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History of attitudes towards poverty and the churches.
These attitudes towards people who are poor date back to Calvin, and the early Calvinist teaching that "God rewards the good people {the elect, or those predestined to go to Heaven} with wealth, health, and good things, and punishes the wicked sinners {those headed for hell} with poverty, illness, and misery". (I've heard it put many different ways, but the central idea of wealth = God's blessing, poverty = God's punishment/curse is in all versions.) (Davies 1966, Hill 1952) Another early Calvinist teaching is that hard work was one's calling and to not be working hard was showing a wrong attitude towards God (Hill 1952). These negative religious attitudes towards the poor, essentially starting with Calvinism, were in essence using them as a negative reference group (Kusmer 2002). An interesting point is that this all also started after the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution. Starting with the Master-Apprentice system which at the time defined most working relationships, a master would provide for his apprentices while training them in a trade. The apprentices provided very cheap labor, while the Master provided training and often food and shelter. This system was widely abused (Wikipedia 2006a, 2006b). Apprentices and Journeymen would run away from the abuse, and would in essence be homeless. At the same time, yeoman farmers were being dispossessed of the land their families had been on for generations, in order for the rich elites to run sheep on their (previous) farms. They had nowhere to go and would end up homeless and wandering, looking for a place to live and employment (which was hard to come by for someone who'd been a farmer all their life). In essence, homelessness was not a major problem before that period but became an issue as the numbers of unemployed and homeless people skyrocketed. Going back to the Calvinist ideas about poverty, these people were singled out as a threat to the social order and held to be lazy and sinners. (At the same time, an informal underground economy developed among the newly poor, which was considered a threat to the middle class and property values in the cities, and this economy did sometimes involve behavior considered sinful by the better off (DePastino 2003, Kusmer 2002, Rossi 1989). William Perkins (a Calvinist theologian of the time) demonstrated how the economic and religious attitudes were intertwined in the attitudes towards people who were poor in his statement about them "wandering beggars and rogues" were to be "taken as enemies of this ordinance of God" (Kusmer 2002:19). It's interesting how even today, economics are conflated with religion and people think God ordained the economic system (no matter how much harm and misery it actually causes). These attitudes and beliefs about poverty resulted (in England) in the passing of the Henrician Poor Laws (starting in 1536), which defined the "undeserving poor" as anyone who was able to work (who defines that?) but not working, and the deserving poor as anyone unable to work (again, who sets this standard?) - and provided severe penalties for any 'undeserving poor' who didn't work (Littles 2003). The laws regarding the "undeserving poor" even provided (for a number of years) for enslavement of anyone who wasn't obviously working hard (excepting the rich, but they were also expected to be 'hard at work' - in effect demonstrating their 'godliness') and even children were expected to be hard at work and could be enslaved. It took testimony (as I remember the descriptions of the laws and how they worked) from two people to forcibly enslave the observed to the the complainants. I wonder how many rich people gained free slaves like that. (Note: I don't have the notes in front of me, but the research articles and books I refer to contain this information.) In any case, the treatment of the poor was very harsh and abusive, and it goes back to what could easily be labeled Calvinist Heresy. Poverty and homelessness are problems that came to this continent in the earliest years. By 1640, "vagrant persons" were listed as being people that law enforcement were to apprehend for punishment (Kusmer 2002), and there are indications that poverty and homelessness had impacted on the attention of the authorities throughout the colonies. When you consider that the Pilgrims, those vaunted oh-so-Christian immigrants to this continent (I consider them proto-Dominionists, and they do fit the profile) were militantly Calvinist and who had been driven from Europe by their actions, it is easy to see how these attitudes came to roost in this continent. The fact is, the Pilgrims were here to get rich, because they believed they were the Elect plus they believed that hard work (and God's blessing) would mean wealth (refer to the sources mentioned, there are many others who also point this out). Thus, if you weren't rich (or "Following God's Law by demonstratively working hard" to use the sort of language they might have used), you were a sinner - maybe even thought of in a similar light as non-Christians are thought of in many churches today - as someone who is contagious and a threat to the "righteous". (Never mind that the pilgrim's wealth came from taking land, crops, and so on from local Native Americans or moving in to fields abandoned because of death due to introduced diseases. If it wasn't for some intertribal politics and devastation due to European diseases, they wouldn't have found a place to live - this continent had a far denser population than most Americans realize (estimates as much as 10,000,000 people just before Columbus). It's also not that well known outside of tribal circles and historians, but the first cash crop from New England was Native American slaves, sold to the Caribbean to work the plantations. Africans quickly replaced Native Americans because they weren't acclimatized and died quickly. So some of that wealth also came from slavery - of people driven from the land that the Pilgrims/Puritans lusted after.) It wasn't nearly as pretty as the public would like to believe - and it finally resulted in King Phillip's war. In the early years of this country, there were actual laws that people who weren't demonstratively working hard (living an "idle and riotous life") would be bound out as servants (Kusmer 2002:14). A person who did not work could be said to be defying the "proper order of things" and in rebellion against God. This belief is reflected in an attitude as reported by Kusmer (2002) on page 14: "Bostonians complained that among some people "the sin of idleness (wch is the sin of Sodom) doeth greatly increase". People who weren't working were considered a potential threat to the social order (Hill 1952). An interesting point is that no consideration was taken that many of those people who were homeless became that way because of war (such as King Phillip's War) or economic changes (Kusmer 2002). One final point regarding the early years of