The Ecumenical and Interfaith Call to End Poverty

An address to the National Association of Ecumenical and Interfaith Staff (NAEIS)

Baltimore, March 16, 2010 

I am going to take it as a given that we who are gathered here tonight recognize the biblical imperative to care for those who are materially poor.  This is, after all, the ethical issue most discussed in the Bible.  Recall, for example, the indictment of Isaiah:  “‘It is you who have devoured the vineyard; the spoil of the poor is in your houses.  What do you mean by crushing my people, by grinding the face of the poor?’ says the Lord God of hosts.”  Or how about Amos and Jeremiah or a great number of the psalms or the Letter of James or nearly all of Luke’s gospel…? 

This is familiar territory, and I am simply going to take it for granted that this biblical material is background for our discussion.  What I will focus on in this presentation is the call to end poverty – or, at least, to stand in solidarity with the poor – as it has been heard in the ecumenical movement.  In recent years, this call has led Christians increasingly to work with neighbors of other faiths. I will speak about this, too, but much of my attention will be on ecumenical bodies.  What have Christians said together about poverty and the mission of the Church?   

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We need to begin our discussion of poverty by noting how ecumenical councils, such as the World Council of Churches (WCC) and the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA (NCC), define the term.  Two points are particularly important. 

First, ecumenical statements almost always concentrate on systemic poverty – poverty that is the direct result of the failure, whether intentional or not, of governments or other authorities to satisfy the legitimate rights of all people for a dignified, equitable life.  Little attention is paid in ecumenical literature to such things as voluntary poverty (a major scriptural theme) or the poverty that results from living in a inhospitable places.  Instead, the focus is on the elimination of poverty as a matter of social justice – which means that the proper response is not only diaconal but structural, not only charity but advocacy.  Listen, for example, to this sharp-edged paragraph from the report of the WCC’s Global Consultation on Justice, Peace, and the Integrity of Creation (Seoul, 1990):  “Their poverty is not accidental.  It is very often the result of deliberate policies which result in the constantly increasing accumulation of wealth and power in the hands of the few.  [Thus] the existence of poverty is a scandal and a crime.” 

Second, such poverty, seen in ecumenical perspective, is not simply a matter of economic deprivation, but includes a wide range of what we call “human rights.”  A person is impoverished if marginalized from the political process or denied access to education or health care.  Making such a claim is not to minimize the significance of material need: but it is to say that these things are integral to one another.  Lack of access to political power, for example, is characteristic of those deprived of material resources. 

There have been too many ecumenical initiatives dealing with poverty for me to cover them systematically.  And, besides, that would be boring!  Instead, I would like to note six developments over the past two or three generations that may be useful for us as we think about the present. 

1.             While “poverty” has not disappeared from the ecumenical vocabulary, there has been a decided shift, starting in the 1970s, from speaking of “poverty” to speaking of “the poor.”  For one thing, “poverty” seems too abstract, a matter of structural analysis, without sufficient attention to the toll that economic deprivation takes on real people, each of whom is created in the image of God.  But an even more important reason for this terminological shift is the growing conviction that eliminating poverty will necessarily involve persons who are poor acting as agents of their own liberation.  (The influence of Paulo Friere, who was for a time a member of the WCC staff, is unmistakable.)  There is still a great need for top-down reform (such as efforts to reduce or eliminate the debt owed by impoverished nations), but there is also need for grassroots people’s movements that define and fight for their own destinies.  By the mid-1970s, the role of the church was increasingly defined as support for the struggle of the poor to achieve justice and self-reliance. 

2.             Over the past forty years, the concern to eliminate poverty has shifted (to use classic ecumenical terminology) from being a matter of Life and Work to being of great importance, as well, to Faith and Order and Mission and Evangelism.  It has become, in other words, a central theme for the entire ecumenical movement. 

The mission discussion is well known.  Once ecumenical Christians began to emphasize missio Dei (mission as participation in all that God is doing in the world), then addressing poverty became every bit as important as evangelism in their understanding of the church’s missional calling.  In fact, it was at the World Conference on Mission and Evangelism in Melbourne (1980) that the issue of the poor received its fullest ecumenical attention.  Christ, said the delegates, is the center of the world’s life, but he paradoxically demonstrates that centrality by moving toward those who are on the margins, especially the poor.  The church, therefore, cannot speak of God’s Kingdom, or of its own missional task, without a priority concern for those who live in material poverty.  The church, said Melbourne, is not only called to bring good news to the poor but to be a church of the poor – surrendering attitudes of benevolence and charity in favor of genuine solidarity.   

