I'm far from any kind of theologian but holding a focus in the interdisciplinary study of religion, the theological perspectives are interesting:
"the theological articulation of the human beings as indebted
resonates with neoliberalism’s own marking of individuals as indebted
subjects. The term “resonate” (which I borrow loosely from the work of
William Connolly) is important here. I’m not interested in making a
causal argument, which I don’t think is possible for numerous reasons
but, rather, interrogating the way in which overlapping discourses
contribute to fashion and discipline subjects as indebted.
The paper itself focuses on how Anselm’s satisfaction theory of
atonement contributes to this sense of indebtedeness. Readers of the
blog and the journal will certainly be familiar with that theory. In sum
it says that through sin human beings have violated God’s honor, which
Christ satisfies on our behalf through his obedience and death. Anselm
understands the notion of sin at work in terms of debt; sin is a
violation of what we owe to God. Indeed, it’s mounting debt to the point
of infinity that necessitates divine intervention.
What interests me more about Anselm’s understanding of atonement,
however, is that he understands the human condition itself in terms of
indebtedness. Debt isn’t simply a byproduct, the result of sin, but
worked into the very fabric of creation. According to Anselm, the reason
human beings get into trouble in the first place is their failure to
make good on the original debt of obedience they owe to God. Even after
their redemption via Christ’s satisfaction, human beings continue to owe
God their obedience, along with an additional debt of gratitude."
read the rest here
Monday, December 26, 2016
Tuesday, December 13, 2016
*Inequality, Race, and Religion
*Originally written for the Human Economy Blog
In the United States, like many countries across the world, income inequality has been reaching staggering proportions. In 1980, according to ThomasPiketty, Emmanuel Suez, and Gabriel Zucman, the average pre-tax income of the top 1% in the United States was 27 times the average pre-tax income of the bottom 50%. In 2014, this disparity increased to 81 times the bottom 50%. Noticeably, the pre-tax income of the bottom 50% has stagnated.
In the United States, like many countries across the world, income inequality has been reaching staggering proportions. In 1980, according to ThomasPiketty, Emmanuel Suez, and Gabriel Zucman, the average pre-tax income of the top 1% in the United States was 27 times the average pre-tax income of the bottom 50%. In 2014, this disparity increased to 81 times the bottom 50%. Noticeably, the pre-tax income of the bottom 50% has stagnated.
Inequality and poverty are oblivious to religion, worldview, ethnicity, skin color, sexual orientation, and ability. As Dr. Sean Maliehe likes to say, "money knows no boundaries" and, of course, 'race' is no exception. In the broader scheme of things, racism diverts attention away from the growing trends of inequality in the U.S. and around the world.
While the current epoch has been ripe for a renovated class analysis in which the trends of the political elite and their policies are dictated by the 1% (Gilens and Page 2014; criticisms addressed here), the various intersections of the 99% must also be carefully considered without constructing them as a homogenous static monolith.
If we take a closer look at the 'median net worth of households' (sum of assets minus debts) in the United States, racial disparities come into focus:
The median net household wealth for Asian Americans, in 2010, was $83,500 while the median household income of Asian Americans in 2010 were:
If we consider the relationship between education and median household income:
The economic issues of 'class' and poverty in the United States are intimately tied to their issues of 'race' and its range of related factors like education.
If we are to take the 'human economy' seriously, it is necessary to consider systemic forms of racism and structurally embedded injustices against people of color that impact their economic circles. This means looking at the racial disparities in: mass incarceration, property rights and ownership, housing, employment, judicial prejudice, healthcare discrimination, predatory lending and foreclosure practices, education, and among many other things, the hypervisibility of police brutality, all of which impact economic mobility and the advancement of human needs; things that "cannot be reduced to dollars per capita" (Hann & Hart 2011). Moreover, the 'human economy' must also include the myriad of ways in which information is produced and reproduced as well as the narratives and stereotypes they disseminate.
