woman later died of Ebola. Most likely, Duncan contracted the disease from the woman. Duncan himself died in a Dallas hospital on October 8; he was originally sent home on September 25 from the same hospital with significant pain and a 103* fever. Two days later, September 27, he returned to the hospital via ambulance – this time to stay – eventually diagnosed with the disease that would kill him. Back to the fateful day, September 25, when Duncan originally came to Dallas’s Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital: a man of color with no health insurance sent home, after a few hours at the hospital, to fend for himself. Yes, Duncan was a foreigner, but it wasn’t the first time a patient without insurance was sent away in such a fashion.

T.R. Reid, in his book The Healing of America (Penguin, 2009), says that the US health care system doesn’t work for everybody because the American health care is more so a market than a system. In a market, people with money are able to buy what they want; others are left out. Reid does a superb job of making the case that the principle of health insurance and the pursuit of profit, in today’s world, are inherently conflicted. Many US citizens are unaware that its country is the only one of the developed nations that doesn’t offer universal coverage to its citizens. The U.K., France, Japan, Germany, Canada, and Australia are among those nations that care for all of its citizens, regardless of income and wealth status. What do to about foreigners – in the country legally or not – with no means to pay for treatment, like Duncan, is a crucial question that has implications for every one of us.

Reid documents the US health care system’s unfortunate inefficiencies and wastes in comparison with other countries: we spend the most on health care per capita and per GDP (significantly so), spend more on administration costs, and our fragmented system lacks the decisive incentive to encourage long-term preventative care. Whereas some 700,000 US citizens annually declare bankruptcy due to health care costs, other countries (Britain, France, Germany, Japan) have none who are forced to do so.

For those under the impression that the “free market” is the mechanism to cure all of our ills (pun intended), Reid’s presentation strongly argues to the contrary. Reid encourages (and I agree) that America go forward in health care by doing what it has done many times before: to pragmatically look around (in this case, to other nations) to see what works best and to incorporate those traits and practices to make our own system – which is the best in the world for a minority of us – much better for all Americans. These mentioned nations use market principles within their systems, but in a controlled manner. We can certainly do the same. Reid says fixing our fragmented system is a moral and ethical obligation, and reminds us that we are better off when all of us – not just some – have access to good care.

At first glance, some of us might not feel responsible for the health of a foreigner visiting on a tourist visa, but inaction or neglect can be deadly for the rest of the population. And it’s not only that Ebola or some other deadly disease might proliferate, as horrific as that would be in itself. We are weaker, more fragmented, and more vulnerable to social ills (violence, depression, higher rates of incarceration, teen pregnancy, obesity, shorter life spans) when social inequalities escalate. My book, Just a Little Bit More: The Culture of Excess and the Fate of the Common Good, establishes and develops this argument in detail.

Thank God for brave public servants – from military personnel going to the front lines of the Ebola breakout in Africa to nurses and doctors fighting the disease in our hospitals here. More so than ever – in this age of modern globalization – we are interconnected and have a shared responsibility for the good health and well-being of all.

 

Just a Little Bit More is available at the Blue Ocotillo Publishing website and through Amazon (paperback and ebook) and other booksellers and retailers.

 

 

The Hungry Ghost

On By T. Carlos "Tim" AndersonIn Commentary6 Comments

Third article in a series . . .

The great religious systems of the world – and many regional indigenous strains – weave a harmonious montage against greed and materialism. This blog post is the third in a series highlighting religious unity against the type of values seen in the dominant religion of the land: the confluence of commerce, materialism, and consumerism. These posts are adapted from the book Just a Little Bit More: The Culture of Excess and the Fate of the Common Good, available online and in your local bookstore. Ask for it!

