Getting maladjusted to business as usual
Political Pulpit
Object:
Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of Jesus and Christians as "maladjusted" to certain social dynamics. They refuse to conform to social conventions (A Testament of Hope, pp. 14-15). Alas too often Christians, in order to be "good" citizens, sell out to the norms of and values of the day to their personal detriment, to society's detriment, and to the detriment of our common morality.
The summer months have a number of assigned texts that allow you to teach maladjustment to your flock -- maladjustment to the dynamics of contemporary American business and what it is doing to us. We will start by noting these biblical texts, somewhat in inverse chronological order arranged by topics of maladjustment, saving mention of the texts most directly pertinent critiquing our 2010 business culture for the end.
Americans like to demonize criminality. But the second lesson for August 29 would have us care for those in prison (Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16). We also get some pretty counter-cultural rhetoric about sexual fidelity and renouncing the love of money. Middle-class and wealthy Americans these days tend to bash the poor, regarding their hardships as their own making. But that very day in August in the gospel lesson we even hear about Jesus wanting to care for the poor (Luke 14:1, 7-14). You can also preach that theme on July 18 with the first lesson (Amos 8:1-12). This Jesus of ours is even a law-breaker, if the law gets in the way of helping people. The gospel for August 22 (Luke 13:10-17) invites sermons on that topic. Such maladjusted social behavior is also prescribed by the first lessons July 25 as Hosea (1:2-10) marries a prostitute in order to demonstrate God's forgiving love as well as for July 11 (Amos 7:7-17) and June 20 (1 Kings 19:4 [5-7], 8-15a) as Amos and Elijah respectively defy the authorities in power. Of course you could proclaim that this defiance of authority is Jesus' style if you preach on the second lesson for July 25 (Colossians 2:6-15 [16-17]).
I would direct us to the first lesson for July 13 (1 Kings 21:1-10 [11-14], 15-21a) as a key passage for bringing many of these themes and texts into a coherent whole. It is the story of a dishonest business maneuver by King Ahab of Israel and Queen Jezebel. Through his prophet Elijah, God reacts to such "smart business" in a most maladjusted way, condemning the authority in power. This commitment relates to two assigned texts for August 8, as its first lesson calls for justice (Isaiah 1:1, 10-20) and its gospel (Luke 12:32-40) reminds us that your real treasure is on what your heart sets itself. But as is already intuitively apparent and will become more obvious is how our present business ethos has contributed to making poverty, the prison industry, as well as the breakdown of authority and the family the problems that they are today. All the preceding texts invite sermons that teach us to be maladjusted to these dynamics.
A look at present realities related to American business makes it clear why we need to get maladjusted. The big Wall Street corporation and banker bonuses, some of them paid (or planned to be paid) by companies whose executives sought federal bail-out money required by their less-than-excellent performance are the most egregious examples. In a number of other Fortune 500 companies, the bonuses came from pinching workers' pensions. In 2008 such companies with pension plans provided $44.5 billion in stock grants and options to their top executives while contributing only $39.5 billion to the company pension find. Financial service companies handed out $2.30 in stocks and stock options to their executives for every $1 they contributed to their employee retirement funds! Share those statistics on the Sundays noted above. We need to activate some Christian maladjustment.
Other outrageous data abounds: It is estimated that benefits for the American labor force may be cut up to 27% in 2010 compared to the far from robust 2009 packages. And the cost of health insurance has more than doubled since 1999 rates. None of this impacts the CEO. A study of the Institute for Policy Studies based on 2008 data indicated that the ratio of salaries for American CEOs to the average American worker was 319 to 1! I have already called your attention to the fact that the gospel for August 8 is all about that sort of greed, and we also have noted that a similar point is made in the second lesson for August 29.
