Breaking the Gag Rule

President Obama’s important electoral victory grew from a younger generation of voters that is at once more diverse, but also profoundly at-risk.

            The new report released last week by the Washington-based think tanks, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and Economic Policy Institute, documents their predicament.  If they were part of the middle fifth of U. S. households, their incomes grew only 1.2 percent in the past fifteen years (after adjusting for inflation). Of course many in the Obama majority are only honorary members of that middle class with virtually no income gains for decades. The report, entitled Pulling Apart, finds that

Nationally, over the last thirty years the richest fifth of households enjoyed larger average income gains in dollar terms each year ($2,550, after adjusting for inflation) than the poorest fifth experienced during the entire three decades ($1,330).    

This means that much of the “hope” they created in electing President Obama for a second term is now living on fumes.

             The picture of gross injustice for these moderate income families is beyond scandalous. Pulling Apart examined the eleven largest states in the nation and found that   

the average income of the top 5 percent rose between the late 1970s and mid-2000s by more than $100,000….By contrast, the largest increase in average income for the bottom fifth of households in these states was only $5,620.  In New York...average incomes grew by $194,000 among the top 5 percent of households but by less than $250 among the bottom fifth of households.

In these 11 large states, the incomes of the top 5 percent of households increased by 85 percent to 162 percent between the late 1970s and mid-2000s. By contrast, incomes of the bottom fifth of households didn’t grow by more than 27 percent in any of these states, and in one state —Michigan – they actually fell.

These morally outrageous social policies have destroyed the prospects of whole generations of middle and lower income families, placing the deepening crisis of income inequality on the same burner where slavery, early 20^th century industrial tyranny, and racial segregation were confronted by civil war, Social Gospel reformers such as Walter Rauschenbusch and the Martin Luther King, Jr. voting rights movements.

This also helps explain why, at a  recent lecture in San Jose by the renowned biblical scholar, Walter Bruggeman, a young pastor rose to ask about the contemporary consequences of the biblical texts about prophetic justice Bruggeman had been discussing. She put her question sharply: 

            “So, does this mean,” she asked, “that we will have to be shot?”  Her question tests who will answer the call to a heightened level of non violent protest in both the churches and among the Obama followers.

Vividly aware of the need to resist the outrageous inequities now set in concrete in the daily lives of most citizens, the questioning pastor at the Bruggeman lecture appeared to realize that confronting growing inequality in the United States will require overcoming the gag rule in both the quietest middle class and in the churches where disturbing the peace can mean the end of pastoral careers.

This recalls John Quincy Adams, who as a member of the House of Representatives following his brief presidency offered a resolution every year for sixteen years to abolish the notorious Gag Rule that prevented any anti-slavery petition from being brought forward until, finally, he succeeded and new sentiments accumulated that would lead to emancipation.

The Obama majority does not have sixteen years. The question is whether their great electoral victory will strengthen them to break the cultural gag rule that expects people to accept their place in an increasingly stratified society. Will Obama’s majority risk public disapproval and organize non-violent movements to resist growing inequality? Will the churches tell them why it’s meet and right so to do?

 

First Perils: The Temporary Majority

       Scanning the crowd as President Obama spoke late in the evening following his election victory the TV cameras showed  faces of a joyful audience dramatically younger and more diverse than the Romney crowds visible during the election campaign.   

       Recent data from the Pew Research Center tells us that this younger audience is also more distant than their parents from traditional institutions of American life such as the churches. Only 40 percent of these younger adults believe religion is very important compared to 75 percent in their grandparent generations. Twenty-six percent of the younger adult faces at the Obama victory rally will have no religious affiliation.  Fewer than 18 percent will attend church even once a month. That trend is growing:

Fully one-in-four adults under age 30 (25%) are unaffiliated, describing their religion as "atheist," "agnostic" or "nothing in particular." This compares with less than one-fifth of people in their 30s (19%).    

      So it is not only the Republicans toward whom growing numbers of younger generation adults have become disaffected, it is also the churches and the trend is growing!  The Pew studies:

Less than half of adults under age 30 say that religion is very important in their lives (45%), compared with roughly six-in-ten adults 30 and older (54% among those ages 30-49, 59% among those ages 50-64 and 69% among those ages 65 and older). By this measure, young people exhibit lower levels of religious intensity than their elders do today, and this holds true within a variety of religious groups.

      There are several serious questions here. What does it mean for the churches? What does it mean for President Obama? Quickly put, for the churches it means the graying of congregations, already obvious on Sunday mornings and it means many of the brightest and best young voices have left the churches in recent years if they were ever there at all.

      The meaning for the President is connected to this declining faith paradigm. Are President Obama's appeals in a language of  hope connected to anything more than his personal perspective? The President  came very close to losing these faces in the tragedy of the Great Recession and he could lose them in the not-distant future if there is no concrete relief. Where is this hope? Many people in any random crowd these days have suffered joblessness. Many remain on the streets today unemployed. Many others have had their jobs shifted off-shore and have lost their first homes. Even hi tech workers often find themselves suddenly obsolete. 

      No moral paradigm has been invoked to prevent this or slow it appreciably. Apple last month launched several new I-gadgets, selling them by the millions while hiring Chinese workers by the tens of thousands to assemble them. It has passed before the public eye with hardly a complaint. Apple hired very few assembly workers in American cities to build their stock value because--as its supporters are fond of putting it--"It's not a moral issue." 

       Inequality of opportunity and the grounds for hope are growing worse. The rich really are getting richer. The president's supporters are living mostly on the fumes of hope. If proposals for jobs and the economy do not become more concrete, if they fail to find support among both Republicans and Democrats, the election victory will pale very quickly as it did in 2008 when all of us were first faced with the Great Recession.

        The back story buried behind the new faces is another matter and, leadership aside for the moment, is a more serious question: What does the disaffection from Christian tradition mean for a country whose moral framework was largely built by it?  What intellectual roots and spiritual streams of nurture--broadly stated--can now feed visions of peaceable kingdoms in today’s culture?  What language can be spoken by faith communities that the new generation of leaders can understand? We’ll discuss this question in coming blogs, very soon.