On my recent trip to the Holy Land I had the opportunity to converse with several American citizens who were  participating in the study tour. The experience was eye opening as a Canadian. Some stereotypes were reinforced (the connection between Republican politics and evangelicalism), while others were challeneged (the willingness of Americans to listen to the perspectives of outsiders, say, Canadians). Much of the conversation centered on the then upcoming election. I was truly surprised by the fear that existed among most of them about the possibility of Obama's victory, which then by the polls seemed almost certian.

In particular my conversationists mused on two fronts: first, what Obama would do to the social values of America, and second, how he would tax upper income Americans in order to redistrubute wealth. In retrospect, I find myself amazed by the contradiction here: these folks want legislated morality (eg. anti-abortion laws) but total freedom from legislation within the market economy (regarding personal and business income). This pattern of thought seems to permeate conservative American Christianity. It was there during the civil war on the matter of slavery and its economic benefits, and it persists today clothed in newer social concerns: the latter being largely a mirror image of the former. Let me explain.

As far as I understand it, the problem lies in the belief that morality and economics occupy mutually exclusive spheres of reality. This kind of social classification is not new, it is merely the separation of church and state, by the state - a rose by any other name. The question is whether the separation comes from God, or from the state, and I would venture a reasonably educated guess that the idea serves state interests (including the state's relationship to big business) more than God's. Moreover, concerning the corollary question about whether a market economy is the natural outcome of the biblical vision, there is simply no room in biblical economics for any economy which fails to assist the poor. Isaiah, and most of the prophets, notably, Jesus, are cases in point. That the bible legislates both morality (defined not as being good, but being righteous), and economic behavior, should lead us to the conclusion that they are two sides of the same shekel. Notwithstanding, it is my opinion that unbridled capitalism - the unrestricted ambition of those who happen to have capital to both create and dominate ever-increasing market expansion (the economic equivalent of Alexander the Great's rootlessness) - is as ruthless as any dictatorship. As Paul Williams of Regent College argues, capitalism, especially in its contemporary mode of globalization, possesses an internal logic which fails to account for an anthropology of greed, power, and the extent that men will go to conceal their lust for both.

One form of this concealment is the location of truth with the new benchmark of the rational self. Prior to the period of Modernity selves, it they were spoken of at all in the way we think of them, have always been understood as constructions of a variety of social situations. The God of the Bible is always about forming a family, tribe, nation, or tongue; people are designed to root themselves in the particularity of a local situation and to created wealth in various forms for the benefit of the whole earth. The original mandate was to fill the Earth, to be fruitful and multiply, but always to be somewhere: placed, situated.

The problem historically stems from the rank individualism that proceedeth from the father (protestantism/anti-authority) and the son (modernity/rationalism). This unholy trinity sees fit to classify morality mainly in terms of private sins, which have little direct economic import (though the structures that maintain them, such as the pornography or gambling industry is another matter altogether). Thus the pre-civil war southerner could denounce drunkenness and licentuousness as private sins, claiming thus to be safe from the fires of hell, while publicly lobbying for the slave trade, which was the slave's consignment to his own hell on earth. In this system, as exists today, the economic benefits resulting from various forms of slavery (slavery to debt being the chief of sinners) cannot produce the biblical idea of Shalom, wholeness, peace, prosperity in the broadest sense. This form of economics and the colonialism that drives it is drunk on the wine of scarcity. It believes that there will never be enough, and must therefore expand regardless of the cost, but mostly regardless of the cost to others.

In contrast to the incipeint anthropologies of capitalism and its economic discontents, biblical anthropology insists that since all human capacity, including the capacity required to produce wealth, is a gift from God, the resulting wealth first belongs to God. And as it happens God has always chosen to spend some of that wealth on those who, for whatever reasons, lack such a capacity. Thus, biblical economics is inextricably rooted in the notion of peoplehood and community.

With this in mind we can see that once the modernist/rationalist/protestant notion of the individual self as the keystone of reality took root, it became much easier to think of individual capacity as arising from the source of the self, instead of the community or of God. The logical outcome is to view one's responsibility in terms of maintaining the conditions necessary for the continuation of individual prosperity, 'taking care of number one.' We used to call this American dream, now we assume it as our God given right. This trajectory is only steps away from the belief that those who cannot produce wealth for themselves somehow deserve their lot in life. Jesus had words to the Pharisees on this matter (Matt 23).

Those same Amercians who cower in fear about Obama establishing abortion as a norm in American society (isn't it already?), and who wish to have thier personal booty protected by the same law book have proceeded on the basis of two questionalbe assumptions. First, that there such a thing as a Christian nation. I submit that there never was, and that this idea is but a myth told to maintain the political hegemony of both capitalism and liberal democracy, both of which see the earth as their oyster and thus have little to do with the world being God's pearl. Moreover, if Jesus had anything to say about the Kingdom of God, it was that it worked from the bottom up, regardless of the political reality into which its leaven worked, and usually in spite of it.

The nation which relies on its political power (including the power of policing and enforcing legislation) has already moved away from the Kingdom model. The lesson is this: abortion is a leaven issue, and is most certainly wedded to the economics of any society. Tony Camplo argues that 70% of the abortions perfomed in American today result from poor economic conditions. Perhaps many mothers believe that it is better to abort than risk a life of extreme poverty for their child. Yet in the first century, Christians were known for adopting abandoned children who had been left to die for similar reasons on garbage dumps outside cities. The early Christians were KNOWN for this. How's that for an anti-abortion message: "let me raise your child, or help you to make life possible." The people of God are mostly a people in exile, and if we live with that perspective it will be much easier to tolerate what we consider to be abusive legislation, knowing that neither Obama or any other leader exists to make a Christian life easy. Easy is not a theological category. Here's food for thought: what is the church of today known for?

Second, and returning to the idea of the distribution of wealth, it is a very dangerous thing to shake one's fist at the idea of taking from the rich to give to the poor, especially since Jesus warned of the danger of riches. If we had clearer minds to understand our riches in terms of having basic needs met and most often exceeded we might welcome such legislation as a gift towards our own spiritual fitness. Besides, the Bible basically endorses this idea through the laws governing the tithe.

The bottom line for me is this: if the church was known for generosity (economic redistribution), instead of private gain (whether as individuals or individual churches) then perhaps Obama's proposed legislation would be unnecessary. With 100 million Christians on the scene an unmistakable dent could be made in terms of assisting the poor such that it is unlikely that the conversation would need to take place. If Christians were proactive instead of relying on legislation we might also have earned something that is nowhere to be found on the horizon: a substantial reputation (name) for our God, the God who gives that all might be blessed, and the God who by the two hands of his Son and Spirit form a people who are like him in this respect.

The fact that a governmet cannot legislate a spirit of generosity should be our first clue that if such a spirit is truly present, it hardly matters what else that country legislates. Its laws will be non-sequitor.