Sikkim - Land of Discovery
The Hungry Ghost

 

The hungry ghost forages for desired consumables – its pinhole mouth and pencil thin neck feebly servicing its oversized paunch and ravenous appetite. Yes, it might get its hands on something to consume, but the consumable is immediately belched out as fire, smoke, and ash. Satisfaction continually distances itself, and the hungry ghost bewilderingly looks for more. Not fully alive, present moment surroundings mean nothing to the ghost – attainment of the next (supposed) fix trumps all other considerations. Constant craving from within dominates; the striving for more and more that satisfies less and less cycles onward ad infinitum.

One of the six realms or mind states within Buddhist understanding, the hungry ghost aptly depicts greed, addiction, and compulsive behavior in metaphoric brilliance. We might also contemplate the meaning of the ghost as we consider the embattled American economic landscape.

Most all agree that the economy is not as good as it used to be. What might be the solution? Ample opinions abound: cut taxes, invest in green energy, eliminate burdensome regulations, renew an emphasis on job training, raise the minimum wage, “drill, baby, drill”, and so forth. All these and others are, perhaps, worthy of consideration. Yet a common assumption behind all these proposed solutions lurks unawares: greater and greater economic growth. More and more growth is assumed without question – as if the limits that are part and parcel of the universe don’t apply when the issue at hand is the economy and our standard of living. Good golly, it would be nice for the incredible economic expansion of the last 200 years or so to continue ratcheting through the stratosphere . . . but available energy supply, increasingly complex pollution, and a burgeoning world population make for a system that can’t go on unquestionably as it has before.

“Just a little bit more” beckons – but when does enough get to be enough? Our credit card payment schedules, predicated on future income, in turn predicated on further economic growth, may well outlast us into the future: credit card debt as our touchstone to immortality. Economic growth has its limits, but debt does not. Buddhism teaches contentment with what one possesses today; contentment and gratitude for things like food, clothing, shelter, community, and purpose in living. Striving for much more? Beware of the ghost . . .

 

Click here for second article in series and here for first article in series. (This series of articles was originally posted in March 2014.)

 

 Just a Little Bit More: The Culture of Excess and the Fate of the Common Good is available on Amazon as a paperback and ebook, and on iTunes and Nook as an ebook. Published 2014 by Blue Ocotillo Publishing, Austin, TX.

Seeking Common Good and Kingdom Connection

On By T. Carlos "Tim" AndersonIn Commentary1 Comment

I picked up the first printing (three boxes totaling 100 copies) of Just a Little Bit More from my local printer on the first Friday in May – the day before our synod assembly meeting in Austin. That next day, with more than 400 pastors and lay leaders gathered for the meeting, I sold about thirty-five copies of JaLBM. Some of my colleagues knew of the book and anticipated me finally having it in hand and ready for distribution; by this point it had been a three-year project in the making. For all my preparation, there was one thing I hadn’t readied: a go-to phrase when inscribing the book. And, no, I had neither thought to bring a Sharpie . . .

The next day, a number of my congregants at St. John’s/San Juan Lutheran Church (ELCA) in Austin were kind enough to purchase the long-awaited tome. To close out the first week of JaLBM’s availability, good friends Paul and Marsha Collinson-Streng hosted a book signing party inviting and gathering other good friends. I sold those first 100 copies that very first week. Still at this early point in the process, I had no go-to inscription. I inscribed those first copies with appropriate words of gratitude and support, tailoring individual remarks as needed.

A go-to inscription is especially useful when an author is signing multiple books in rapid fashion. T. Carlos Anderson is a unique pen name, but any confusion at a large scale book signing event between the small-time, first-time author of JaLBM and a mega-selling author like Malcolm Gladwell won’t be happening any time soon. All the same, a sui generis inscription, besides being efficient and giving the impression of situational mastery, adds an additional touch of character to one’s work.