I must acknowledge that this radical identification of the church with the poor has never taken deep root in the countries of the North Atlantic (despite the fact that the great majority of Christians worldwide are counted among the poor). But this theme indicates that poverty has become not only a missional but an ecclesiological issue – and that brings us to Faith and Order.  A 2005 text from the NCC’s Faith and Order Commission, entitled, “Love for the Poor,” argues that Christians are united in our love for those living in poverty, even as the increasingly-obscene disparity in wealth is a church-dividing issue that must be addressed if our efforts to realize visible church unity are to be meaningful.  And, of course, churches are also divided, at least internally, over how best to respond to the poverty around them.¹ 

“Love for the Poor” contends that, in the body of Christ, rich and poor have been made one community.  But there is a more profound question that Faith and Order has not sufficiently tackled:  Can any authentic unity of the Church include both oppressor and oppressed, both those who are poor and those whose wealth is causally related to deprivation of others?  In the short term, the answer is surely “yes,” if only because it is nearly impossible to draw the line between acceptable wealth and wealth that oppresses.  But is economic status a legitimate diversity when seen in light of God’s coming Reign? 

3.             Closely related to the previous point, the concern to eliminate poverty and/or to be in solidarity with the poor is increasingly seen in ecumenical circles as part of an integrated ethical agenda.  Katrina, of course, is an obvious example of what some documents call a “web of oppression,” in which poverty, environmental destruction, racism, and excessive military expenditure are clearly linked.  For the past twenty-five years, the WCC has tried to show this connection by articulating integrative frameworks for ecumenical social thought – most notably, “Towards a Just, Participatory, and Sustainable Society” and “Justice, Peace, and the Integrity of Creation.” 

If space permitted, we could also note the frequent reference to the poor in such classic Faith and Order texts as Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry, where the sacraments are seen as a “constant challenge in the search for appropriate relationships in social, economic, and political life.” 

4.             Most controversially, while councils of churches have been critical of all economic systems, especially during the polarized early years of the Cold War, there has been a clear tilt, especially in recent decades, toward economic socialism.  To be a bit more precise, ecumenical documents favor government programs that redistribute wealth over programs that promote economic growth aimed at “trickling down” to the poor. 

Closely related is the broad ecumenical endorsement of the claim, made in Latin American liberation theology, that God has a “preferential option for the poor.”  The WCC responded to one of the criticisms this has generated in its text, “Mission and Evangelism:  An Ecumenical Affirmation”: “The preferential option for the poor, instead of discriminating against all other human beings, is a guideline for the priorities and behavior of all Christians everywhere, pointing to the values around which we should organize our lives and the struggle in which we should put our energy.” 

The charge, as you know, is that the western, often upper and middle class, church has tended to spiritualize poverty in order to avoid the sting of the biblical mandate.  But the ecumenical movement, by generating a truly global conversation, has forced a different posture.  The church, as Julio de Santa Ana put it in one of his highly influential works, cannot be neutral when it comes to the poverty that so divides our world.  “Silence,” he writes, “is acquiescence, and acceptance is collaboration.” 

5.             Much of the ecumenical discussion of poverty over the past fifteen years has been linked to globalization, understood as an ideology that seeks to give free reign globally to market forces.  The WCC’s assembly in Harare (1998) was very direct:  Global capitalism has dramatically exacerbated the division between rich and poor, a fact that challenges the cheap language of shared community.  “The often-used image of ‘global village,’” said the delegates in Harare, “is misleading.  The new situation is lacking exactly the sense of community, belonging and mutual accountability that is typical of village life.”  Indeed, one clear result of globalization has been fragmentation of local communities (as people struggle to be counted among economic “winners”) and fragmentation of the world community (as groups of people struggle to preserve some sense of independence in the face of economic and cultural hegemony). 

One response has been to promote such things as fair trade (not free trade) and debt cancellation.  But such efforts, while important, only temper the effects of globalization.  A more radical response is to provide a vision of an alternative way of living in global interdependence and to embody it in the churches’ own interactions.  Harare suggested four essentials to such an “oikoumene of life”:

·         participation of all parties in decisions that affect them,

·         equity or basic fairness in the distribution of resources,

·         accountability for the decisions we make and the resources we consume, and

·         a commitment to meet basic needs for all and to promote a quality of life for all that is more than bread alone. 

6.             The ecumenical struggle to eliminate poverty is increasingly undertaken alongside interfaith partners – a point I will return to shortly when speaking directly of the NCC.  For now, I will simply note the growing affirmation that such horrors as endemic poverty, racism, and warfare are too pervasive to be dealt with by any one religion (let along any one denomination!).

