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?