“Seeking Common Good and Kingdom Connection.” Sometime in June, when I was distributing the second round of 100 books, the tie-in between common good and God’s kingdom* came to me. I immediately googled the phrase and discovered only one other theological commentator using it. A researcher and blogger for the Acton Institute, a libertarian think tank based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, calls for societal common good construction via just laws and conscientious moral choices from individuals. Yes, of course, I fully support such thinking and try to live accordingly. There are a few libertarian ideas I like (less reliance on military interventionism in foreign lands, as one), but the uncritical approbation of the “free market” as the arbiter of all things good and just is simply unacceptable. Such a faith fails to take human nature’s degraded tendencies seriously. In Just a Little Bit More, I name the uncritical acceptance of the free market an ideology and label it a bad religion.

We’ve now been living with and under thirty-five years of the elevation of fiscal policy over social policy in the United States. Consequently, we’ve become a market society where market values and considerations trump other ones. The pendulum does swing back and forth; the long-running New Deal era culminating in LBJ’s War on Poverty exemplified the pendulum’s opposite arc, the welfare society. Is there a better balance to be found between the extremes? Here’s a crucial question: Which do we value more – human rights or property rights? A far-reaching common good, yes, includes the contributions of a wide-ranging and robust market system, but not at the expense of its very participants. Eric Fromm rightly critiqued consumerist society years ago: “We must put an end to the present situation where a healthy economy is possible only at the price of unhealthy human beings.”

Jesus claimed that the Divine Realm is in our midst. When and where the gifts of love, cooperation, reconciliation, and compassion are shared – individually and collectively – the Divine presence is more pronounced, and less ambiguous. The common good is uplifted as well. The connection between God’s kingdom and common good is mostly tenuous – but I think we can say it does occur, especially when the needs of humans come before the needs of capital. Yes, the “free market” has fed, clothed, sheltered, and employed millions, mitigating the effects of poverty for many of these; its veracity and utility are indisputable. But the exaltation of property rights above human rights oftentimes leads to the co-opting of market forces by greed and duplicity, life being defined by one’s possessions (the goods life), and abuses and injustices brought about by the myopic pursuit of profit.

The common good is set up by just laws, aided by works of individual and collective charity, and enhanced by positive market forces. Crucially, however, the common good must also be protected from negative market forces (and human destructiveness). The market is not entirely self-regulating. To trust that the market is entirely self-regulating is to endow it with divine-like status. “Seeking Market and Kingdom Connection”? I won’t deny that it’s possible, but I won’t be using such an inscription anytime soon for my book. I already have a much better one.

 

 

Just a Little Bit More: The Culture of Excess and the Fate of the Common Good is available at the Blue Ocotillo Publishing website and through ACTA Publications, Chicago, IL.

* Kingdom, of course , is a word fraught with links to male domination. Empire, as an alternative, doesn’t work for me as it is fraught with allusions to worldly kingdoms and ambitions – Babylon, Rome, etc. I like divine realm best of them all, and use it interchangeably with kingdom.

My Mom’s Dresser and Book Writing

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The phone rang interrupting the morning quiet in our family’s suburban Chicago home; it was my mom on the line. Would my brother and I drive over the van to retrieve an old dresser that she had seen at a garage sale? Sure, I said. She was at work; my brother Mark and I were hanging out at the house not due at our own jobs for another few hours. We got in the ’76 Chevy Beauville – its life extended by many summers hours sanding the rust off the lower sides before coating them with Rustoleum – and made the ten minute jaunt to the part of town where some old gem piece of furniture had caught my mom’s eye. When Mark and I saw the dresser, we busted out laughing. We didn’t see any beauty – the dresser was old, darkened, ugly, shoddy, and neglected. The top of the dresser was a pock-marked and gouged mess. My mom had paid all of $5 for it. Ha! We didn’t know what was funnier: the dilapidated dresser itself or that she had paid only $5. We laughed the whole way home as the Beauville trudged back through town with its disputed treasure.

Mark and I were on summer break from college when we heeded our mom’s request. Soon enough, however, we were back at school and away from home. Unbeknownst to us, our mom was slowly and patiently working on that dresser. The fall becoming winter is a great time in the Upper Midwest to work away on a time-consuming project in the garage or basement. Mom painstakingly stripped off the old varnish (the dresser boasted ample intricate wood cuttings and carvings which I had not noticed), sanded and stripped some more, had our dad cover the top with durable edge-routered formica, and applied multiple coats of polyurethane to all of the outer wood.