Now with the recession we have skyrocketing unemployment ("downsizing" the execs call it, to depersonalize the human tragedy), 2.6 million by the end of 2008 and over 10% of the labor force at the end of 2009. That makes the labor force put up with the bad jobs they already have, for fear of losing the sweat-shop that at least pays something. Sometimes the labor force will even go without pay, just so the owners make enough to stay afloat. With 17% of Americans in poverty, the highest of percentage of the population of all industrialized nations of the West, the recession is not all that bad for the company's bottom line. Working conditions, benefits, workload, and wages don't need to be improved. With those realities, it is little wonder that in 2009 Americans ranked eleventh among citizens of other nations in receiving paid vacation days (13 for the US laborer compared to 38 for the most-vacationed French worker). Little wonder given these realities that only 45% of the American labor force is happy with their jobs.
These data's connections to poverty and justice mentioned in the texts we have noted for these months are obvious. We need to put the numbers and trends before the flock so they can truly become maladjusted to all the smoke and mirrors the business establishment uses now to demonize government regulation and unions (which are just trying to get workers a fair shake from the fat cats).
Another set of statistics also relevant for sermons on justice (first lessons of June 6 and August 8) as well as Paul's hymn of the unity of Jew and Greek, male and female in the second lesson for June 20 (Galatians 3:23-39) is the wage gap between men and women (according to 2005 Census statistics the average full-time employed male over 25 made $40,798 compared to $31,223 for his female equivalent). While white and Asian men averaged a figure above that of the typical American worker, black men averaged only a $25,000 salary and Hispanic men just $20,000! We definitely need to get maladjusted to these numbers. And that means protesting against "business as usual" in America.
We can and should link these trends to our attitudes toward the poor, the prisoner, those in authority, and sexual fidelity. A book written about a decade by Sociologist Richard Sennett, titled The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism, is still most relevant. The title says it all. Sennett convincingly demonstrates that business dynamics, especially since the dawning of the computer era and the associated business-administration theories of flexibility, niche marketing and team management, economic and social mores have combined to alter the character and values Americans hold dear. As a result of these dynamics, stressing openness to new ideas, creativity, and risk, loyalty is no longer a virtue (witness the breakdown of the institution of lifelong marriage and the regular shifting of jobs and careers). Don't forget to talk about these business dynamics if you preach on marriage on August 29, because if we don't get maladjusted to such dynamics marriage will be increasingly jeopardized. Government regulations are also perceived in such a business ethos as stifling for business, limiting creativity and flexibility, since laws outlive their original context. But if we believe in original sin, don't we need regulations for the sake of justice?
The flexibility-team management twin emphases create a culture of meritocracy (but in reality it's really networking, not just merit, that gets you anywhere). The teams established by business are short-term and flexible, though you may meet someone (a mentor) who will help you. Of course he/she may drop you if expedient and may move on. And so we tell ourselves as we climb the ladder that we get there by our skill. Competitive as we must be to get there, we are led to demonize the losers (the poor and the imprisoned). Our business culture coupled with the innate sin we share tell us that we can't admit the reason the losers didn't succeed is that they were not blessed with our contacts. In a flexible environment with no incentive to display loyalty to or solidarity with those in our community, we conclude that we owe these "losers" no loyalty. They're on their own. See how business as usual fosters the present demonizing of the poor and of those in prison so characteristic of our times. We need to nurture maladjustment to such thinking with some sermons on how we have been conditioned by business to think that way (see above, the relevant texts for July 18, August 8, August 29). Business and its values reflected in the media teach the prevailing business values. These are the socio-cultural authorities we need to challenge (see above, June 20 and July 11).
The team-management style of most companies is not about community (as it is "spun"), but about amassing more power for the CEOs and his staff. Because we are supposedly working together, if things go wrong the boss has the team to blame. (The buck no longer stops with the CEO in American business.) Also because the natural employer/employee adversarial relation is now discredited by the team concept, there is less chance for the workers to confront the boss and each other if things are going wrong, and the idea of labor unions and strikes are politically incorrect in such a corporate culture. The result: The boss gets more power, and the work force less leverage to get a good salary and benefits. Sensing that they are no longer really responsible to their employees, who with the old adversarial models were a segment of the company owners and managers you had to live with and so might get to feel some responsibility toward, greed and selfishness indigenous to all us sinful human beings is no longer restrained. This explains the unconscionable salary gaps between CEOs and the labor force we have noted. It is evident that these gaps are not just a matter of the greed of a few isolated CEOs, but the outcome of structural management dynamics. Without restraints, risk-taking (something capitalism and success in an undertaking demand to some extent) reaches new, irresponsible heights, with little to no accountability. Have we not described the dynamics of the financial meltdown of 2008 and following?
