“Farewell Welfare”
Sunday, October 16, 2016
The Rev. Dr. W. Frederick Wooden
Fountain Street Church
24 Fountain St., NE
Grand Rapids, MI 49503
www.fountainstreet.org
Printed by
THE EXTENSION SERVICE
of
FOUNTAIN STREET CHURCH
Single Copies……….. $1.00
Copyright © 2016 by Fountain Street Church
To the reader: This sermon was only part of a service of worship with many components
working together, all of which were designed to be experienced in a community context.
In our "free pulpit" tradition, its concepts are intended not as truths to receive, but as spurs
to your own thought and faith.
2
“Farewell Welfare”
“This dullness of vision regarding the importance of the
general welfare to the individual is the measure of
the failure of our schools and churches to teach
the spiritual significance of genuine democracy.”
– Henry A. Wallace
Readings
Luke 18: "In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect
for people. In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, 'Grant
me justice against my opponent.'
For a while he refused; but later he said to himself, 'Though I have no fear of God and
no respect for anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her
justice,
so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.'"
“The welfare of the weakest and the welfare of the most powerful are inseparably
bound together ... The general welfare cannot be provided for in any one act, but it is
well to remember that the benefit of one is the benefit of all, and the neglect of one is
– Calvin Coolidge
the neglect of all. “
“To America,”
by James Weldon Johnson
How would you have us, as we are?
Or sinking ‘neath the load we bear?
Our eyes fixed forward on a star?
Or gazing empty at despair?
Rising or falling? Men or things?
With dragging pace or footsteps fleet?
Strong, willing sinews in your wings?
Or tightening chains about your feet?
*****
Sermon
Taxes. That may not sound like a religious topic, but if as Franklin said that the
only thing certain about life is death and taxes, and death is religious topic, then why
3
not taxes? Jesus talked about taxes: render to Caesar etc. And he hung out with tax
collectors who were as reviled then as IRS people are now and revenuers from
generations ago.
In my series of sermons on the issues that really matter but aren’t being discussed,
I have arranged my thoughts according to the clauses of the Preamble to the
Constitution which explicitly names the purposes of the national government – “the
form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the
common defense,” and this week “promote the general welfare.” That phrase, plus an
early Supreme Court Decision - McCullough vs Maryland – empowers the government
to do whatever is reasonable and constitutional to accomplish its goals, even to the
disadvantage of particular states. And ever since, we have been wrestling with the
question of how much government and how much taxation is truly good and wise.
My father loved trains. When I was quite young he would take my brother and me
with him on weekend excursions that involved steam engines. Find me a child that
was not fascinated with locomotives back then. I was, and even had an engineer cap
and jacket. Steam engines were especially exciting, with their pushing pistons and
spinning wheels, the smoke from the stack and the steam from the cylinders. On top
of the boiler was something called a governor. It was a small pair of weighted arms
that spun around. My father explained that if the engine was getting too hot the
escaping steam would force it to go fast which would open the hole wider, letting more
steam out and reducing the temperature. The whirling arms would then go slower,
which would close the hole more, keeping more steam in and thus allowing the
temperature to get hotter. The device served to keep the boiler from being either too
hot or too cold.
That’s governance. Our Constitution sets out to govern government with its
branches and powers and checks and balances. It is not perfect, as our many
amendments prove. As often, the Supreme Court has shaped our governance. Two
instances touch upon my thoughts this morning. One is McCullough vs Maryland that
says the federal government is not bound to pay taxes to states because ‘the power to
tax involves the power to destroy,’ and concludes that therefore a state could
undermine the power of the federal government which is illogical. I am no lawyer, but
we all should know about this because it perceives the connection between power and
taxes, and the danger of too much or too little.
Too much power and money in the hands of government can destroy the nation as
an overheated boiler can blow up. That’s been at the heart of the conservative
movement for half a century. And it is a concern well founded because the demands
4
people make of government never get smaller. We elect people who promise to do
things, which always involves new laws and the means – money – to enforce them.
What is forgotten is that too little power and money can bring the nation to a halt. As a
locomotive that cannot move is no longer a locomotive but a lot of iron with no place to
go, so a nation with too little government is not a nation.
That brings me to the United States vs Butler. This had to do with a New Deal
program that allowed the federal government to regulate agriculture at the local level to
prevent boom and bust cycles. It wished to govern the range of production the way a
locomotive governor set limits on a boiler. The Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional
because it violated the tenth amendment which reserves all powers not granted to the
federal government to the ‘states and people respectively.’ We are a long way from
religion now, but bear with me, for there is a spiritual and moral point to this.
