poor." .
In the United States, 19th century writers like Herbert Spencer said that poverty was the direct.
consequence of sloth and sinfulness. One writer said: "Next to alcohol, and perhaps alongside it,.
the most pernicious fluid is indiscriminate soup." Cotton Mather had set the tone. "For those who.
indulge themselves in idleness, the express command of God unto us is, that we should let them.
starve." (The current Republican Contract With America is all too continuous with this villainy.) .
Religion joined the attack on the poor in a big way. Drawing from Augustinian and Calvinist.
predestinationist themes, it divided humanity into the saved and the damned. Wealth came to be.
seen as a sign of God's favor, and then, of course, in a double whammy, poverty came to be seen.
as a mark of God's disgust. Bishop Lawrence of Massachusetts intoned: "In the long run, it is only.
to the man of morality that wealth comes.Godliness is in league with riches." It is hard to get.
further from the Gospels that put God firmly in league with the poor: "Blessed are the poor.of.
such is the kingdom of heaven." And of the rich? It would be easier to get a camel through the eye.
of a needle than to get them to take a God's eye view of their hypocrisies. Privileged classes, as.
Reinhold Niebuhr prophetically reminded us, have always been shamefully full of self praise. They.
have traditionally heaped moral encomia upon themselves, dubbing themselves "nobles" and even,.
in that most classical of misnomers, "gentlemen." .
So the poor must not only be stripped and starved. They must also be insulted and blamed for.
their poverty and painted as too lazy to go out and get those mythical decent jobs that are not.
even there! .
(3) It is an insight of the Jewish and Christian scriptures that poverty and wealth are correlative.
As Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza says: "In Israel poverty was understood as injustice." Guilt was.
assigned to the system, not to the poor.
