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This page was updated 03/10/2008
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"The Limits to Charity"
The Rev’d Dr. Jay
E. Abernathy, Jr.
UU Congregation of Fort Wayne, IN
February 24, 2008
Jack Mendelsohn, Channing, the Reluctant Radical.
In a document designed to nudge the Federal Street congregation toward the creation and funding of a social action committee, he softened up the parish’s policy makers by reminding them that their personal possession of "ability, piety, good morals, and human happiness" laid upon them the privilege of doing what they could for those less blessed. Accordingly, he proposed a multi-faceted program of services for the poor: improvement of educational methods, relief for debtors, investigation of prison conditions, a preventive approach to poverty, an attack on the causes of intemperance and "kindred vices," and a work program for the unemployed. (191)
…Channing expressed himself in "Self-Culture" [a major address often reprinted] as angered by the charge, popular in high social circles, that schooling spoiled a good laborer by giving him ideas too big for his britches: "I reply that a social order, demanding the sacrifices of the mind, is very suspicious, that it cannot be sanctioned by the Creator. Were I, on visiting a strange country, to see a vast majority of the people maimed, crippled, and bereft of sight, and were I told that social order required this mutilation, I should say, Perish this order." (215)
…Channing held in contempt the classical economic theory of his time—that of Smith, Ricardo, and Malthus—which insisted that in a free market economy, wages for laborers must be pegged at a subsistence level. Although it meant flying in the face of what others with wealth conceived to be their self-interest, Channing bluntly questioned the motives of those who claimed that the economic laws decreeing poverty were writ in the nature of things. These statements, he said, come "generally from men who abound, and are at ease; we think more of property than any other human interest; who have little concern for the mass of their fellow-creatures; who are willing that others should bear all the burdens of life; and that any social order should continue which secures for themselves personal comfort or gratification. (216)
Prayer and Meditation: JEA
"The Limits To Charity"
My Dad was an easy mark. To anyone with a sob story who looked like he would work, my Dad would give him a chance. I don’t mean he would give the fellow a couple of bucks; he would give him a job—even if there was no job to be done. He lived through the Depression, and he had an abiding sympathy. It wasn’t the money, you see; his was the gift of respect.
Dad believed that helping someone was not a matter of charity; it was a matter of faith in people, of hope and trust—in other words, a matter of religion. We learned to say in the Seventies, "Give a person a fish, but it is better to teach that person to fish." What a great idea, but, then, what if the person is starving now, and the river or lake is far away, or polluted, or the landowners won’t give permission? We liberals have been unable to clarify the works of charity and their limits. But where angels have stumbled, we UU ministers stride forward—at least I hope to clarify the limits of charity.
We face a conundrum as old as civilization: what do we do with those who "under-perform" in our economy and society: the poor, homeless, ignorant, and lazy, not to mention those who are mentally and physically limited. We have established a great many ad hoc solutions, both local and national, satisfying our immediate sense of guilt. We have government and non-profit solutions (and a great many businesses profiting from them) which have both immediate programs for the needy and long-term policies that address what we nowadays term "systemic problems." Yet, in our nation poverty is growing, and more children are in poverty than at any time since the Depression. The percentage of children eating subsidized school lunches increases in Allen County, and we have no sense there is an end in sight.
1. The economic system
The economic attitudes of our citizens divide us at least as much as religion or politics or race. Put simply, are we to let "market forces" or "the free market" or whatever term one chooses, decide the fate of our fellow citizens or all humanity? Are we content to let economic decisions trump moral decisions? Is there nothing more powerful, more important, more pertinent to how we live our lives, than a completely unlimited, laissez faire, economy? Are we so naïve as to expect such an attitude to be even remotely benign force for good, for health and harmony, for justice and peace.
My Dad, you remember him from, ran a small business selling lamps and other interior furnishings in the South. He was a businessman, a traveling salesman as it were. It fit his personality; he loved to schmooze. He loved to travel, and he abhorred a desk and the 8-5 routine. He was a cowboy a century too late, and selling was an ideal job.
You would be wrong, then, to assume that I oppose business and capitalism. I think it is the economic system with the greatest potential for creativity and freedom. However, as a human invention, it requires constant intervention to limit its human practitioners from their grossest excesses, their selfishness, greed, and lust. In this it is no different from any other economic system, but its positive attributes, especially its creativity freedom, make capitalism our best economic system yet.
2. The limits to benevolence
The limits of charity are similar to capitalism’s limits. We can’t force people to take advantage of our economic system’s gifts, and we can’t force people to care for themselves, apply themselves, or work. We can’t.
William Ellery Channing in the 1820’s pointed out the fixed limits of our concern for other individuals. They goal is not simple charity, gifts to help the poor get by. This changes nothing. We need more fully developed religious goals, focusing on our concern for the humanity of the poor.
We cannot, in the strict sense of the word, make any being happy. We can give others the means of happiness, together with motives to the faithful use of them; but on this faithfulness, on the free and full exercise of their own powers, their happiness depends. There is, thus, a fixed and impassable limit to benevolence. It can only make men happy through themselves, through their own freedom and energy. We go further. We believe that God has set the same limit to His own benevolence. He makes no being happy in any other sense than in that of giving him means, powers, motives, and a field of exertion. [107]
Channing's remarkable statement relates theology and praxis through his insight into the social basis of humanity. He makes several points. First, our power over others is limited, even for Good, and this limit is precisely that of religious autonomy, of human freedom. Even our most idealistic hopes flounder on the rocks of human freedom—the reason why Utopias of both Left and Right always fail. Second, we cannot provide only the means of self-improvement (such as economic capitalism); we must also help furnish the motivation. Unfortunately, not everyone takes advantage of the opportunities available to them, because of their limited background, whether from birth, by accident, or even by choice. Religiously, it is precisely this latter group of people who most concern us.