A related dynamic: Unchecked in the ways just noted in the exercise of power, the real authorities in society become the business execs who control the media, buy the politicians with their contributions, and own us (the labor force). How else do you explain all the hullabaloo against health-care reform? The public was brainwashed by these authorities. Failure to act significantly, while health-care insurance rises and employer benefits drop, certainly doesn't help anyone but CEOs. Now thanks to the Bush Supreme Court, corporations will be able to spend all they want in the media on their favorite politicians in an attempt to brainwash the public to vote for the candidates these corporations now own. Yes we need to be maladjusted to these dynamics, and the biblical texts testifying to the rejection of authorities need to be applied to the growing power of business executives. Keep these themes in mind and the texts I noted.
No two ways about it. Business as usual has been calling the shots in America, at least since the Reagan era. The statistics I've cited show that its dominance since the 1980s has been bad for America, and left unchallenged it can only get worse. Unless Christians with the help of leaders like us along with other people of good will get maladjusted to these business dynamics, greed, class-ism, and the erosions of the American character and values can only get worse. If you don't agree with me, let me know how you address the assigned texts for the summer in preaching in order to support your pro-business agenda. I'll bet you can't pull it off. At least let your parishioners read the statistics you've just read in this column. If you think it's un-Christian to be so maladjusted to business as usual, that we ought to be more neutral, consider how maladjusted and political was the preaching of the first Protestant, Martin Luther:
But that I demand: Whatever you deal about among men, in buying or selling you are to consider it as something uncertain, which is not to be trusted and believed in… As soon, however, as you think a purchaser to be an honest man who will keep his word, and of whom you are certain that he will not deceive you; so soon you have fallen away from God, have prayed to a spectre and put your trust in a liar.
(The Complete Sermons of Martin Luther, Vol. 3/1, pp. 302-303)
Mark Ellingsen is a professor on the faculty of the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta and the author of hundreds of articles and fourteen books, most recently "Sin Bravely: A Joyful Alternative to a Purpose-Driven Life" (Continuum).
The summer months have a number of assigned texts that allow you to teach maladjustment to your flock -- maladjustment to the dynamics of contemporary American business and what it is doing to us. We will start by noting these biblical texts, somewhat in inverse chronological order arranged by topics of maladjustment, saving mention of the texts most directly pertinent critiquing our 2010 business culture for the end.
Americans like to demonize criminality. But the second lesson for August 29 would have us care for those in prison (Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16). We also get some pretty counter-cultural rhetoric about sexual fidelity and renouncing the love of money. Middle-class and wealthy Americans these days tend to bash the poor, regarding their hardships as their own making. But that very day in August in the gospel lesson we even hear about Jesus wanting to care for the poor (Luke 14:1, 7-14). You can also preach that theme on July 18 with the first lesson (Amos 8:1-12). This Jesus of ours is even a law-breaker, if the law gets in the way of helping people. The gospel for August 22 (Luke 13:10-17) invites sermons on that topic. Such maladjusted social behavior is also prescribed by the first lessons July 25 as Hosea (1:2-10) marries a prostitute in order to demonstrate God's forgiving love as well as for July 11 (Amos 7:7-17) and June 20 (1 Kings 19:4 [5-7], 8-15a) as Amos and Elijah respectively defy the authorities in power. Of course you could proclaim that this defiance of authority is Jesus' style if you preach on the second lesson for July 25 (Colossians 2:6-15 [16-17]).
I would direct us to the first lesson for July 13 (1 Kings 21:1-10 [11-14], 15-21a) as a key passage for bringing many of these themes and texts into a coherent whole. It is the story of a dishonest business maneuver by King Ahab of Israel and Queen Jezebel. Through his prophet Elijah, God reacts to such "smart business" in a most maladjusted way, condemning the authority in power. This commitment relates to two assigned texts for August 8, as its first lesson calls for justice (Isaiah 1:1, 10-20) and its gospel (Luke 12:32-40) reminds us that your real treasure is on what your heart sets itself. But as is already intuitively apparent and will become more obvious is how our present business ethos has contributed to making poverty, the prison industry, as well as the breakdown of authority and the family the problems that they are today. All the preceding texts invite sermons that teach us to be maladjusted to these dynamics.
