"How to engage in politics without losing your soul" - part two

No divisiveness sounds good. But it may depend on what the meaning of "divisiveness" is.

I bring this up because divisiveness between Rich and Poor is a reality. The other divisions in the list derive mostly from sociocultural constructs. Even with the psychobiological foundations of gender and age categories, culture determines most of our ways of defining and dealing with them. Race, strictly speaking, doesn't exist, but ethnicities do -- and ethnicity, along with notions of race, is entirely a cultural thing. All divisiveness based on these categories is based on social fictions. Reconciling them in our own minds should be relatively easy for us as Christians. Being inwardly reconciled should make it easier for us to take the role of reconcilers in the public square with regard to ethnicity, gender, and age.

But Rich and Poor are something else. Their material conditions are different; their material interests truly are in opposition. Both scripture and socioeconomic analysis address the issues of wealth and poverty, of rich folks and poor folks, of workers and the indigent and the utterly destitute. Scriptures consider wealth and poverty to be paramount issues, with material equity being a matter of justice, and justice being a spiritual matter. Socioeconomic analysis, in synergy with scriptures, makes clear the nature and extent of the problems at any given time and place.

Class war in the USA is a reality. It's been a stealth war, and the rich have been winning. Class is almost a taboo word, except when the mythical universal "middle class" is invoked. But 5/8 of the US population is "working class", 1/3 are "middle class", a few percent are "upper class" and a minor fraction of a percent are "ruling class" -- the corporate and political high elite. ("Middle class" and "middle income" are frequently confused: many middle income people are actually working class. Class is essentially a power and autonomy concept, not just a matter of income level.)

As Christians, we have a prophetic calling to address this reality with its inequities of wealth and iniquities of power. But it's divisive. And when these matters are brought to the attention of the Rich, they tend to get testy, even if the prophet is tactful. And if the poor aren't too beaten down, physically or spiritually, when they take the prophetic word to heart they can get pretty uppity, to use a word that was applied to Barack Obama four weeks ago. So, speaking the truths that we are called to speak can easily lead to overt divisiveness. Write a polite but critical comment about class at the GOPUSA site and see for yourself.

And then there's the asymmetry in the reactions of angry Rich folks and angry Poor folks. The poor march and protest and maybe riot, they might throw stones and burn things, and sometimes shoot people. The rich have better access to armed force: they can pay for others to do their shooting, directly or through government. Governments are set up to protect property interests and will send police and the National Guard to shoot unruly mobs. In US history, there have been legal massacres of union members and organizers.

So, what are we to do about Guideline #8? We can free ourselves from the temptation to demonize people and we can avoid personalizing the conflicts. But there will be conflicts. I vote for removing "rich and poor" from the "no divisiveness" list. Or can someone solve the problem by devising an apt definition of "divisiveness" that doesn't edit out the "woe to the rich" passages of the Bible?

Bill