Last night President Trump touted economic news that should warm the hearts of most Americans. Those of us who have experienced bouts of unemployment know how much of a gut-wrenching episode that can be. But there were many unhappy about the news of a robust economy.
A quick scan this morning of social media reveals that liberal Christians, like the Democrats who were in attendance, are not pleased with the economic prosperity and job creation that is becoming more and more evident. One commentator claimed that the address was a “Trump campaign rally,” another chanted “resist, resist, resist,” and others looked to collectivist solutions for poverty. If the energized economy was mentioned, there was no link to Trump’s policies. All this good economic stuff fell from the sky, perhaps a delayed reaction to Obama’s magical touch.
These and other Christian leftists, with their Keynesian/socialist worldviews, are troubled that unemployment is declining, employees are getting raises, and economic optimism is spreading far and wide. Normally this would be a good thing. The problem is that all this is happening with a Republican president.
But this response is not anything new. It was much the same in the Ronald Reagan years.
In the 1980s, the two most important monthly publications of the Christian Left were theOtheSide and Sojourners. Co-edited by John Alexander in Philadelphia, theOtherSide (later renamed The Other Side) billed itself as “a magazine focusing on peace, justice, and economic liberation from a radical Christian perspective,” and Sojourners, edited by Jim Wallis in Washington, D.C., was a magazine similar in content and format. Neither showed any excitement for the job creation that came with Reagan’s tax cuts.
After college, Jim Wallis became a co-founder of a radical Christian magazine the Post-American, later renamed Sojourners. The message in the first issue was clear: “As radical Christians we seek to recover the earliest doctrines of Christianity, its historical basis, its radical ethical spirit, and its revolutionary consciousness.” To be clear, the Sojourners crowd was uninterested in sharing the Gospel message (check out the magazine for yourself).
TheOtherSide’s John F. Alexander was a contributing editor of Sojourners. In his early days he taught philosophy at Wheaton College until his leftist views proved that he was not a good fit. He had a love-hate relationship with theOtherSide, a magazine his parents launched in the mid-1960s. He was often on the edge of burnout as he suffered from poor administrative skills, strained relationships with co-workers, and bad health, including eczema, proctitis, and hypertension.
Preferring to read Tolkien, Le Guin, Richard Adams, Vonnegut, Stephen Donaldson, Lloyd Alexander, C.S. Lewis, and other fantasy fiction, Alexander wrote that he “was as mean as sin” as he labored with the money-losing theOtherSide. In October 1984, after years of “internal hassles and conflicts” with co-workers he resigned as co-editor of theOtherSide and he and his family moved to Oregon.
Christian Left writers rarely claimed any deep knowledge of the study of economics and usually their attacks on actual economic policy lacked specificity. Key concepts such as oppression and justice remained largely undefined. Their case against free enterprise was oddly “uneconomic” and the expectation was for readers to simply “suspend critical and empirical judgment” and blame capitalism “for oppression by means of the notions of ‘implication’ and ‘complicity.’”
The typical argument of the Christian Left was that the “trickle-down theory” resulted in a “shrinking” economic pie and a declining standard of living; for them, the correct and biblical solution was a just distribution of wealth. Notable was the Christian Left’s appreciation for the writings of socialists, including Karl Marx. John Alexander wrote: “Oppressed people buy in because he [Marx] cares, he offers answers, and he gives a name to what is devouring them. He has power because he is nearly right, because he was raised on Old Testament concepts of justice.”
Actually, some Christian Left activists desired America to be free from the American dream: “That is, we don’t need to get rich …. We don’t need to be successful in any area.”
Explained in another way, Donna Day Lower, a Presbyterian minister serving in Philadelphia, wrote of the competitive work world and how the Protestant work ethic was a betrayal to millions of the unemployed. Was it healthy, she asked, that life’s meaning became so identified with paid labor?
There was almost something sinister about Reagan’s revitalization of the economy.
In 2018, the Christian Left maintains its radical message saying little or anything about the rise of poverty in the Obama years. There has yet to be any appreciation for the growing American economy of recent weeks that is bringing relief for those seeking a better life for their families.
Apparently, as one can see from the liberal responses to Trump’s address, a good-paying job is overrated.
The Bayview Review 