Poverty: the U.S. Church Busted

10 Truths About American Poverty: the American Church Busted.

In March/April 2014, Mother Jones magazine published an article by Erika Eichelberger entitled "10 Poverty Myths, Busted." The author is referring to erroneous ideas about poverty that most Americans believe are true; this is her list:

1. Absent dads are the problem.
2 Single moms are the problem.
3. Black dads are the problem.
4. Poor people are lazy.
5. If you are not officially poor, you're doing okay.
6. Go to college, get out of poverty.
7. We're winning the war on poverty.
8. The days of old ladies eating cat food are over.
9. The homeless are drunk street people.
10. Handouts are bankrupting us.

In addition, read this March/April article from Mother Jones entitled "What If Everything You Knew About Poverty was Wrong?" by Stephanie Menrimer. Also "More Evidence that half of America is in or near poverty," by Paul Buchheit (March 26, 2014, Nation of Change). After reading the above articles, you will realize why what I am writing about the American church is so tragic, so wrong. Unfortunately, in my opinion, the American church has contributed more to the continuation of poverty (think both sins of omission and commission) than to its end, though it would vehemently deny this. The following 10 items have contributed to creating and maintaining American poverty:

1. The church has far too often been silent about or participated in Indian genocide, enslavement of Africans and the "annexing" of almost half of Mexican territory.
2. The church often has been silent about or participated in the mass incarceration of young black and Latino males and the 20-1 racial wealth gap.
3. The church has been silent about or participated in the American Trinity of hyperindividualism, hypermaterialism and hyperethnocentrism.
4. As the Pharisees did, the American church has much too often neglected justice and the love of God.
5. The church often quotes scriptures such as "You will always have the poor with you" and "Blessed are the poor in spirit" out of context.
6. In the church, there has been a massive failure to teach about the 555 Hebrew references to oppression and its synonyms in the OT.
7. The church has failed to discover and apply the NT teachings on oppression and justice; a massive omission.
8. The church has failed to combine love and justice, spirituality and justice.
9. The church has failed to combine the Holy Spirit, the kingdom of God and justice.
10. The church has failed to practice repentance, restitution and reparations thereby maintaining the enormous damage done by past systems of oppression.
11. The church has relocated away from the oppressed poor into the "spiritual" suburbs; a Lutheran pastor once wrote that over a 40-year period, 40 out of 44 Lutheran churches left Detroit.

Can we change these sad truths into myths in the sense of no longer being factual? Can the church become a doer of Jubilee Justice instead of a doer of injustice?