Jordan Ballor has an intriguing post on “the relationship between the church’s approach to charity and the creation of the welfare state” as discussed in Lester DeKoster and Gerard Berghoef 1980 book, The Deacons Handbook: A Manual of Stewardship:
DeKoster and Berghoef argue in “The Church and the Welfare State” that “The Church is largely responsible for the coming of the modern welfare community.” But they also contend that the diaconal office is the key to answering the challenge posed by the welfare state: “The Church could be largely responsible for purging welfare of its faults and problems. IF enough deacons caught the vision!”
The church helped to bring about the welfare state in two ways. First, the Church embodied the idea of loving self-sacrifice in service of others. “The Word which the Church proclaims demands charity and justice for the poor. As this Word has permeated at least the Western world, an alerted public conscience has demanded public welfare,” write DeKoster and Berghoef. “The Church is the parent of the welfare community.”
But this “welfare community” became secularized when the Church “did not, and perhaps in some respects could not, measure up to her own ideals. Not all the starving were fed, not all of the homeless given shelter, not all of the oppressed and exploited relieved. The cries of the needy ascended to heaven. The Lord answered with the welfare state. The government undertakes to do what the Church demands and then fails to achieve by herself.”
In this sense, the welfare state is understood to be God’s preservational (thus imperfect) answer to the failed duty of the Church:
Thus the Church is, both by commission and by omission, author of the welfare state. Deacons start from here. Government has undertaken to do what conscience, tutored out of the Scriptures, demands but fails, through the Church, entirely to achieve.
December 7th, 2009 | 10:36 am | #1
I certainly agree that the church is partially responsible for the welfare state in spirit, though I might disagree with a few historical details. I would suggest the following points for consideration:
1) The 19th century church’s flirtation with (or active embracing of) progressivism and the social gospel. When for many Christians after the Civil War the Gospel stopped being “forgiveness for our sins” and started being “love thy neighbor,” many Christians entered an alliance with the Progressives and began to focus on social action, incuding civil welfare programs (see particularly the influence of Henry Ward Beecher and William Jennings Bryan).
2) During the Great Depression, there was simply no way churches could perform all of the necessary charity work.
These two events together- the theological foundation for the idea that the churches can turn over some of their responsibilities to the government combined with the inability of performing those responsibilities themselves- meant that there was (and still is) virtually no resistance to the creation of a welfare state.
Anyway, just my thoughts on the issue…
December 7th, 2009 | 10:40 am | #2
Sounds great, except that’s not what actually happened in history. The welfare state was the vehicle of the American Church for serving the poor because that is what the movement progressives within most of the late 19th-century and early 20th-century Christian denominations desired.
The government did not “undertake to do what the Church demanded and then failed to achieve by herself.” The American Church, in actual U. S. history, did not intend to achieve it by herself because they did not have to: they had control of politics and desired to enact a vision of charity and social justice through the government intentionally and they largely succeeded in doing so (the temperance movement did not last, but most other goals did). Politics in the early 20th-century fed off of this desire and combined with a kind of nationalism that had pervaded Europe, heightened after WWI. Most of the politicians and men of influence in that time period were products of a European education. The rest is history.
Of course, the “the Church failed to do its job so the government had to step in” sounds really humble; it just not true and actually avoids repentance of the actual sin committed, which was giving over to the State the resources and responsibility to do what the Church herself, as an institution, is called to do and what the State, as an institution, is not called to do.
Which, I suppose, is why the Ron Siders of the world are continuing to push for State involvement, on the grounds that the Church historically won’t do it, which is false. It just tried doing it through the State.
The upshot is that it is true that the Church is responsible for the welfare state, though directly, and not indirectly as the article suggests.
December 7th, 2009 | 10:52 am | #3
Coyle, I think you’re pretty much on target, though for a majority of churches in America, it was more of an embrace of than a flirtation with the social gospel; that’s where liberal “mainline” denominations hail from.
Many conservative Christians think that “mainline” denominations are losing members, losing influence; that entirely misses the point. They already won, and their influence and cause has been institutionalized in the State to which they married themselves.
On the other hand, I don’t have a problem with commanding the Church to “love thy neighbor” nor do I think that somehow isn’t a part of the good news of Jesus Christ. That’s not the problem at all. The problem is how the American church understands herself and her mission, that is, it critically relies on ecclesiology which the evangelical church is pretty bad on.