A look at present realities related to American business makes it clear why we need to get maladjusted. The big Wall Street corporation and banker bonuses, some of them paid (or planned to be paid) by companies whose executives sought federal bail-out money required by their less-than-excellent performance are the most egregious examples. In a number of other Fortune 500 companies, the bonuses came from pinching workers' pensions. In 2008 such companies with pension plans provided $44.5 billion in stock grants and options to their top executives while contributing only $39.5 billion to the company pension find. Financial service companies handed out $2.30 in stocks and stock options to their executives for every $1 they contributed to their employee retirement funds! Share those statistics on the Sundays noted above. We need to activate some Christian maladjustment.
Other outrageous data abounds: It is estimated that benefits for the American labor force may be cut up to 27% in 2010 compared to the far from robust 2009 packages. And the cost of health insurance has more than doubled since 1999 rates. None of this impacts the CEO. A study of the Institute for Policy Studies based on 2008 data indicated that the ratio of salaries for American CEOs to the average American worker was 319 to 1! I have already called your attention to the fact that the gospel for August 8 is all about that sort of greed, and we also have noted that a similar point is made in the second lesson for August 29.
Now with the recession we have skyrocketing unemployment ("downsizing" the execs call it, to depersonalize the human tragedy), 2.6 million by the end of 2008 and over 10% of the labor force at the end of 2009. That makes the labor force put up with the bad jobs they already have, for fear of losing the sweat-shop that at least pays something. Sometimes the labor force will even go without pay, just so the owners make enough to stay afloat. With 17% of Americans in poverty, the highest of percentage of the population of all industrialized nations of the West, the recession is not all that bad for the company's bottom line. Working conditions, benefits, workload, and wages don't need to be improved. With those realities, it is little wonder that in 2009 Americans ranked eleventh among citizens of other nations in receiving paid vacation days (13 for the US laborer compared to 38 for the most-vacationed French worker). Little wonder given these realities that only 45% of the American labor force is happy with their jobs.
These data's connections to poverty and justice mentioned in the texts we have noted for these months are obvious. We need to put the numbers and trends before the flock so they can truly become maladjusted to all the smoke and mirrors the business establishment uses now to demonize government regulation and unions (which are just trying to get workers a fair shake from the fat cats).
Another set of statistics also relevant for sermons on justice (first lessons of June 6 and August 8) as well as Paul's hymn of the unity of Jew and Greek, male and female in the second lesson for June 20 (Galatians 3:23-39) is the wage gap between men and women (according to 2005 Census statistics the average full-time employed male over 25 made $40,798 compared to $31,223 for his female equivalent). While white and Asian men averaged a figure above that of the typical American worker, black men averaged only a $25,000 salary and Hispanic men just $20,000! We definitely need to get maladjusted to these numbers. And that means protesting against "business as usual" in America.
We can and should link these trends to our attitudes toward the poor, the prisoner, those in authority, and sexual fidelity. A book written about a decade by Sociologist Richard Sennett, titled The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism, is still most relevant. The title says it all. Sennett convincingly demonstrates that business dynamics, especially since the dawning of the computer era and the associated business-administration theories of flexibility, niche marketing and team management, economic and social mores have combined to alter the character and values Americans hold dear. As a result of these dynamics, stressing openness to new ideas, creativity, and risk, loyalty is no longer a virtue (witness the breakdown of the institution of lifelong marriage and the regular shifting of jobs and careers). Don't forget to talk about these business dynamics if you preach on marriage on August 29, because if we don't get maladjusted to such dynamics marriage will be increasingly jeopardized. Government regulations are also perceived in such a business ethos as stifling for business, limiting creativity and flexibility, since laws outlive their original context. But if we believe in original sin, don't we need regulations for the sake of justice?
