“American Community” is a surprisingly rare phrase. We speak of hyphenated American Communities (African-American Community, Hindu-American Community, Native-American Community, and so on), but rarely of an “American Community.” It seems slightly off that our nation, which prides itself on diversity, bricolage, being united, etc. does not recognize itself as a community. We are – as I can testify to after standing in a sea of faces on the national mall three weeks ago – a profoundly unique, hopeful, and united community.
Why don’t we know ourselves as a community?
I’d like to make a few suggestions, and then provide a theological reflection on a means to move forwards towards community or, scripturally put, Koinonia –
Milton Friedman Serving as Economic Advisor to Ronald Reagan
1) The United States fought a fifty-year war with ‘commun’-ism. As the heart of communism, at least theoretically, is a certain notion of community. And, while we now know that notion as flawed, it was very much a topic of debate for the previous 150 years. We don’t discuss it much, but many of the greatest theologians and Church leaders of the 20th century were at one point or another socialists. Yet, by the time many of us arrived the terms of the debate had been firmly settled. Reagan was able to call the U.S.S.R. – and thereby communism – the EVIL empire. The inverse of which places us, as non-communists, as the Good.
2) Out of the 150 year debate and fifty-year war all aspects that could be labeled as “socialistic” or “communistic” could be branded as “evil.” The fight between “socialized” or “universal” healthcare is emblematic of this phenomenon. Whenever an aspect of our society could be viewed as ‘communistic’ we adjusted to move strongly against it. The rhetoric beginning in the Reagan era and continuing through today is quite demonstrative of this mentality. For example, the famous line from the movie Wall Street, ‘Greed is Good,’ was recently the title of a Wall Street Journal editorial defending executive bonuses against the Administration’s proposed TARP legislation.
More Below The Fold. Sorry for the long post. Lot of thoughts here.
3) While not always put so explicitly, “Greed is Good” has been the prevailing economic mentality since 1980. Greed is what we thought drove a capitalist economy. After all, ‘capitalize’ is simply a derivative of capitalism. Godfather of conservative economics Milton Friedman – in fact the first economist I was taught as an undergrad – well demonstrated the immorality of our economic system when discussing “Greed.”
It is hard to listen to that clip of Milton Friedman and fathom that it was a Christian “Moral Majority” movement that put his ideology in office. ”Where do we find these angels who are going to organize society for us?” What a profound question.
4) The war on communism is not, assuredly, the only source of a strong anti-community sentiment. I’m sure other commentators on this site would just as readily point to standing racial, religious, gender, and economic inequalities as driving foundations to our anti-communal natures, as well as an undercurrent of hyper-individualism, profiled by thinkers like Robert Putnam, where the front-porch became the fenced-in back-yard in the second half of the 20th century. But I think the anti-community rhetoric very much reaches its full volume in the era of Reagan. The combination of the southern strategy with the free-market strategy – beginning in Lee Atwater and running through Karl Rove – took advantage of community splits on racial and economic lines. False memes like the ‘welfare mom’ were perfect combinations of racial stereotyping and economic indifference. By taking advantage of splits within our national community and demonizing or declaring evil (like the U.S.S.R) any governmental attempts to share (still a dirty work in politics) resources across economic, racial, or gender (ERA was also a major player in the 1980s) lines, the Reagan era was able perpetuate anti-community sentiments.
5) Greed is Good seemed to be a truth for quite some time – especially in the media, on television, in business success stories. We were economically successful. The proof was in the pudding, so-to-speak, until this year when it suddenly wasn’t.
6) I’ll point to three specific instances of these memes in the 2008 election;
Rudy Giuliani at RNC
We have the era of Reagan – 1980-2008: greed run amuck; the dominance of the much acclaimed ‘era of conservatism’ or what Karl Rove called the “permanent conservative majority;” the period of the electorally successful and socially regrettable southern strategy; free, unregulated, market ideology; the teaching that you are on your own; a lift yourself up by the bootstraps society; the myth of the self-made man; indifference (what George Bernard Shaw called the “Devil’s Disciple”) towards the poor and the weak and the most vulnerable amongst us; going from workers making $1 to their CEO’s $100 to workers making $1 to their CEO’s $450; a society that doesn’t give the poor food, housing, or clothes but instead the “opportunity” to “make it” in our market-based society. While “opportunity” is a powerful and important thing, more basic are clothes, food, housing, and community. Sometimes we need to
“give a man a fish:” After all, it would not have been such a miracle for Jesus to teach a crowd of 5,000 how to fish rather than “simply” giving them fish.
