Economic Inequality: Political and Economic Oppression

Recently both Pope Francis and President Obama have vigorously spoken out against economic inequality.  Pope Francis identified corporate/financial capitalism as our current system of oppression using phrases such as unfettered capitalism, idolatry of money and deified markets.  President Obama called economic inequality the defining issue of our time.

I prefer the phrase political and economic oppression over economic inequality.  This phrase captures the essence of a plutocracy---rule by the rich who have taken over our democracy.  If a person understand that biblically oppression means the cruel and unjust exercise of power and authority (what oppression IS).  What does oppression DO to a people---it crushes them, humiliates them, treats people like animals; it also impoverishes, enslaves and kills human beings created in the image of God.

And tragedy of tragedies, we far too often have to add religious oppression to political and economic oppression.  Just as in Jesus' day when a religio-politico-economic elite ran the temple as a "den of robbers," so today in modern America much of the religious establishment either actively supports oppressive American corporate/financial capitalism or it tolerates it or only weakly opposes it.  Lacking a comprehensive socioeconomic theology of society, we are easily seduced by American materialism and don't know what to do about it.

In 1987, I wrote a book entitled Sociotheology; chapter 12 charted the beginnings of a biblical economics.  The following comes my self-published book:

There seems to be an endless debate over which economic system is more Christian---capitalism or socialism.  Each is regarded by the other as a great evil visited upon the earth.  Unfortunately neither landlord agricultural capitalism not state controlled, collective agriculture, neither industrial, corporate capitalism nor state-run, industrial socialism as they are commonly practiced in our world today come close to following scriptural principles.  Baptizing either capitalism or socialism with a few scripture verses will not make either Christian.  Greed and power have corrupted both economic systems almost beyond repair.  Each is essentially a secular system.

Jacques Ellul, author of Money and Power, a French sociologist and Christian ethicist, is not enamored with either capitalism or socialism.  Both fall short of kingdom of God principles.  Ellul states:

Capitalism has progressively subordinated all of life---individual and collective---to money. . . .  One by one the state, the legal system, art and the churches have submitted to the power of money. . . . One of the results of capitalism . . . is the subservience of being to having.

In a socialist society, individuals . . . remain entirely submitted to production.  The economy is the basis of their lives.  This is precisely the source of real alienation--not the subservience of being to personal having, but the subservience of being . . . to collective having.

Old Testament

We need to go back to the basics; we need a fresh look at the Scriptures.  Fortunately, we have a person who has done his scriptural homework who can guide us.  Christopher J.H. Wright (Ph.D., Cambridge), has written two masterpieces, an article and a book, on old Testament social ethics.  The article is "The Ethical Relevance of Israel as a Society," published in Transformation, an evangelical journal on social ethics.  The book is entitled An Eye for An Eye: The Place of Old Testament Ethics Today.  Both the article and the book cover much the same material, but the article delves in greater detail on some socioeconomic aspects of Israeli society.  Though Wright does not use the term. I call these masterpieces, sociotheology.  In my judgment, sociotheology can give us the setting and guidelines for a just economic system.

To be continued