Spiritual Reflections on My Paycheck

MONEY IS TO Americans what sex was to Victorian England. We’ll read about others’ exploits, but rarely reveal our own.

In the mid-1980s, I joined the Sojourners base Christian community. I was in my 20s with little disposable cash and a modest college loan. My theological attitude was “love of money is the root of all evil” (1 Timothy 6:10)—even thinking about money risked sliding into America’s amorous relationship with capital.

Christian community is an experiment in discipleship. The Sojourners community wanted to pattern our life on the early church. We owned houses and cars communally. Our salaries in the Sojourners ministries were based on need or paid directly to a common fund. In illness, we relied on “mutual aid” rather than health insurance. We constantly experimented.

Our economic model taught me to understand money communally and also allowed me to push my financial responsibility to others. I finally woke up when Bible scholar Ched Myers said to me, “Not thinking about money is a privilege most people in the world don’t have.” In large part, discretionary capital is an unearned entitlement given to some. Now I see how the early church took responsibility for communal needs by paying attention to economics, not by ignoring it.

I’m in my mid-50s now. I still work at Sojourners. My annual compensation package‚ which includes health, life, and disability insurance—is about average for an editor in Washington, D.C. After accounting for retirement plan payments, state and federal withholding, and Medicare and Social Security contributions, my take-home pay is (full transparency) about $2,700 per month. For comparison, a one-bedroom apartment in my D.C. neighborhood rents for $2,300 per month, utilities not included.

I can afford housing because I co-own a house and share expenses with other adults. Purchasing our house was possible because we had access to Sojourners’ housing cooperative and financing through government assistance and a nonprofit affordable-housing agency.

I bank locally. When my local branch was gobbled up by Wells Fargo, I switched to a neighborhood credit union. My co-owner and I keep an emergency house repair fund with Self-Help, a national credit union “committed to community development in underserved urban areas.” I have one credit card, also through a credit union—it’s the card I got as an undergrad when I worked in the arboretum at UC Davis. I pay it off monthly.

I don’t have a mobile phone, but my long-distance carrier, CREDO, donates 1 percent of my payment to socially progressive organizations.

Just Money Advisors helps me align my retirement funds with my values. I don’t want to support gun manufacturers, fossil fuel companies, or the defense industry. I do want to support women-led small businesses, land trusts, and community-impact investing. JMA makes sure those funds circulate and work for others until I need them.

I give monthly to my church and to my family. I pay what community economics leader Chuck Matthei called my “social mortgage” (or reparations) to offset my unearned economic privilege. Recently, I’ve begun paying Native organizations an “entrance fee” when I enter their sovereign territory.

Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr encouraged “proportionate giving,” instead of tithing. Elizabeth O’Connor expanded on this idea: “None of us has to be an accountant to know what 10 percent of a gross income is, but each of us has to be a person on her knees before God if we are to understand our commitment to proportionate giving. Proportionate to what? Proportionate to the accumulated wealth of one’s family? Proportionate to one’s income and the demands upon it? ... The answer, of course, is in proportion to all these things.”

When you can, give to those who ask. Don’t expect anything in return. Write a money autobiography. Keep money circulating, not accumulating. Invest in people, not things. If you have too much, give it away. If you have too little, invest what you have in others. Remember, wealth and assets, debts and wages are all topics for Christian discipleship.