Economics and Hospitality
My brother-in-law is a very conservative guy – politically speaking. A while back several of us were having a discussion about the spike in homelessness that Tacoma is currently seeing. My brother-in-law interjected that homelessness was a result of laziness and a lack of creativity on the part of the homeless. There was a stunned silence among those of us previously in the discussion that anyone would espouse this opinion. Yet, in spite of our disapproval of this idea, it is one that persists in our culture. Clearly homelessness, and poverty in general, are multifaceted problems and any attempt to minimize them to a single source is naive at best.
The question of the source of poverty is one that is only briefly covered by Polanyi, but a topic that should be covered in any reading on the history of economic development. It is said that history is written by the victors and this is true of economic history as well. Too often those who lack power are forgotten in the malaise of excitement around the successes of the system. Polanyi points out that during the period covered in his book that the question to the source of poverty was generally answered by saying that poverty was a necessary result of the successes of the system.1 Poverty was essentially the collateral damage of having a successful economy.
During the manufacturing successes of the eighteenth century in England, John Wesley set out to set up ministries to help those in need. Often those in need would be the infermed or elderly. One such ministry was homes for widows and those who could not provide for themselves. An important part of the ministry was having four or five Methodist preachers and others in the community dine with the members of these households every week in order to help the residents maintain connection with the Methodist community.2 Wesley also instituted “Love Feasts” where members of the small groups would regularly gather to share a meal together and he encouraged them to gather with the poor and needy to help with their needs.
Much like Wesley’s era there are many in our communities that are falling through the cracks of a system that is built to support those who can support themselves. Now is the time to start creatively seeking to build ministries that are able to better support those in need. This is not to say that there are not already many hospitality ministries that are doing incredible work, but rather to say that there are other creative solutions to be found.
As stated earlier, poverty is a multifaceted problem. This means that there are many areas of potential success can be found. The traditional areas of food and shelter are needed, for sure, but there are also less explored areas like vocational retraining and communal support. For instance in Tacoma we have the Tacoma Housing Network, which provides housing for families when sudden unemployment and homelessness happens. It also provides job training and budgeting lessons to the parent(s) in order to help them find work again and eventually a place where they can live. Several churches in area participate by open their buildings to the network for a week every few months as a home to the participants. The members of the churches provide meals, entertainment, and community. Another interesting solution is a foster licensing organization in the area that provides what they call ‘pre-foster’ placements for children while their parents get back on their feet, with the assistance of other organizations, after losing their job or illness. This helps to keep the children out of the system and a blemish off of the parents record. These are but a couple creative methods for helping those in need. People more creative than I am will be able to find other solutions if we allow them to be creative with the solutions.
It is great when the economy booms, but the need does not go away, it is only more obscured. As followers of Christ we need to be aware of this reality and lean into the opportunities to provide hospitality to those in need.
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1. Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time, (Beacon Pres: Boston, 1944) 108.
2. Christine D. Pohl, Making Room: Recovering Hospitality as a Christian Tradition (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eermans, 1999) 54.
About the Author
Sean Dean
An expat of the great state of Maine where the lobster is cheap and the winters are brutal I've settled in as a web developer in Tacoma, Washington. As a foster-adoptive parent of 3 beautiful boys, I have deep questions about the American church's response to the public health crisis that is our foster system.15 responses to “Economics and Hospitality”
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Thanks for your thoughts Sean. I appreciate you sharing about the divisiveness of discussions surrounding poverty. One of the questions that seems to be invited by our readings, is whose job is it to care for the poor? And at what organisational level? You mentioned a number of community efforts in your area. How many are government initiatives? And from what level? Where does the church come in relation to organizational responsibility? Should we expect individuals to come forward and organise help? Or should it be denominationally? I suppose one of the tensions I saw between Bebbington and Polanyi was that the evangelical stream seemed (I’m going to oversimplify) to be content to come up with strategies to care for the poor in the midst of the economic system, whereas Polanyi seemed to be suggesting a shift in the system to care for the poor. Which response would you see as most beneficial within your context?
I once said it is the job of Christians to be the loudest voice in the room for anyone without a voice. With some notable exceptions, like fascists, I still believe that to be true. I think the Church needs to be the catalyst for care for those overlooked by society. I’m less worried about methods than I am with the Church pushing forward care for those who have been marginalized by the motion of society. For some things the push will be the church on government and in other things it will be initiatives by individuals and for others it’ll be somewhere in between. The multifaceted nature of poverty means that the actual solutions will come from all sides, but (at least one of) the catalyst for those solutions should be the church.
I love your perspective and persistence Sean! I also agree that we should use our privilege, in whatever form it comes, to raise awareness of the marginalized. Yes to be their voice if that is the only option, but I lean towards the strategy of doing everything we can to get a megaphone in their hands. Bless all your strategies my friend.
Sean,
I always appreciate your thoughts and perspectives. I particularly “enjoyed” your post in response to this source because you challenge us (both churches and the Church) to consider what we can and will “do” to serve those caught up in poverty! I tire of sources like this because so much intellectual and academic horsepower dwells on “the history written by the victors.” You have offered tangible, helpful, creative ideas that churches in the Tacoma area are doing. Thank you so much for inspiring me to think what we can do in Houston.
Harry, as always you are far more gracious than is necessary. I’m assuming that’s because you’re from Texas. Thank you nonetheless.
These things are always held in tension. The perspective of the victors is important, but not more so than the perspective of those for whom they were victorious over. I had a history professor in seminary who wouldn’t let me write on the heroes of the faith, instead I had to write on the heretics they wrote against. It was the best thing that happened to me in seminary because it got me to think from both sides. If more people could stop and think from both sides we might not be in the spot we are in American society.