When I came home for Thanksgiving, I happened upon a new dresser in the basement. It was beautiful. A mariner theme with wood carvings of rope, rudders, and a sailboat stood out from this carefully constructed piece of furniture. When I saw my mom a bit later, I asked her where she got the new dresser. Now it was her turn to laugh at me. It was the old $5 gem, newly reconstructed by my mom. I was stunned.

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Mom’s dresser – impervious to the machinations of Spider Man . . .

Years later when my wife and I moved to Houston, my mom was kind enough to let us borrow the mariner dresser for our daughter Alex. We had the dresser for six years or so while we were in Houston. The dresser is now back in the Chicago area at my sister’s house and in the room of my nephew Miles.

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My mom – Mary Ann Anderson – with the two beneficiaries of her handiwork, her grandkids Miles and Alex

There’s something about how my mom worked on that dresser that relates to the process of writing a book. It took me the better part of three years to write Just a Little Bit More. Six months intensive reading and research, twelve months of writing with continued research, an additional twelve months of rewriting and reviewing edits, and six months of design detail and preparation for selling. I worked on the book while pursuing my regular full-time job which, logically, elongated the process. I never cherished the dream of “one day to write a book.” I’ve always read a lot, but ask my family members or friends: not one of them foresaw me writing a book. While writing a book is more involved than rehabbing a piece of furniture, the same principles apply.

Occasionally I look back with a touch of astonishment on the work and effort required of me to write Just a Little Bit More. Braggadocio aside – the combination of perseverance and passion can produce improbable results. As I remember my mom’s dresser, I can see where I got some of that perseverance . . . from her. In addition to rehabbing furniture, my mom specializes in two other creative tasks requiring patience and steadfastness: sewing and quilting. She has made numerous blankets, bedcovers, quilts, and clothing items that have blessed the lives of her six adult children and their spouses, her sixteen grandchildren, and many others (yes) throughout the world.

It’s cliché to exalt the philosophy of one step at a time and one day at a time. Another way to express the wisdom inherent to those clichés: sometimes slow is fast. In an instant gratification society, putting work into a long term project (like a refinished dresser or a book) seems anachronistic. Isn’t there a shortcut or an easier way? Not always – sometimes slow is fast, and the resultant quality reveals, for those who look carefully, an enduring legacy of commitment and passion.

 

 

 Just a Little Bit More: The Culture of Excess and the Fate of the Common Good is available at the Blue Ocotillo Publishing website.

 

 

Civil Religion in an Era of Inequality

On By T. Carlos "Tim" AndersonIn Commentary1 Comment

I’m a pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). I was ordained in 1991; my generation of pastoral leaders presides over a precipitous decline in church membership and participation. This is true for all the mainline churches (Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, etc.). Evangelical and non-denominational churches are no longer growing; the Roman Catholic Church in the United States maintains no loss in membership gracias a los Latinos. Times have changed and the institutional church has lost quite a bit of its mojo . . .

Churches in America, yes, once upon a recent time, did have some mojo (status and momentum). The period of the 1950s and early ’60s was the recent heyday of American churches; the civil religion of that day required good citizens to belong to houses of worship. My generation of pastors (mainliners, at least) was educated and trained by seminary professors, most of whose formative years harkened back to the heyday period. Expectations were rightfully lofty; we were to support the church’s dominion even as signs of decline unmistakably surfaced. My generation can be accused of harboring some entitlement mentality; we were expectant of a decent salary, health insurance, and a pension from these established churches. Today, fewer and fewer churches are able to satisfactorily meet all three of these expectations.

It’s a pretty good idea in this current era of diminishment that a minister have a second gig. I know pastoral colleagues who are engaged in the following tasks for pay: music lessons, carpentry, teaching, coaching, writing, managing a call center. Tent-making, descriptive of the Apostle Paul’s second gig and of a pastor working a secular job, has been the norm much more so than not during the Church’s two-thousand year history. All is not lost in this era of precipitous decline. The church has done some of its best work from and within minority status.