For example, historian Ellen Wu (2014) documents that in the 40s and 50s, after the "yellow peril," both Asian Americans and African Americans sought to combat racism by appealing to their upstanding citizenry (note that most statistics on U.S. income and education levels for Asian Americans tend to exclude the period from the 40s to 70s). However, only the Asian American narrative of the "model minority" was adopted to gain Cold War allies in the East. This strategy in the 1960s, Wu argues, not only launched Chinese and Japanese Americans into "model minority status", reducing discrimination in certain areas of social life, but was further used as domestic propaganda to undermine the civil rights movement and foster falsehoods about black poverty. In other words, Asians in the U.S. did not gain respectability by their achievements per se (which is a half-truth; Wu shows that, in the past, although certain Asian groups completed more years of schooling, they earned less than whites with comparable education levels - a phenomena that appears to be changing in the 21st century) but rather from an orchestrated geopolitical campaign that was also propagated for divisive domestic purposes. Not only did this deliberately create African American and Asian American tensions but the "model minority" construct, as a homogenizing classification, has impacted and continues to impact the lives of Asian Americans by masking, even neglecting, the concerns and challenges faced by them. The Hmong, as well as other Southeast Asian refugee communities, for example, often ignored in such statistics above, have high rates of welfare dependency, unemployment, and low levels of income and education (Wu 2014).
Socially engineered racism has long been a political stratagem that dates back to the first encounters of European migrants and the indigenous people of the Americas. It is a stratagem that has been employed throughout U.S. history and featured quite prominently during the Jim Crow era. Segregation was a method to "placate the poor white masses," suppress a 19th century populist movement, and maintain the south as a means of cheap labor (King Jr, 1965; citing historian C. Vann Woodward). While many may presume that this was a scheme of the past, most people of color are well aware of its continued effect on the present day.
In this regard, there is a need to identify the trends of thought and action that perpetuate racial tensions, socio-economic and racial inequalities across lived realities, epistemologies, and the social ethos that emerge from, and are driven by, U.S. social institutions. Emile Durkheim and Claude Levi-Strauss have both pointed out that what is social is also psychological. Levi-Strauss (1960) states, "we can never be sure we have fathomed the meaning and function of an institution if we are not capable of reliving its impact upon the individual consciousness. As such an impact is an integral part of institutions, any interpretation must aim to match the objectivity of the historical or comparative analysis with the subjectivity of the experience as it has been lived."
Given the economic history of western expansion through its colonial project, Christianity is one institution that has been at the center of much scrutiny. While the religion has, in the past, been quite explicit in its support of colonialism and racism, their contemporary forms - apart from the resurgent spike in hate crimes and white nationalism - have been much more covert and implicit (Bae 2016). Many Christians and their churches have made explicit declarations and commitments to justice and equality (Emerson & Smith 2000) as well as love and tolerance (Coward 1986) in race relations.
And yet, despite such expressions, U.S. Protestant Christians have consistently opposed government programs to resolve issues of inequality (Brown 2009). In a study of conservative white Protestant Christians on the topic of socioeconomic gaps and inequality, Emerson, Smith, and Sikkink (1999) found that they:
Anthropologist Clifford Geertz (1973) argued that the province of religion is where models of the world and models for living in that world are brought together in a complementary fashion. In this sense, Christianity holds a reflexive tension. While the professed views of egalitarianism and "equality before God" is arguably a model for the world, the model of the world that Christianity propels in practice directly contradicts it.
If the U.S. brand of Christianity is to shed its complicit skin and focus on the concerns of ever-increasing inequality that Piketty and company draw attention to, it must first address its contradictions and prejudices against poverty and race.
While the current epoch has been ripe for a renovated class analysis in which the trends of the political elite and their policies are dictated by the 1% (Gilens and Page 2014; criticisms addressed here), the various intersections of the 99% must also be carefully considered without constructing them as a homogenous static monolith.
If we take a closer look at the 'median net worth of households' (sum of assets minus debts) in the United States, racial disparities come into focus:
The median net household wealth for Asian Americans, in 2010, was $83,500 while the median household income of Asian Americans in 2010 were:
If we consider the relationship between education and median household income:
We can also note
the difference in median household income vs. median net worth/wealth in White households. In 2010, their median household income was $54,000
and their median household net worth/wealth was $138,600. This
contrasts with Asians whose median household income was $66,000 and
their household net worth/wealth at $83,500. Whites and Asians further contrast with Hispanics and Blacks in that the latter show a lower median household net worth than their median income. For Hispanics the median income was $40,000 with a median net worth at $16,000. Similarly, the median income for Black households was $33,300 and a median net worth at $16,600. As of 2010, Native American and Alaskan Native households had a median household income of $35,062.
With regard to the relationship between education and poverty:
The economic issues of 'class' and poverty in the United States are intimately tied to their issues of 'race' and its range of related factors like education.