Thank you, Sean. Your post and your response to Harry reflects the deeper thinking and acting that is needed especially in our nation. It is never one single cause that creates need, nor is it one single answer. We tend to oversimplify what we don’t want to seriously face and take responsibility for. Thank you for making us go deeper than that. Unfortunately, your brother-in-law represents a large part of our population and a significant part of the Church. May we wake up…soon.
When you say, “we tend to oversimplify what we don’t want to seriously face and take responsibility for.” I think you hit the nail on the head for so many issues. I’ll be thinking about that sentence for a while. Thank you.
This was really good, Sean, and I never would have known you’d written it a few times! 🙂
I very much echo your sentiments and share them in my own post as well. First, I would have had the same shocking response as you did in that moment with your brother in law. I also lament that the story being told about those who are experiencing homelessness is a one note story. It reminds me of “The Danger of a Single Story” TED Talk by novelist Chimamanda Adichie. When we only view one side of someone we negate the full story and picture of who they are.
It sounds like Tacoma is headed in a good direction to care for those in it’s community. I’ll be praying for your church and your community to give people the chance to be heard.
My brother-in-law has calcified into the summation of all the worst parts of American conservatism and that’s really too bad, he can be a pretty nice guy.
Tacoma is facing a lot of issues with homelessness. Quickly rising home values and cost of living here and in Seattle and a lack of mental health services have caused for a surge in the homeless among us. I’m thankful for the ministries and services around, but they’re only scratching the service. Creative thinking is the call of the day and a lot of somebodies need to step up.
Thanks for your comments.
Thank you Sean for the thoughtful post. I understand where your brother is coming from but it is with a lack of understanding. Many who are homeless are also mentally ill or suffer from substance abuse. Many have suffered unspeakable tragedies at very young ages that lead to mental instability at older ages. These are the ones that can not make it even when the economy is good. It may seem like laziness but it is so much more. We need to pray that God would give us all hearts of compassion, kindness, and humility to help those who are suffering. Continue to love your brother-in-love as well as those in the homeless community.
The thing about the story is I know that in some cases my BIL is right, but in most cases he’s wrong. It’s learning how to hold all that in tension. But no matter right, we need to continue loving everyone.
Sean – these are really good thoughts – and the engagement after was valuable as well. I appreciate your opening about your family – I have avoided these topics lately with my parents and siblings because I don’t believe it would be beneficial. I wrestle with when I keep the peace and when I speak up. This is not relegated to only family but with church staff and senior leaders. Do you engage with your brother-in-law regularly as a way of trying to influence his beliefs or just keep it light and easy (and shallow) when you’re together?
Sadly I try to avoid my brother-in-law whenever possible. He’s the “I’m going to argue with you just to make you mad” type and – to say the least – I am not. It’s really an area I don’t know how to embrace. I’m more than willing to process through interactions, but the engagement part is something I tend to avoid. That being said, I’m looking forward to reading Haidt in a few weeks, since his book deals a lot with engaging people of different perspectives.
I like what you said about poverty being a multifaceted problem. I agree also that if the church did more, poverty would be less prevalent in our communities.
There are a couple of points I’d like to briefly point out. The first is good news. According to recent studies on global extreme poverty, the world is getting less poor. In fact since 1981, experts have shown that the rate of people getting out of poverty has increased dramatically. So that’s encouraging, but our work is never done, is it.
Second thing to note about one of the multifaceted issues surrounding poverty is how different societies relate to the problem. Here’s an example. I’ve lived in the Philippines for half of my life. The Philippines is a poor country and was even poorer when I lived there as a child. The home of my childhood would be a slum compared to some of the low-cost, government subsidized housing projects in the U.S. Many Asian nations fit this category. But here’s the amazing thing, even with abject poverty, no one is homeless. There aren’t government helps, churches are poor themselves and yet hardly anyone is homeless. I’ve not seen any.
How can they afford housing, one may ask? The issues relevant to this discussion have everything to do with societal values. Here are some: (1) standard of living is lower, which means people are content with what they have. They don’t consider themselves poor; (2) the poor find creative ways to make a living, like selling flowers and cigarettes on the street etc.; (3) they squat in unoccupied and undeveloped land, that is until they’re driven away; (4) the poor live with relatives, etc. These are just some of the things you’ll observe if you ever visit the Philippines.
I have to admit, these things are tough. It’s tough to understand and appreciate another culture without living it. But the poor in the Philippines are resilient, happy, and they don’t even know they’re poor.
Hi Sean. Your brother in laws response is typical of neoliberal thinking that has pervaded the last 50 years and has become convention that is hard to shift. After the great depression and world war II, Keynesian thinking was adopted by Britain and the US (to a lesser degree) in that political controls were placed on markets to minimise the damage done by unregulated marketeering. Keynes saw that equal power distribution, or lack thereof, was the prime cause of poverty. In fact, the neoliberal free-market enterprise was the brainchild of the professional criminal underworld. Those who couldn’t survive in the mainstream market that tended to own politicians financially utilized the same free-market model of competition but as an adjunct criminal society (Criminal in the sense that mainstream free-market society declared it to be so). Before world war II we called it the Mob and protectionism – now we call it the Mob, gangland, criminal underground, drug trade and so on. We don’t like it, but it is based on free-market thinking, but with a different set of power players. The two worlds are similar, but at war with each other. In the middle are ordinary people who end up as a pawn in both systems. Consequently, regulation minimises the requirement for two systems. The question of course is, who regulates the regulators?