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Civil religion has deep roots in modern society. Political philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (18th century) wrote of the “sentiments of sociality,” the social glue holding a nation or state together. Sociologist Robert Bellah, in our day, wrote of civil religion as the common values that unify Americans. He called the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and the Civil Rights movement the defining chapters of the national narrative. Other items deserving mention include the playing of the national anthem at public events, the president closing out national addresses with “God Bless America,” and belief in the concept of American exceptionalism. Civil religion is a two-sided coin, both helping and hindering societal common good.

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The ELCA publishes its own monthly magazine for its faithful. No surprises with the name of the magazine – it is called The Lutheran. In the July issue, the cover theme was “Economic Inequality.” Four articles by different authors highlighted this timely topic; The new inequality by Jon Pahl, a teaching theologian working in Philadelphia, was especially well done. Pahl argues that two important responses to this “new inequality” (not entirely new, but a repeat of the inequality of the Gilded Age and the 1920s, and newly present since the late 1970s) is the advocacy of community (political) organizing and the implementation and empowerment of social ministries. Whereas Lutheran Christians have in the past and today strongly advocate social ministries, community organizing seems an entirely different issue. Many of us are comfortable with advocating a food pantry ministry to serve the hungry in our community, but how many of us are willing to dig deeper and ask the question – with the goal of answering it – why there are so many people, including children, who are hungry?

We almost got rid of hunger in the United States in the late 1960s, because of a continued emphasis on social policy coming out of the New
Deal era. In the late 1970s, there were only 200 or so food pantries serving the hungry in the United States. The pendulum swung, however, and something changed as the ’70s gave way to the ’80s. Governmental and societal will embraced the emphasis of fiscal policy over social policy and financialization has been dominant ever since. The size of the US financial sector (measured by percent of GDP) doubled from the late 1970s to 2008. Something else has also increased – exponentially so from the 1970s. Today there are more than 40,000 food pantries and soup kitchens that serve the hungry in the United States. Close to 50 million Americans are food insecure, the majority of these women and children. The emphasis on financialization – the process whereby financial markets, financial institutions, and financial elites are given top priority in governmental policy – is a major factor in the creation of the current economic inequality and its fallout.

When the September issue of The Lutheran came out, the letters to the editor section printed four responses to the articles on economic inequality. Two were highly critical of the magazine for running the articles:

“I do not share your cheerleading enthusiasm that paints economic inequality as demonic injustice.”

“I refuse to be used by people who feel entitled to half of everything others have while they do nothing.”

A part of American civil religion – the social glue that holds this society together – in this era of inequality has devolved into a simplistic “maker/taker” tenet that casually accepts the current rampant inequality as normal. Entitlement, taking on second jobs, poverty (inclusive of an abysmal childhood poverty rate of 23% in the United States), and other social consequences of inequality are crucial issues that cannot be dismissed as trivial.  More harmful, even, is the demonizing of others as entirely culpable and the categorization of American citizens into two groups – us and them.

We pay a high price for the ignorance concerning the causes of inequality and their consequences for the whole of society; the common good suffers as a result. Economist Thomas Piketty forecasts historic levels of inequality for the United States by 2030 if we continue on current trajectories. In the meantime, the soon-to-be minority-status church has a job to do: remind the society in which it resides that the justice of heaven is to touch everyday life here on earth. A majority-status church (as in the 1950s) runs the risk of not being able to differentiate itself from the surrounding civil religion (consider the many US flags in sanctuaries across the nation, as an example). The minority-status church is less susceptible to being co-opted by the reigning civil religion. Point in case: the Divine will carried out on earth includes daily bread, not just for some, but for all.

 

These ideas are adapted from the book Just a Little Bit More: The Culture of Excess and the Fate of the Common Good (Blue Ocotillo Publishing, 2014) available at the Blue Ocotillo Publishing website.