If “Greed is Good” then what is generosity?
The question highlights the trouble with what many of us took as economic truth for the past 28 years. In its glorification of greed America has lost what it means to be a community. So much so, that we created a whole slew of anti-community myths. We taught an ideology, at home and abroad, that to be against community was what brought prosperity, progress, and opportunity.
Crisis, though, is quite good at creating community. The era of Reagan, as we now know and scripture was telling us all along, was a house of cards. The society built on greed, individualism, myths of success, will crumble. The emperor (herein our financial dominance) had no clothes. Scripture (especially in the economic realm) has a lot more to say about community than the self-made man. The term scripture uses is Koinonia, which I imagine we will be hearing a lot more about in sermons and theological journals in the coming months — Koinonia is a theologically richer term than our modern notion of “community,” and may be more current to our time.
So what are the meanings of Koinonia?
- Koinonia means participation with God in community.
- Koinonia is the term for “communion” or the sharing of a meal, and, in many traditions, the participatory taking of the body of Christ.
- Koinonos means ‘a sharer’ in classical Greek. Not necessarily a spirit of generosity but tangible giving acts.
- Koinonos also means a companion, co-owner, or partner. In Luke 5, James, John, and Simon are called koinonia or companions. The term can also be used to describe an companionship relationship with God.
- Koinonos is an antithesis of greed.
- Koinonos is considered of the most desired virtues in Biblical writings and Classical Greek literature.
When we are anti-community we are (what Thomas Aquinas once called) anti-Koinonia. I’m going to stop short of saying we are against the will of God. But we are definitely against what seems to be the desire of the Gospels. We are extolling a virtue in direct opposition to the virtue of community as apparent throughout scripture. Ought we be surprised that the house of cards fell?
Where were those saying Greed is Bad when Greed was Good?
Well, first, Greed was not good for everyone. There were many voices of pain that we were not listening to during the era of Reagan. Secondly, while many churches changed their theology to encompass a theology of greed (see Time Magazine’s “Maybe We Should Blame God For the Subprime mess,” which asks whether the prosperity gospel caused the economic crisis), many other churches stayed true in their call of caring for community and standing against greed. Thirdly, it was in the Barack Obamas of the world who were working hard to organize communities to meet each other’s needs.
I hope, during these dark hours, we learn to depend on one-another. That we no longer just glorify the story of the successful small business owner but also the community she enriches and the folks who work there. That we speak of “us” instead of “them” when speaking of the poor among us. That the Gospel returns to being a living word calling us together across religious, gender, racial, and economic divides – in common (community) purpose in a single body. The return of Koinonia. The return of Ephesians 4. The return of E Pluribus Unum.
If 2008 was about us coming together, then 2009 is going to be about Life Together (to quote Bonhoeffer’s title). In this hopeful new day, lets discover what life together means in an American Community.
So glad you wrote this. The quandry you have named, along with all of its ramifications, have led us to the irony in which we as an American community have come to prize things such as radical autonomy and economic prosperity as virtues, and, as indicators that we are ’specially” blessed by God. God have mercy on us! And we are so consumed by our radical autonomy that, as you have insightfully noted, the words “community” and “share” conjure up feelings of fear and harken people’s minds back to the Cold War and the so dreaded societal ills of “socialism” and “communism.” As a result, when we speak of things such as universal health care, many cringe and respond with their deeply embedded notions of autonomy, saying they reject a so-called “socialized” health care system, where individuals have take no responsibility. Sadly, this understanding not only suggests that health care is a human privilege and not a right, it continues to perpetuate the notion that we are all these autonomous beings fully and utterly independent of the people and creation around us. This radical autonomy, however, becomes exactly the thing it espouses to despise: irresponsible. Irresponsible, because this radical autonomy turns a blind eye to the undeniable fact that some of us have privilege and have had more access to privilege than others, and to expect some people to be able to just take the bad hand they are dealt in life and simply overcome it, refuses to take responsibility for the complicity we ALL have in the perpetuation of the various unjust systems we find ourselves in – whether we intend to or not. The gospel stands in direct contradiction to a radical austonomy that turns a blind eye – that refuses to take responsibility – that chooses the autonomous self over the “we” and the “us”. May we seek to focus on the “we” and the “us”, seeking to be like the community in Acts who “shared everything the had in common.”
[...] been mulling over Grant’s book-of-a-post on (among other things) our nation’s acceptance of the “greed is good” economic [...]