For whose good is the government? Sounds obvious: the people. They are the
ones who ordained and established the Constitution that grants powers to the national
government. The General Welfare, as argued by the Framers and cited in Butler and
other places, consists of the acts and laws that serve the whole not just the parts. The
Framers wished to ensure that the national government would serve only the national
good, not some local or limited good.
If conservatism wisely questions overreaching for the General Welfare, it has
overlooked the decline of our popular belief in the General Welfare. A new survey by
the Washington Post shows a continuing decline in American belief in democracy
itself. Not only do more people not trust government to be working for the General
Welfare, we do not even trust each other. I cannot say which is the chicken and which
is the egg, but Parker Palmer, whose book on “Healing the Heart of Democracy” has
informed my thinking this fall, says we need to re-cultivate civic ‘habits of the heart’ the
first of which is “We are all in this together.” That is what is declining.
That phrase, ‘habits of the heart’ is the title of a book by the sociologist Robert
Bellah who explored the culture that holds us together. Addressing a convention of
religious liberals, he added, “that what religious liberalism and American culture
generally lack is a social understanding of human beings.” Even when we say we are
all in this together, we only mean it when it works for us personally. The moment we
are asked to be responsible and accountable to the larger good we chafe and rebel.
How often have I described us as ‘the church of you’re not the boss of me?’
That phrase is something we learn in childhood. I think there is in liberal religion,
and in America, a childish habit of the heart let’s call it, that finds any limitation or
5
judgment or expectation to be a violation of one’s personal sovereignty. This, I
believe, is the worm in the American apple. So though we speak of The General
Welfare, we do not mean it when it asks us to sacrifice personal advantage for the
common good, cooperate as well as compete, serve others as well as ourselves.
There is something selfish and - yes - childish in our individualism, that insists on our
right to be an individual over any social obligation or responsibility.
Religion, the word itself, means to bind together. If liberal religion means individual
religion, then the term is an oxymoron. For us, and for the country, we need a vision
that sees both the individual and communal as sacred, that understands individual
liberty to be one side of a coin the other side of which is social responsibility. We need
both, equally, and to serve one without the other is both spiritually and nationally
idiotic.
How can we do better at this as a nation? Let’s start with taxes and an old
Republican, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, who famously said, “I like to pay taxes.
With them, I buy civilization.” Taxes are the dues we pay, due meaning as a duty to
the body of which we are part and apart from which we lose part of who we are. Can
we levy them better, fairer, and use them more fairly? Of course, but I reject the notion
of taxes themselves as a violation of my rights and individuality.
From this follows the inevitable conclusion that tax laws which favor a few at the
expense of the many violate the General Welfare clause. The system we have is so
byzantine and opaque that most Americans do not trust it. Add to that the legal
avoidance of taxes by those who can afford to and the perception of unfairness grows
exponentially. Conversely, I believe everyone should pay income taxes, even it if is a
widow’s mite. There exists a contempt for the poor who receive much and give
nothing that divides us when we need to be together. We need a tax law and system
that – forgive me – asks from each according to their ability and serves each according
to their need if we are truly “all in this together.”
I have mentioned National Service, the expectation that every person owes the
nation one or two years of direct service. This can be military but could be civil as well,
and done without privilege or advantage. Everyone serves and no one gets to cherry
pick the easy or the fun jobs because we are “all in this together.”
While I think our current term limit laws do not work well, I do believe more citizens
should be more involved in government. Why not conscript people to serve on boards
and commissions. We are expected to serve on juries so why not school boards and
park boards and so on? Do it by lottery. Heck, what if when a legislator retires the
6
next term would be served by someone chosen at random, just for one term, ineligible
for re-election? Everyone serves because in a democracy we “are all in this together.”
Again, these are not proposals but ideas to shake up our narrow notions of what
democracy and government is about. I reject the black/white choices that on the right
says that if Black Lives Matter Blues Lives do not, that regulating guns means taking
them away, that welfare means indolence, that climate change is false. I also reject
liberal orthodoxy that says every problem needs a federal program or more
regulations, that corporations are innately evil, that we can simply stop using fossil
fuels tomorrow. Categorical positions prevent us from using the imagination and
creativity that has made America great in the past and which we need for it to be great
in the future.
We are all in this together - as a nation, as a spiritual community, as a species, and
(with every other creature) as earthlings. That is no kumbaya hand holding statement.
Rather it is the same sober realization attributed to Ben Franklin who supposedly
remarked when the Declaration was signed that “We must all hang together, or most
assuredly we shall all hang separately.”
It is time for the USA to be the “US” of America, which means all of us. It won’t be
easy, but is there really any other choice?
May the words of my mouth…
7