 

Labor Day and Its Ironies

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“Work is a divine gift and those who refuse it are sinners.” Historian Richard Donkin thus describes George Pullman’s secularized version of the Puritan work ethic. At least Pullman (manufacturer of sleeper train cars) understood the connection between a satisfied workforce and increased productivity. His late 19th century worker town, just outside of Chicago, gleamed in comparison to the filthy stockyards and slum settlement of Packingtown, only miles away. Pullman City had parks, schools, a boathouse, and recreational access to Lake Calumet; its company homes even had indoor plumbing. No shit – literally. Pullman, however, had his grabby fingers in every transaction that occurred in the town. With the economic downturn of 1893, Pullman slashed worker positions and wages without reducing rental charges for the company housing, which led to a worker strike. President Grover Cleveland, claiming the strike to be illegal (US mail service had been disrupted), sent in federal troops to quell it.  The ensuing conflict resulted in the deaths of thirty workers, and Pullman City and its architect/owner were doomed. (When Pullman died just a few years later in 1897, his coffin was encased in thick concrete lest any of his legion detractors were to desecrate his grave.)

The Pullman worker strike lasted some two months during the summer of 1894. The conflict and accompanying deaths of workers, ironically, sealed the deal for President Cleveland to nationalize a Labor Day holiday (various states had been passing legislation for such a holiday as early as 1887). Designated the first Monday in September, it was purposely distinct from the May 1st holiday – International Workers’ Day – chosen in 1889 by the worldwide Communist and Socialist movement. This organization was one of many advocating for an eight-hour, five-day workweek.

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People rush and race every morning to arrive to their jobs as fast as possible. Is it because of the great love they have for their work? Somehow I don’t think that’s it. Many of us are sleep deprived and we allow minimum prep time before leaving for work. On top that – none of us want to spend more time than necessary on the road arriving to work. That’s why we are racing to work, with a small minority of us every morning getting in a fender bender (or worse) as we participate in the big race. Who in their right mind wakes up in the morning thinking today would be a good day to get into an accident on the way to work? American workers have been described as “crazy, driven, hard-working believers” – and that makes it tough to slow down. Why smell and savor the coffee, when instead, we can have it splash onto our laps when we slam on the brakes? (Sorry, not enough time to have put on the coffee cup lid!)

Some 25% of us will be working this Labor Day. Schools, banks, and government offices are closed for the national holiday. Stores, restaurants, hotels, and other service sectors will be laboring away. Some will be happy to be working and earning; others will not be. For these latter, their taskmasters demand obeisance. The irony of Labor Day – officially born only six days after federal troops violently cracked down and broke the Pullman strike on the side of an autocratic employer – continues in this society so defined, uplifted, and desecrated by work. Remember, at the time of the Pullman strike, Andrew Carnegie’s steel workers were putting in 12 hour days, seven days a week.

Work is, without question, a great blessing. Productivity for self, family, and community makes it so. This Labor Day weekend, it will be good to ask the following question: Whom does our work benefit – ourselves and our community, or are we unwittingly part of some larger design where our contributions are parasitically annexed for someone else’s gain? If you go to worship this weekend, perhaps you’ll hear some recapping of the Exodus story (chapter 3) where God tells Moses that he has heard his people’s cries and has seen the oppression that they have suffered. God did not create his people to serve as the slaves of the Egyptians. Enough was enough. God led the protest, Moses organized the people, and liberation blossomed for a people that had slaved under the hot sun of injustice.

Swiss historian and economist Jean Charles Leonard de Sismondi (1773-1842) warned long ago: “Humanity should be on guard against . . . the error of identifying the public good with wealth, abstracted from the sufferings of the humans who made it.” The God of Israel, no less, agrees.

 

These ideas are adapted from my book Just a Little Bit More: The Culture of Excess and the Fate of the Common Good, available at the Blue Ocotillo website.