Europeans on this continent: the idea of being "settled". The deserving poor were (in essence) defined as also being from the local area - and anyone from outside the area did not fit the "deserving" label. If unemployed, they were automatically undeserving (Rossi 1989). Poverty and homelessness continued to be a vexing problem after the early years, and as upward mobility became restricted, working people and ex-servants (those who were indentured) found themselves in "an increasingly marginal existence" (Kusmer 2002:15). Kusmer relates that during the period when slavery existed on this continent (it still does but is a major violation of law), there were many escaped slaves and indentured servants who also escaped the abusive situation they were in among the homeless. An interesting point he mentioned is that homelessness was less prevalent where slavery was more common. In essence, the historicity of the attitudes towards the homeless and very poor added up to an attitude driven by a demand for low-cost labor, instead of personal failings being the root of homelessness and poverty (Kusmer discusses this at length.) This is really brought home by the situation in the 19th century. While denouncing and demonizing the homeless, business owners were at the same time employing labor agents to seek out transient laborers - in essence trying to get people living and laboring on farms to leave and move to the cities (and become homeless in the process). The real reason was to provide a source of cheap labor, so that they could drive down wages for those living in the area and who were steadily employed (Depastino 2003). Just as with the roots of the attitudes and treatment found in England after the start of the Industrial Revolution, GREED was and always has been at the real root cause of poverty in this country. Not greed of the working people or the poor - the greed of the rich (and the wannabe rich) has caused poverty. There is plenty of research that makes this point clear. The fact that (and this is well documented) business owners were soliciting for people to become homeless, while at the same time demonizing the homeless and denouncing them is revealing. Thus it's also shown that poverty is also connected to these actions - because the presence of the homeless was used to push down wages. (That's certainly true today!) Thus, it could be argued that poverty is a construct based on greed - and the fact is, throughout history poverty has been caused primarily by the greed of elites, followed by natural disasters (where it could be argued that elite greed made things far worse) - NOT PERSONAL FAILINGS. If you look at the history of the attitudes of the more militantly fundamentalist churches, you will find strong echoes of early Calvinist heresies and greed for wealth. It's no wonder that they ignore the findings of science - scientific thinking is a relatively new thing in many ways, and the things that scientists are finding counter the beliefs based on medieval thinking. For instance, one research project (at Berkeley in California) demonstrated that the rich are greedier and more crooked than the rest of society. We now know that the idea that people are inherently lazy is FALSE. We know that people's attitudes towards the poor are being manipulated and shaped to fit a certain narrative (which is in itself false). This narrative is punitive and manipulative - it discourages questioning authority (the fundamentalist preachers and ministers) and critical thinking, while encouraging a false belief in "hard work and doing without will make you wealthier" (no, it just makes the rich wealthier). That false narrative also encourages the internalizing of blame and absolving those who are actually responsible. People are responsible for the harm they do to others. How on earth can anyone with half a brain believe that people are responsible for the harm that is done to them (unless it can be clearly shown that there is a connection between behavior and harm)? Yet you'll hear sermon after sermon about "How you're responsible for everything that happens to you!" - I've never heard a preacher, priest, or minister (outside of the UU churches) say "You're responsible for the harm you did to others!" If you know where all of this comes from, it's obvious - it hearkens back to old Calvinist heresy! Here is a final point that many Christians don't consider. If you look at the history of poverty and the history of their religion, it could be argued that the person they claim to follow was well aware of the reality of poverty and what caused it. Recent research and understanding undercuts the theological ground the dominionists (and fundamentalists) stand on, and brings back the validity and power of the Social Gospel. The fact is, we COULD end world hunger. We COULD end poverty. Not by making the rich poor, but by making things more equitable. Science disproves many of the things they take as Gospel, as a "given". Maybe if they'd stop trying to hold onto old heresies and false ideas, and started thinking, examining the Bible (which contains much good mixed with error) critically and in context, and trying to understand what the person they claim to follow REALLY was trying to say, maybe this world would be a better place - and they wouldn't be harming so many innocent lives. (Plus maybe they'd stop trying to make everyone else live according to their beliefs, and start focusing on living them themselves.) Note: This essay was written based on a paper I wrote for a class several years ago. It's not the best cited, but all of the things in it can be traced to research and pubilshed articles and books. It's something I threw together in a couple of hours... didn't spend much time at all and didn't even dig into my personal library, much less the hundreds of thousands of books and articles available to me. However, I felt it important to point out the historicity of the attitudes towards the poor and the error behind those attitudes. Poor people aren't lazy, they're not SINNERS!, they're PEOPLE, and it can be shown that poverty is something applied from outside rather than stemming from "personal failings" (SINS in the eyes of the judgmental). *- Several years ago I ran into a couple of websites where the author actually counted and listed all of those lines. The length of the list was gigantic - and while I've forgotten the number, it was obviously over a thousand. At the same time, they listed only (as I remember) FIVE lines of scripture that had anything remotely to do with homosexuality (and those lines, as I understand, were probably mistranslations). I chose to not go back to try to find those sites - I'm tired of wading through all of the Christian propaganda in trying to find the kernels of truth. References and useful sources :
Davies, C. S. L.
History of attitudes towards poverty and the churches. | 149 comments (149 topical, 0 hidden)
History of attitudes towards poverty and the churches. | 149 comments (149 topical, 0 hidden)
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