December 7th, 2009 | 11:00 am | #4
The history behind the welfare state is soooo complicated as to render any finger pointing to any particular cause of it invalid. But, it is true that Woodrow Wilson and his progressives were unapologetically Christian and thought (or at least propagandized) that they were doing “God’s work.”
December 7th, 2009 | 11:50 am | #5
Albert-
Sorry for any confusion- I definitely wasn’t saying “love thy neighbor” is divorced from all things Christian, my point was that for the social gospelers and the progressives, “love thy neighbor” became the Gospel, rather than flowing from faith in the Gospel on the part of Christians.
You’re totally right about Christians using the state as a vehicle of social progress. A total confusion of the two kingdoms had taken place as a result of the social gospel/progressive movement, causing the church to tie the ideas of Christian social action to political action.
I think it would be interesting to see a comparison of the rise and fall of the temperance movement with the welfare state. I’m sure there are lessons there for Christians today when engaging with our modern political institutions.
December 7th, 2009 | 12:52 pm | #6
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December 7th, 2009 | 12:53 pm | #7
I am not opposed to the welfare state as such. However, a recent incident led me to think that some Christians may put too much confidence in it.
Our family recently joined a Presbyterian church which has elders but no deacons. Of course we found this a bit odd. When we asked someone about it, we were told that the welfare state had made deacons redundant!
December 8th, 2009 | 12:03 am | #8
I agree with Bob Sacramento, not that I understand the full history of the welfare state but it seems to me that he is right on that this matter is far more complicated than is let on here.
It seems a stretch to say that the church created the welfare state because that seems to assume that the church must provide for the tangible nees of even it’s non members indiscriminately.
I Timothy 5 tells us that the church must discriminate even amongst it’s own members when it comes to the distribution of welfare. If the church must turn away some of it’s own members what does that say about it’s non members.
Also, all of this about diaconal ministry taking care of welfare seems so very spiritual, but the reality is that the church can only distribute the resources it possesses. The church can only give in benevolence to the extent that it’s members give in tithes and offerings. Even if we were to envision a world in which churches didn’t spend money on buildings and other “material” things it’s hard to imagine that the members of a congregation could give enough to meet the benevolence needs of its own congregation plus the many benevolence needs outside its congregation. And of course, this does not take into account the church’s responsibility to discriminate in it’s benevolence.
Also, at least one famous forefather of ours seemed to recognize the church’s inability to meet the “welfare” needs of it’s congregation and the society around it. In a 2001 article in Christianity Today Gerald McDermott spoke of Jonathan Edwards’ views on state welfare as follows:
Edwards supported a state welfare program. Since all human beings, even true Christians, are naturally selfish, he contended, private—even church—charity is unreliable. Hence, government shows its “wisdom” when it administers a welfare program to assist the deserving poor. Those who are poor because of laziness or prodigality, however, do not merit such assistance.
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2001/julyweb-only/7-2-25.0.html?start=4
December 8th, 2009 | 6:46 am | #9
Despite my comment above about the lamentable lack of deacons in our church congregation, I agree with David Wayne’s remarks. Diaconal ministries and the welfare state are in principle complementary and not mutually exclusive.
December 8th, 2009 | 8:22 pm | #10
Theo (et al.),
I encourage you to read the full excerpt from the book, in which DeKoster and Berghoef end up being far more sanguine about potential partnerships between the diaconate and government than I’m inclined to be.
But in any case, I think it’s an argument worth considering, which is why I brought it up in the first place. And incidentally, I don’t think they mean to say that the church is the only cause of the welfare state, but seem to concur with the notion expressed here that in some sense it is a judgment against the fidelity of the church.
Also of note, we’re planning to release new and updated editions of many of these kinds of works next year. Sign up to keep informed at the Christian’s Library Press website.
December 9th, 2009 | 3:48 pm | #11
Again, this presupposes a false history which is available for anyone to read. While the minority of theologically conservative American Christians were busy divorcing themselves from public life, the mainline denominations succeeded in directly creating the welfare state as an outgrowth of policies begun by Woodrow Wilson, entrenched by FDR, and culminating in LBJ’s Great Society. It had nothing to do, in our actual history, with a judgment on the failure of the American churches to do charity. This was our way of doing charity.
Seeing the welfare state as God’s judgment on the American church for not taking care of the poor is just not the best framework to be looking at what went on. It’s simple (“Monolithic American Church sins, God judges!”) but it misses the essentially progressive Christianity driving the creation of the welfare bureaucracy while conservative Christians largely abandoned cultural participation, including in politics.
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