The flexibility-team management twin emphases create a culture of meritocracy (but in reality it's really networking, not just merit, that gets you anywhere). The teams established by business are short-term and flexible, though you may meet someone (a mentor) who will help you. Of course he/she may drop you if expedient and may move on. And so we tell ourselves as we climb the ladder that we get there by our skill. Competitive as we must be to get there, we are led to demonize the losers (the poor and the imprisoned). Our business culture coupled with the innate sin we share tell us that we can't admit the reason the losers didn't succeed is that they were not blessed with our contacts. In a flexible environment with no incentive to display loyalty to or solidarity with those in our community, we conclude that we owe these "losers" no loyalty. They're on their own. See how business as usual fosters the present demonizing of the poor and of those in prison so characteristic of our times. We need to nurture maladjustment to such thinking with some sermons on how we have been conditioned by business to think that way (see above, the relevant texts for July 18, August 8, August 29). Business and its values reflected in the media teach the prevailing business values. These are the socio-cultural authorities we need to challenge (see above, June 20 and July 11).
The team-management style of most companies is not about community (as it is "spun"), but about amassing more power for the CEOs and his staff. Because we are supposedly working together, if things go wrong the boss has the team to blame. (The buck no longer stops with the CEO in American business.) Also because the natural employer/employee adversarial relation is now discredited by the team concept, there is less chance for the workers to confront the boss and each other if things are going wrong, and the idea of labor unions and strikes are politically incorrect in such a corporate culture. The result: The boss gets more power, and the work force less leverage to get a good salary and benefits. Sensing that they are no longer really responsible to their employees, who with the old adversarial models were a segment of the company owners and managers you had to live with and so might get to feel some responsibility toward, greed and selfishness indigenous to all us sinful human beings is no longer restrained. This explains the unconscionable salary gaps between CEOs and the labor force we have noted. It is evident that these gaps are not just a matter of the greed of a few isolated CEOs, but the outcome of structural management dynamics. Without restraints, risk-taking (something capitalism and success in an undertaking demand to some extent) reaches new, irresponsible heights, with little to no accountability. Have we not described the dynamics of the financial meltdown of 2008 and following?
A related dynamic: Unchecked in the ways just noted in the exercise of power, the real authorities in society become the business execs who control the media, buy the politicians with their contributions, and own us (the labor force). How else do you explain all the hullabaloo against health-care reform? The public was brainwashed by these authorities. Failure to act significantly, while health-care insurance rises and employer benefits drop, certainly doesn't help anyone but CEOs. Now thanks to the Bush Supreme Court, corporations will be able to spend all they want in the media on their favorite politicians in an attempt to brainwash the public to vote for the candidates these corporations now own. Yes we need to be maladjusted to these dynamics, and the biblical texts testifying to the rejection of authorities need to be applied to the growing power of business executives. Keep these themes in mind and the texts I noted.
No two ways about it. Business as usual has been calling the shots in America, at least since the Reagan era. The statistics I've cited show that its dominance since the 1980s has been bad for America, and left unchallenged it can only get worse. Unless Christians with the help of leaders like us along with other people of good will get maladjusted to these business dynamics, greed, class-ism, and the erosions of the American character and values can only get worse. If you don't agree with me, let me know how you address the assigned texts for the summer in preaching in order to support your pro-business agenda. I'll bet you can't pull it off. At least let your parishioners read the statistics you've just read in this column. If you think it's un-Christian to be so maladjusted to business as usual, that we ought to be more neutral, consider how maladjusted and political was the preaching of the first Protestant, Martin Luther:
But that I demand: Whatever you deal about among men, in buying or selling you are to consider it as something uncertain, which is not to be trusted and believed in… As soon, however, as you think a purchaser to be an honest man who will keep his word, and of whom you are certain that he will not deceive you; so soon you have fallen away from God, have prayed to a spectre and put your trust in a liar.
(The Complete Sermons of Martin Luther, Vol. 3/1, pp. 302-303)
Mark Ellingsen is a professor on the faculty of the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta and the author of hundreds of articles and fourteen books, most recently "Sin Bravely: A Joyful Alternative to a Purpose-Driven Life" (Continuum).
