At
the latest G7 summit in Biarritz, U.S. President Donald Trump reassured
the world that “our economy is creating jobs and helping the poor.” A
similar confidence was expressed in a recent op-ed published by the Wall Street Journal. It was titled “Making Money is a Patriotic Act”
(August 13, 2019). Signed by Bernie Marcus, a cofounder of Home Depot,
and the New York City supermarket magnate John Catsimatidis, the op-ed
opened with a striking, quasi-religious claim: “The two of us are quite
rich. We have earned more money than we could have imagined and more
than we can spend on ourselves, our children and grandchildren. These
days getting rich off a profitable business is regarded as almost
sinister. But we have nothing to apologize for and we don’t think the
government should have more of our profits.” The fact that the latter is
a prominent member in, and generous donor to, the Greek Orthodox Church
in America (as well as to the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York)
prompted me to reflect again on the age-old question of wealth and
poverty in Christian thought. This is a question where Orthodox and
Roman Catholic teaching are very similar, if not the same.
Of course, the connection or correspondence between prosperity and philanthropy has long concerned economists, political theorists, and moral philosophers, as well as theologians. Economic resources are indispensable to the church, but the church has an obligation to husband its resources in a way that includes the less fortunate. When it comes to wealth, the focus for Christians should be beneficent compassion (the law of love) rather than brutal competition (the law of survival of the fittest). Proclaiming that greed is neither sinister nor sinful and claiming that the government should not impose higher taxes on the wealthy is at odds with the Christian responsibility to recognize the dignity and parity of the least of our brothers and sisters (Matthew 25:40).
The authors boast of creating employment (albeit at often degradingly low salaries) and supporting charities (while benefiting from generous tax deductions for charitable giving), but they’re also proud of having risen from meager origins to achieve the American Dream. This up-by-the-bootstraps success narrative may be convenient for the Christian right, but it is inconsistent with both Orthodoxy and Roman Catholic social teaching.
Of course, the connection or correspondence between prosperity and philanthropy has long concerned economists, political theorists, and moral philosophers, as well as theologians. Economic resources are indispensable to the church, but the church has an obligation to husband its resources in a way that includes the less fortunate. When it comes to wealth, the focus for Christians should be beneficent compassion (the law of love) rather than brutal competition (the law of survival of the fittest). Proclaiming that greed is neither sinister nor sinful and claiming that the government should not impose higher taxes on the wealthy is at odds with the Christian responsibility to recognize the dignity and parity of the least of our brothers and sisters (Matthew 25:40).
The authors boast of creating employment (albeit at often degradingly low salaries) and supporting charities (while benefiting from generous tax deductions for charitable giving), but they’re also proud of having risen from meager origins to achieve the American Dream. This up-by-the-bootstraps success narrative may be convenient for the Christian right, but it is inconsistent with both Orthodoxy and Roman Catholic social teaching.
Luxury is the enemy of solidarity. The tragedy is that the rich may never understand why heaven is beyond their reach.
Before
contemplating the spiritual message, however, let’s consider the
economic argument. Fiscal conservatives have long insisted that private
charity is better than government handouts; helping hands, they say,
should be inspired by a heart of compassion rather than compelled by
law. But to suggest that wealthy donors can replace government programs
is both arrogant and dangerously irresponsible. Private philanthropy
falls off during economic downturns, when poverty rises. In other words,
philanthropy tends to be cyclical, whereas public programs are designed
to be counter-cyclical, helping the most when there’s the greatest need
for help. The idea that faith-based or privately organized charity is
more efficient or more effective than government relief has not been
true since the industrial revolution. It is especially untrue during a
recession.
But much of secular philanthropy is less about providing relief to
the poor than about stockpiling tax deductions and/or getting one’s name
emblazoned on the front of a new cultural or religious institution. No
matter how dizzying the donations of the wealthy, they are in fact a
minuscule fraction—economists estimate it’s less than 0.031 percent—of
current social needs. It would be wonderful if more of society’s most
fortunate members would respond to the needs of the less fortunate. But
it is a fantasy to believe that voluntary organizations, including
religious ones, could adequately replace the array of government health
and social programs that help the most vulnerable.
Take some examples from my own church, which is also the church of
John Catsimatidis. How troubled are Orthodox leaders that the tens of
millions of dollars worth of donations raised for a church at Ground
Zero in New York City—all of which doubtless qualify for tax deductions
as charitable gifts—will in no way benefit the underprivileged, in a
city where there is visible evidence of material want on every street
corner? How often do Orthodox Christians and perhaps especially Orthodox
clergy stop to examine their lifestyle in light of their vocation to
close rather than widen the gap between rich and poor? And when wealthy
Orthodox Christians give, how much do they focus their generosity on
impoverished fellow Christians—or, indeed, on impoverished
non-Christians?
Recently, at a traffic stop in Lewiston, Maine, I observed a refugee
woman cross the road in order to offer money to a beggar. I was
instantly reminded of the episode in Luke’s Gospel “when Jesus looked up
and saw the rich putting their gifts into the treasury. He also saw a
poor widow put in two mites. And he said, ‘Truly I tell you, this poor
widow has put in more than all of them; for they all contributed out of
their abundance, but she out of her poverty put in all the livelihood
that she had’” (Luke 21:1–4). I carry a mite with the cross that I
wear—a reminder that the cross entails sacrifice and that my social
obligations are central to any spiritual aspiration. This is true for
everyone of course, not only the rich; and “rich” is a relative term.
But there is no relativizing away the special duty of those who have
much more than they need to help provide for those who have less than they need. Complaints about high taxes signal that one thinks of this duty as merely an option.
Even the subtler, seemingly softer mercantilism proposed by the recent Business Roundtable in its August 2019 “Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation,”
which seems to reverse course on the priority of maximizing shareholder
value, and to soft-pedal the exploitation of offshore labor and
ecological despoliation, is not really a confession of guilt but rather
an admission that big business now has a public-relations problem.
Saints and mystics have always understood the connection between
ascesis and communion: those who are unable to control their
appetites—to say “enough” when their own needs have been met—are less
likely to notice and respond when their neighbor does not have
enough. Luxury is the enemy of solidarity. The tragedy is not just that
the rich may never make it to heaven, but also that they may never
understand why heaven is beyond their reach.
It may be “easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than
for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God...but what is impossible
for mortals is possible for God” (Luke 18:24–26). In the larger picture
of God’s beneficence, there is always ample room for forgiveness and
redemption. Almsgiving allows us to confront our inner brokenness and
spiritual poverty by reaching out to others, to the least and lowest in
our community until, as Abba John wrote in sixth-century Gaza, “we reach
the point of regarding the poor as our equal and as our neighbor”
(Letter 636). But to recognize the poor as our equals is to understand
that they cannot be left at the mercy of a philanthropist’s whim, and
the satisfaction of their needs is not another charitable option, like
the construction of a new opera house or university gym. Rightwing
philanthropists need to get over their aversion to public-assistance
programs and their resentment of the taxes that fund them. And before
they write op-eds congratulating themselves for their own munificence or
disparaging government programs they dismiss as “handouts,” they would
do well to remember another famous passage from Scripture: “Let not your
left hand know what your right hand is doing” (Matthew 6:3).