This is the second post in a three-post series on Christianity and Occupy Wall Street. In the former post, the author introduced and attempted to frame the movement. Here, he begins his critique by appealing to Christian notions of justice as shalom and the radical effects of the Fall. In the next post, he concludes his critique and calls Christians to reflect upon their potential role in the ongoing debate.
Holistic Justice: Beyond 99%
“We are the 99%”, the slogan goes. Catchy as it is, the rhetoric it inevitably constructs – a sense of difference, of disparity, of antagonism between the 99 and the 1 percent – is something of which OWS must be cautious. While it does a good job of garnering solidarity among the majority of Americans and provides an easy statistical benchmark from which to perform socioeconomic analysis comparing the mega-rich and, supposedly, everyone else, it quickly breaks down when those who are, in the opinion of the majority of Americans, part of the 1% also want to be part of the movement. This curious interplay is exemplified by much of the criticism directed towards movements at elite universities such as Occupy Princeton, in which, it seems, raising the point that Princeton protestors are themselves beneficiaries of the system or part of the 1% and thus should not “bite the hand that feeds them” is a legitimate criticism.1 Simply put, the most obvious narrative of change that OWS offers is liberation of the 99% at the expense of the 1%.
The issues at the root of this phenomenon may be ethical, stemming from different conceptions of the human good and justice. One common conception of justice associates itself with words such as “liberty” and “equality.2 From this point of view, injustice is often synonymous with inequality – whether sociological, economic, or political. The finance industry is therefore unjust because it allows for the perpetuation of existing economic inequalities in which the rich possess far more opportunities than the poor. This will be addressed in more detail later on, but this may perhaps be one of the reasons that socialist thought pushing radical redistribution of wealth is such a dominant player in the Occupy movement.3
The Christian perspective is not necessarily at odds with the liberal conception of justice, but provides a means for us to understand how inequalities may not, in fact, be unjust. Christian theories of justice often center around the Biblical concept of shalom, a state in which all of creation lives in proper relationship with other created things and with their Creator.4 Although everything was created in order to play its proper role in the symphony of creation, the Fall has corrupted the original goodness of the world and caused everything to go awry. This is the fundamental injustice of the world, that humankind is not living in accordance with the Will of his or her Creator. As Martin Luther King Jr. describes it, “A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law.”5 Reconciliation of this injustice, then, is not just for the benefit of a few, or even many at the expense of the few. Justice benefits all.
From a Christian perspective, Occupy Wall Street cannot just stop at the 99%. It must move beyond and become the 100%, or the 99% for the 100%.6 One of the ways that the Occupy movement should approach the issue of economic injustice, then, is to move beyond the rhetoric of inequality and towards one of mutuality. Economic reform is a necessity not because it benefits a few at the expense of the many – that would be falling into individualistic, materialistic narratives which hold individual economic success as the exemplar of a life well-lived. It is necessary because gross economic inequality hinders the pursuit of the good life for everyone, rich and poor alike. A Christian attempting to live out the directives of the Bible has very good reasons to believe that many of the practices of the finance industry are antithetical to the pursuit of shalom. Unjust gain, Biblically, is not gain at all. I am convinced that other narratives, religious and non-religious alike, have good reasons as well.
Moving past the 99% to the 100% will mean more than just changing a slogan, however. It entails a willingness to cooperate with even one’s opponents and to demonstrate one’s serious intent to work for the benefit of all. It means trying to move past the artificial unity generated by the duality of the 99% and 1% and taking seriously the fact that even within the 99%, there exist a variety of different voices and beliefs. If Occupy Wall Street is going to be anything more than a passing fad for leftist activists and become something that brings lasting change, it must be able to harness the shifting consensuses of the many into ad-hoc action demonstrating its shared concerns for everyone. Chai Ling, once a student activist for the original “Occupy Tiananmen Square”, recommends identifying and making use of America’s “love language” in order to show that the Occupy movement is willing to sacrifice in humbleness for the good of all.7 At Princeton, a place where time is perhaps every student’s most valuable commodity, the willing sacrifice of time to do something which will immediately and noticeably benefit others on campus may be what it takes to make the movement more than a protest group into a nonviolent agent for change.