* * * 

The points I’ve been making obviously are drawn from the whole ecumenical movement, especially the WCC.  Let’s look more particularly at the U.S. context. 

The NCC tried to make eliminating poverty a top priority for the first decade of the new century when the 2000 General Assembly declared a ten-year “Mobilization to Overcome Poverty.”  The Council’s president at the time, Andrew Young, offered the most memorable rationale:  “The continued existence of poverty in the 21^st Century is the moral equivalent of slavery in the 19^th Century.”  The resolution outlining the mobilization emphasized the dramatically growing disparity in wealth that marked the 1990s, but also the “intractable culture of poverty [that] continues to claim successive generations of some families.” 

There were some successes during the decade, most notably a program to increase the minimum wage at state and national levels, called “Let Justice Roll;” but overall the mobilization became more of a slogan than a driving programmatic priority.  Our best sustained work in opposition to poverty came indirectly through programs aimed at such things as environmental protection (ecological destruction obviously tends to hurt the poor disproportionately) and immigration reform (many immigrants, whether or not they are “documented,” tend to be at the bottom of the economic ladder).   

I also want to report that the NCC Governing Board has named poverty reduction as its major program priority for 2010 (one of five overall priorities for the year).  Jordan Blevins in our Washington office is the lead staff person for this work, much of which is being done with ecumenical and interfaith partners – especially through a program called “Fighting Poverty with Faith” that we are spearheading along with the Jewish Council on Public Affairs and Catholic Charities.  The goal of this joint effort, which will culminate in a week of actions next October (just preceding the fall elections), is “to cultivate bipartisan leadership, locally and nationally, to enact poverty reduction legislation” – that is, to pressure political candidates to commit to a poverty reduction agenda.  The argument is self-evident:  After saying for years that the U.S. doesn’t have the $90 billion needed to address endemic poverty, the government manages to find $700 billion for a bailout of financial institutions.   

The faith community needs to assert a different set of priorities!  Let me be clear:  We do not lobby.  Lobbying is political pressure brought to bear on behalf of those with resources.  Rather, we advocate.  Advocacy is political pressure brought to bear on behalf of those without resources – and the poor are at the top of that list.   

The National Council is not, of course, the only ecumenical body to focus on poverty at this point in our nation’s history.  Another example is Christian Churches Together which has found common ground among Catholics, NCC members, and evangelicals in the commitment to address poverty.  The Catholic and evangelical influence is evident in CCT’s public declarations:  Overcoming poverty “requires both more personal responsibility and broader societal responsibility … both renewing wholesome families and strengthening economic incentives.”  I welcome such statements as a needed corrective to the NCC’s position; but I also lament the proliferation of ecumenical organization and initiatives at a time when the Christian and interfaith communities desperately need to speak about poverty with a common voice, locally and nationally. 

* * * 

I want to end by returning to the discussion of globalization.  In speaking about the churches’ response, I mentioned two strategies:  1) promoting steps, including legislative actions, that temper the worst effects of globalization (e.g., working for debt cancellation), and 2) providing a vision of an alternative way of living in global interdependence, without the obscene disparity of wealth that is so much a part of the present system. 

Insisting on doing both is an approach to ecumenical social ethics that I and others are calling “hopeful realism.”²  Underemphasize “hopeful” and we become simply reactive to the world’s agenda, promoting reforms that, while important, leave the underlying status quo basically untouched.  But underemphasize “realism” and we end up with idealized slogans and utopian pronouncements that may make some of us feel good but do little to change the conditions in which people live here and now.              

As Christians concerned with overcoming poverty, we need to be, in my judgment, hopeful realists.  We cannot eradicate the evil of poverty.  The conceit of such utopianism has itself been the fuel of countless tyrannies.  But we also must not allow those responsible for present systems of injustice to define what is possible, because we are followers of One whose promise is not just for another world but for this world made other. 

Michael Kinnamon
General Secretary
National Council of Churches

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1. Actually, the NCC document does not give enough attention, in my judgment, to poverty as a church-dividing concern.  The focus here is on a solidarity that goes beyond sympathy.  The basis of this is a) our human interdependence, b) Jesus’ own identification with the poor, c) the fundamental command to love our neighbor, d) the recognition that all we have is a gift to be shared, and e) the often-hard-won truth that love for the poor is essential to our spiritual well being.

2. For a discussion of this approach, see Beyond Idealism: A Way Ahead for Ecumenical Social Ethics.