If we are to take the 'human economy' seriously, it is necessary to consider systemic forms of racism and structurally embedded injustices against people of color that impact their economic circles. This means looking at the racial disparities in: mass incarceration, property rights and ownership, housing, employment, judicial prejudice, healthcare discrimination, predatory lending and foreclosure practices, education, and among many other things, the hypervisibility of police brutality, all of which impact economic mobility and the advancement of human needs; things that "cannot be reduced to dollars per capita" (Hann & Hart 2011). Moreover, the 'human economy' must also include the myriad of ways in which information is produced and reproduced as well as the narratives and stereotypes they disseminate.
For example, historian Ellen Wu (2014) documents that in the 40s and 50s, after the "yellow peril," both Asian Americans and African Americans sought to combat racism by appealing to their upstanding citizenry (note that most statistics on U.S. income and education levels for Asian Americans tend to exclude the period from the 40s to 70s). However, only the Asian American narrative of the "model minority" was adopted to gain Cold War allies in the East. This strategy in the 1960s, Wu argues, not only launched Chinese and Japanese Americans into "model minority status", reducing discrimination in certain areas of social life, but was further used as domestic propaganda to undermine the civil rights movement and foster falsehoods about black poverty. In other words, Asians in the U.S. did not gain respectability by their achievements per se (which is a half-truth; Wu shows that, in the past, although certain Asian groups completed more years of schooling, they earned less than whites with comparable education levels - a phenomena that appears to be changing in the 21st century) but rather from an orchestrated geopolitical campaign that was also propagated for divisive domestic purposes. Not only did this deliberately create African American and Asian American tensions but the "model minority" construct, as a homogenizing classification, has impacted and continues to impact the lives of Asian Americans by masking, even neglecting, the concerns and challenges faced by them. The Hmong, as well as other Southeast Asian refugee communities, for example, often ignored in such statistics above, have high rates of welfare dependency, unemployment, and low levels of income and education (Wu 2014).
Socially engineered racism has long been a political stratagem that dates back to the first encounters of European migrants and the indigenous people of the Americas. It is a stratagem that has been employed throughout U.S. history and featured quite prominently during the Jim Crow era. Segregation was a method to "placate the poor white masses," suppress a 19th century populist movement, and maintain the south as a means of cheap labor (King Jr, 1965; citing historian C. Vann Woodward). While many may presume that this was a scheme of the past, most people of color are well aware of its continued effect on the present day.
In this regard, there is a need to identify the trends of thought and action that perpetuate racial tensions, socio-economic and racial inequalities across lived realities, epistemologies, and the social ethos that emerge from, and are driven by, U.S. social institutions. Emile Durkheim and Claude Levi-Strauss have both pointed out that what is social is also psychological. Levi-Strauss (1960) states, "we can never be sure we have fathomed the meaning and function of an institution if we are not capable of reliving its impact upon the individual consciousness. As such an impact is an integral part of institutions, any interpretation must aim to match the objectivity of the historical or comparative analysis with the subjectivity of the experience as it has been lived."
Given the economic history of western expansion through its colonial project, Christianity is one institution that has been at the center of much scrutiny. While the religion has, in the past, been quite explicit in its support of colonialism and racism, their contemporary forms - apart from the resurgent spike in hate crimes and white nationalism - have been much more covert and implicit (Bae 2016). Many Christians and their churches have made explicit declarations and commitments to justice and equality (Emerson & Smith 2000) as well as love and tolerance (Coward 1986) in race relations.
And yet, despite such expressions, U.S. Protestant Christians have consistently opposed government programs to resolve issues of inequality (Brown 2009). In a study of conservative white Protestant Christians on the topic of socioeconomic gaps and inequality, Emerson, Smith, and Sikkink (1999) found that they:
- do not "see social structures contributing to the inequality, except where they are viewed as undermining accountable individuals;
- think that the "United States affords equal opportunity to its citizens";
- explain "inequality as the result of contemporary problems with African American individuals and their relationships" i.e. they lack motivation, have family problems, avoid responsibility, etc.;
- understand "the solution to social problems as changing individuals"; and therefore
- "view government efforts to achieve racial inequality as naive, wasteful, misguided, sinful, and often counteracting real solutions."
Anthropologist Clifford Geertz (1973) argued that the province of religion is where models of the world and models for living in that world are brought together in a complementary fashion. In this sense, Christianity holds a reflexive tension. While the professed views of egalitarianism and "equality before God" is arguably a model for the world, the model of the world that Christianity propels in practice directly contradicts it.
If the U.S. brand of Christianity is to shed its complicit skin and focus on the concerns of ever-increasing inequality that Piketty and company draw attention to, it must first address its contradictions and prejudices against poverty and race.
Wednesday, December 7, 2016
Sunday, December 4, 2016
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