The Heart of the Problem: Beyond Washington and Wall Street
“The question of character gets short shrift, not only from those who worship the people as a race or a nation, thus placing our character beyond question, but also from those who believe that our political and economic systems are structurally immune from whatever faults the people might have.”8
Professor Jeffrey Stout reminds us that, for everyone involved, changing the structural issues that perpetuate injustice is only part of the solution. It is not enough merely to replace the current financial system with one that is theoretically more amenable to alleviating income disparity. It is not enough to have a more socialistic society, to enact a more effective way of redistributing income. At the core, the institutions of democracy and finance are unjust because people are unjust. Ignorance, innocence, or inconvenience is no excuse to participate in a project that systematically excludes and marginalizes others. We must become people who make it a habit to search out and live according to what is good and right and true. This is more than a shift from Washington and Wall Street to Main Street. It is a shift from the questions and problems of what we do to the questions and problems of who we are.
Christians have long pushed this point. As I hinted earlier, from the Christian’s point of view, the ultimate locus of injustice does not arise from living in society or in the difficulties of living in a natural world that is seemingly indifferent to human concerns. Injustice begins in every individual’s rebellion against God. For the Christian, then, reform of the financial system must be accompanied with the reform of our own hearts. We must strive to see personal success defined, not by one’s salary or class, but by how faithful an individual is to the particular calling to which he or she has been called by God. We must fight to be willing to accept personal loss in order to do what we know to be good and right and true, to be able to refuse unjust gain and the glories that come along with it and accept the consequences that may accompany that refusal in a fallen and unjust world. In more theological language, Christians must continually resist the need to justify themselves by remembering the justification won by Jesus Christ, and we must by the power of the Holy Spirit continually put to death the sinful urges to live according to our ways and our plans and fight to live sanctified lives according to God’s plan. As Americans living in the United States, this often means that we must, as Professor Stout so eloquently reminds us, cultivate our character by pursuing the virtues which make a capitalistic, democratic society able to flourish. These virtues may overlap with Christian virtues more often than we might think.
What does this mean for, say, Occupy Princeton? Christian involvement in the protests does not entail an attempt to evangelize everyone else, though one should, as always, be prepared to present the reasons for his or her faith. The principles espoused by the Christian worldview, however, are worth consideration. It is, essentially, a universalization of the problem and the solution; it is not only Wall Street and Washington that is corrupt and needs reform, it is all of us. Every student, prospective i-banker or not, should be called to reflect upon our own lives and the ways that we may perpetuate a campus culture that sends a large proportion of graduates to Wall Street. Occupy Princeton may want to bring reform to the way Princeton University interacts with job recruiters or invests its endowment money,9 but it must not forget that reform must begin with the students, faculty, and staff of the University as well as the administrators. This must involve education and sustained self-reflection in addition to direct action. If there is to be a change for the better, it begins and ends with each and every one of us.
- For example, this was an anonymous comment found on a Daily Princetonian article on Occupy Princeton: “The issue at hand are the childish antics of this group [Occupy Princeton]. You are all the privileged few that occupy stands against. You are not suffering from oppression and other societal wrongs. Get. Over. Yourselves.” The article “Occupy movement hits campus” (and comments) can be found here: http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2011/12/09/29623/ [↩]
- This is a gross oversimplification of liberalism. See, for example, John Rawl’s A Theory of Justice for a more nuanced presentation. It may also be useful to keep in mind the theory’s critics. It may be, as MacIntyre and Hauerwas argue, that such a conception is meaningless outside of a grander narrative of human flourishing traditions such as Christianity (or secular humanism) may provide. [↩]
- I do not intend to be making a value judgment of this position. [↩]
- See Gideon Strauss’s lecture, “Weeping and Working for Justice”, for a presentation of his vision of justice. [↩]
- King, Martin Luther, Jr. “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”. Accessed Dec. 12, 2011. http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html. [↩]
- I am indebted to Chinese Tiananmen Square activist Chai Ling for this point. Read her article, “5 Lessons From a Tienanmen Square Protest Leader for Occupy Wall Street” at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chai-ling/tiananmen-square-occupy-wall-street-5-lessons_b_1022614.html. [↩]
- Ibid. [↩]
- Stout, Jeffrey, Democracy and Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 22. [↩]
- Up to the writing of this article, Occupy Princeton has mic checked both a JP Morgan-Chase and a Goldman Sachs info session condemning the role of these two corporations in the financial crisis and also mic checked a prospective student campus tour protesting Princeton University investment in HEI. Videos of the actions can be found on Livestream: http://www.livestream.com/princetonuniversity. [↩]
