Economics

Mitchell Atencio 11-17-2021
An illustration of differently shaped blocks floating above the entrance to a church

Illustration by Glenn Harvey

IN 1995, Bob Sabath, then-administrator of Sojourners’ new website, wrote about how the World Wide Web might expand and change faith communities. “This next decade may show that the greatest social impact of the computer is not as an office automation tool, but as a communication tool, as a community-building tool.” Sabath, a founder of Sojourners and now director of web and digital technology, wrote that the web “could become a useful tool for helping us find each other and the resources we need to do the work we feel called to do.”

This was a prescient view on a technology that was only at its early stages. Of course, no one could predict exactly how monumentally transformative that technology would be. Sabath wrote during “Web 1.0,” also known as the “read-only” era. Web 1.0 essentially provided digital brochures (or, for churches, bulletins); it gave users a way to access and read information but minimal opportunities for interaction.

Web 2.0, or the “read-and-write” era, gave people a way to interact with others and generate their own content. Myspace, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter all represent read-and-write usages, but do so with online forums and web applications. It’s the type of internet most people are familiar with, even if not by name.

The currently developing era of the internet is known as Web 3.0. While definitions vary, decentralization is often a key component of technologies that fall under Web 3.0. Blockchains are one of those technologies, and they enable cryptocurrencies (such as Bitcoin and Ether) and nonfungible tokens (NFTs)—the digital art that exploded in popularity over the last year.

Aaron E. Sanchez 5-07-2020

People file for unemployment following COVID-19 outbreak, at an Arkansas Workforce Center in Fayetteville, Ark. April 6, 2020. REUTERS/Nick Oxford

Today's economic demons resemble the 'Panic of 1893.'

Fran Quigley 4-28-2020

People wait in line to receive free food at a curbside pantry in the Brooklyn, New York. April 24, 2020. REUTERS/Mike Sega

Samuel Cruz didn't want to choose between faith and politics. Then he found liberation theology.

Portrait of Thomas Robert Malthus by John Linnell. 1834. 

Love him or hate him, Malthus is one of those figures who doesn’t go away.

Fran Quigley 4-21-2020

Eugene V. Debs making a speech. 1921. 

'He was of the working class and loyal to it in every drop of his hot blood to the very hour of his death.' 

Fran Quigley 2-11-2020

June 8, 2019: Large group of people gather for the first ever Medicare For All Rally led by Bernie Sanders in downtown Chicago. Credit: Shutterstock

“Every week, almost daily, I see patients who cannot afford care, can’t afford their medication."

Fran Quigley 1-30-2020

Photo by Joshua Davis on Unsplash

For health journalist Colleen Shaddox, capitalism is incompatible with loving your neighbor.

Delman Coates 1-22-2020

The job guarantee was a centerpiece of the civil rights movement’s policy agenda.

Aaron E. Sanchez 12-19-2019

U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg holds a town hall event in Creston, Iowa, Nov. 25, 2019. REUTERS/Scott Morgan/File Photo

Meritocracy fails to give communities of color the comforts and privileges of mediocrity.

Kenji Kuramitsu 11-27-2019

Ki-woo (Choi Woo-shik) in Parasite. Credit: YouTube. 

Bong-Joon-ho’s film is about what happens to those living below sea level when the rain comes. 

John Thornton Jr. 11-25-2019

Credit: Shutterstock 

Why split public and societal critique from personal care and comfort? Whose ends does this split serve?

Liz Lwanga 11-06-2019

Honoring the labor, expertise, and material resources used to make clothes is an essential way to honor God.

Jamar A. Boyd II 9-26-2019

Credit: Shutterstock

Lost in the debate was concern about the employees preparing the sandwich, their hours, and compensation.

Delman Coates 9-13-2019

"The Fearless Girl" statue facing Charging Bull in Lower Manhattan, New York City. Credit: Shutterstock

As African-American faith leaders committed to the social justice tradition of the Black Church, we would like to raise our voices to point out that it is not lost on us that Larry Summers and the establishment economists have done immense damage to the communities we serve, as well as to the broader American public, via their influence on economic policymaking. We recognize in the new school of economic thought, called Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), a credible, highly impressive, and genuinely public-spirited alternative to the disastrous economic stewardship offered by the old guard. MMT also offers a powerful theoretical defense of the Federal Job Guarantee, a proposal that was pioneered by America’s first black economist, Sadie Alexander, and a centerpiece of the activism of civil rights icon, Coretta Scott King.

Terence Lester 9-09-2019

Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash

Think about this: If you made the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, would you be able to maintain and keep up the life you have now? If you are honest, the answer is probably no. And, if you are really honest, you’d probably say that not only would it be hard, but you’d miss many of the privileges that you are accustomed to daily.

Aaron E. Sanchez 8-09-2019

Construction worker on the frame of the Empire State Building. 1929. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Shall Christ or Cain reign in our American civilization?

George W. Bush in Manchester, N.H. Jan. 2000. Shutterstock / Joseph Sohm 

As a white, suburban evangelical in the early 2000s, I grew up going on short-term mission trips every summer and participating in charitable missions during the school year. When I think back on it, I now see that these trips and the kinds of charity they encouraged began to fall out of favor around the mid 2000s, around the time that the grants from Bush’s faith-based office would have kicked in. Books like When Helping Hurts by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert, and Toxic Charity and its follow-up Charity Detox by Robert Lupton, exemplify the way that Christians on both the right and left would come to absorb the ideological imperatives of welfare reform.

To mark the anniversary of Juneteenth, when enslaved people in Texas finally learned about the Emancipation Proclamation in June of 1865, the House Judiciary Committee held a special hearing on reparations for slavery this week. When asked about the idea of addressing the generational inequalities created by centuries of governmentally sanctioned white supremacy, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) responded that America fought a civil war, passed landmark civil rights legislation and elected its first Black President to address the “original sin” of slavery. As far as he is concerned, the sins of the past can be forgotten.

Unless the money that will be made from marijuana’s federal legalization is used for robust community reinvestment in affected residential communities across America, it fails the moral litmus test of social justice and pumps oxygen into racial wealth disparities. Without this reinvestment, America will once again be blowing smoke into the face of those who have historically been most victimized by the criminalization of marijuana. The abovementioned federal legalization proposal includes the development of a community reinvestment fund to specifically benefit communities most ravished by the marijuana ban, and the decades-long failed war on drugs. The architects of the bill outlined some potential funding areas: job training, post-incarceration and expungement services, public libraries and community centers, youth programming, and health education.

Adam Joyce 5-17-2019

C.J. Hawking Speaks To YMCA Workers On Unfair Labor Practice Strike. Image via Youtube

Rev. C.J. Hawking, Executive Director of Arise Chicago, has worked at the intersection of faith and organized labor for over 30 years. Arise Chicago helps organize religious communities in support of union campaigns and advocates for workers’ rights and dignity in the workplace. For Rev. Hawking, the co-author of Staley: The Fight for the New American Labor Movement, this activism is an essential part of her faith and the church’s call to be faithful to the gospel. I recently had the opportunity to talk with Rev. Hawking about Arise Chicago’s work, and how churches can support the labor movement in their fight for workplace democracy and a more equitable economic order.