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March 4, 2009

Will Obama's Vision Sabotage Religion?--Part II

Sociologist W. Bradford Wilcox responds to Mark Galli's post.

Mark Galli

Mark Galli does not seem particularly concerned about the unintended consequences of the state meeting many of the important financial and physical needs of its citizens, such as health care. Then the Church is freed up, I suppose, to focus on people's spiritual needs.

But persons are creatures of body and spirit. Historically, the Church, and faith more generally, has played a key role in addressing both the spiritual and physical - including financial - needs of people. Moreover, the Church seems strongest when people connect both their bodily and spiritual lives and needs to the faith. Indeed, physical and financial suffering can open people up to the missing spiritual dimension of their lives.

Not surprisingly, the historical and sociological record suggests that when the state addresses most of the physical and financial needs of people, or when individuals are wealthy enough to care for those needs entirely on their own, that people are less likely to turn to God, their local church, charities, or their families for help, direction, and consolation.

This is why in some important respects the Church is healthier in Nairobi than it is in New York, or in Lagos than it is Los Angeles. In these African cities, the Church - and faith - is more likely to take, by force of necessity, a wholistic approach to ministering to the human person. In stable, affluent societies the Church is often reduced to a therapeutic role in people's lives. Any my worry is that a successful Obama revolution would only deepen that pattern in the United States, and reduce the size and vitality of the Christian faith in the process.

--Posted by Mark Galli on behalf of Brad Wilcox, Associate Professor, Department of Sociology,
University of Virginia

posted by Mark Galli | Comments (3)

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Government social programs have utility, but also have deadweight costs beyond expenditure. If churches, following Jesus' teachings on social justice and the precedent of benevolence in the early church, do not have to compete with taxation schemes for revenue, then they may redistribute resources in the context of relationship and community. Government taxation and entitlements, on the other hand, are highly impersonal (on top of crowding out private investment and charity).

Jesus never said, "You shall know the truth, and the truth is that you should advocate for tax-and-spend policies to advance my kindom".

Posted By: caveat bettor | March 5, 2009 3:14 PM

It is of course great and proper to serve the physical needs of others in emulation of Christ, but I believe that improving secular access to things such as healthcare is in no way detrimental to the mission of the church!

We must be careful not to be seen as profiteering from economic deprivation, as did the Protestant church during the Irish famine. Taken to an extreme conclusion, the church could be harmed if a general perception arises that it advocates deliberately encouraging poverty amongst non-Christians in order to push them to make declarations of faith/attending church.

Posted By: Nicola | March 6, 2009 5:19 PM

Hi

It has been stated above:

"But persons are creatures of body and spirit. Historically, the Church, and faith more generally, has played a key role in addressing both the spiritual and physical—including financial—needs of people"

I think presently the Catholic Church has not fullfilled even the spiritual needs of the USA, as is evident from the following news ite.

US Catholics down by 398,000
Between the beginning and the end of 2007, the number of Catholics in the United States declined by nearly 400,000 to 67.1 million, the new 2009 Yearbook of American & Canadian Churches finds.
http://www.cathnewsusa.com/article.aspx?aeid=12064

If the Church would have fulfilled the spiritual needs of the people, the number of Catholics would have increased.

I think the Church needs to look into its creeds and revise them to satisfy people rationally and logically.

I love Jesus and Mary as I do love Moses and his mother.

Thanks

I am an Ahmadi peaceful Muslim

http://paarsurrey.wordpress.com/

Posted By: paarsurrey | March 9, 2009 1:46 AM