We are faced with the dual problem of feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and sheltering the homeless, while we try to solve the cause of their need and prevent future examples. We face both tasks.
Channing makes it clear that benevolence, however necessary in the short term, is not the end of the problem, nor is it the sole concern of religion. The political and economic systems of society provide the means, but religion must provide the motives that encourage people to take advantage of life's opportunities. Religion's former focus on benevolence was one of the reasons Channing and Parker were so critical of Christianity in their day. Religion must also be concerned with the structure of society and how it motivates its citizens, especially the neediest and weakest.
3. Justice: Beyond benevolence
Channing, Parker, and their contemporaries desired more than simple kindness for the poor. Channing said, "Kindness without justice is of little moral worth. It is a feeling rather than a principle. Principle enjoins justice, and will not offer favors as an atonement for wrongs." [397] He reminds us that not only does kindness finally fail the poor, but it serves to hide from society the need for more complete solutions. In a way Channing captures sentiments Karl Marx later made famous: "Men must, in some way or other, strike up a peace with their own consciences... Kindness, when thus made an opiate to conscience, is more a crime than a virtue."
A religion of kindness to the poor is an opiate of the conscience; so, too, are political or economic systems that deaden our awareness of the plight of the poor and disadvantaged. We cannot be satisfied with a society that ignores the structural problems of the disadvantaged. Excuses for the poor today sound like excuses for slavery two centuries ago; the poor and needy are not fully human, that is why they fail. Our economic systems must address the needs of the poor, whatever their source. Religion demands it.
Channing and Parker were describing the capitalism securing Boston's wealth and power, and their churches were bastions of the system, filled with the wealthiest families. Yet throughout their careers, both were critical of an unrestrained capitalism's ethics. Listen to Parker:
I know rich men tell us that capital is at the mercy of labor. That may be prophecy; it is not history; not fact. Uneducated labor, brute force without skill, is wholly at the mercy of capital. The capitalist can control the market for labor, which is what the poor man has to part with. The poor cannot combine as the rich. True, a mistake is sometimes made, and the demand for labor is increased. The result was doubtless God's design, but was it man's intention? The condition of the poor has hitherto been bettered, not so much by the design of the strong, as by God making their wrath and cupidity serve the weak. [130-1]
This seeming diatribe against God is typical of the outspoken Parker, yet Channing drew the issue sharpest. Directly contradicting capitalistic theory (and current conservative economics), he said, "The happiness of a community depends vastly more on the distribution than on the amount of its wealth." [both quotes, 145, emphasis JEA] Increasing wealth theoretically increases opportunity, but it does not address the economic structure nor the motives of those already disadvantaged, Parker's "poor by condition" that I mentioned last week If sacrifices are called for, Channing knows his priorities: "If, by securing time and means for improvement to the multitude, industry and capital should become less productive, I still say: Sacrifice the wealth, and not the mind of a people."
Channing has cut straight to the heart of the matter: economic forces, like government, cannot infringe on individual dignity nor the social compact. "Sacrifice the wealth, and not the mind of a people." Unrestrained capitalism (as opposed to a capitalism limited by the citizenry through democratic action) has a problem: it considers only economic solutions to all problems. But money is not the major issue for the poor; Channing continued,
This people will find out, at length, that money is not the supreme end of the social compact; that republican institutions in particular have liberty and improvement, and a development of human nature, for their objects, not a miserable, degrading drudgery from accumulation. [145]
The tendency to see the poor as economic objects, not as people caught in a limiting web of personal and social forces, deadens one's own sensibilities and responsibilities. As the prophets saw, in our treatment of the poor, widow, orphan, and stranger—"God's quartet"—we display our religious sensibilities. Ministers to Boston’s new capitalist congregations, Channing and Parker did not take exception to the system but to its operation without social responsibility. If a form of capitalism inhibits the social responsibilities of the wealthy and powerful (numbing their senses with material goods and power), and if it inhibits the disadvantaged from fully participating in society and their self development, then it must be corrected. This is not to say that capitalism is at fault. Both were ardent capitalists, but they understood that the economic system, like all human systems, was incomplete, requiring moral guidance, needing to be limited by the humane values of religion and morality to meet the needs of the people.
4. Charity and Justice
Religion, these prophetic ministers preached, stands to remind everyone that human systems are limited to the issues and fields for which they were developed. None of them—not any one of them—can fully address the human condition. No social, political, or economic system addresses the social and natural worlds where the person practices self-development.
In the world of economic reality, no theory sufficiently addresses the broad scope of human development. Religion names no social, economic, or political system as perfect. But it most certainly does advocate moral values applicable to all such systems. Furthermore, religion calls everyone to address those aspects of any system that contradict religious values. Thus, it tolerates a broad range of social, economic, or political systems. Yet religion calls all such systems back to the humane values at the core of the moral life.
From the pulpit I am neither socialist nor capitalist. But from the pulpit I must be a religiously concerned humanist. Poverty is most inhumane, cruel, and ultimately destructive of both individuals and society. No sensitive person can tolerate gross and systematic poverty. Yet our answer must go beyond merely feeding the starving and other such simple benevolent actions. Religion must also address the underlying structure of society, demanding that each social, economic, and political system correct its structural flaws and consider the widow, the poor, the orphan, and the stranger. We must have effective programs that limit greed and power, while they support the weak and needy to self-improvement, and continue to care for those who, for whatever reason, fail to care for themselves. We can afford to do this, and our values demand that we act on both these chores.
