There is a great deal said about money in the Bible—much of it about giving money to the poor and about letting our money work for us.22 Our country rarely follows these values—spending more than it has, not caring enough for the needy, only rarely creating surpluses.
We love money. It defines us as powerful and comfortable and important. We use it to gain political favor and to increase our clout. We spend it easily. We deny it to some, give a great deal of it to others. We hide and waste a great deal of it. Elections are often funded by the very rich exerting considerable control over the outcome, far out of proportion to their numbers.
Have we been good stewards of our money? The Republican Party used to be considered the party of fiscal responsibility, but this has not been true since the beginning of Ronald Reagan’s presidency. President Reagan ran up the national debt to historic proportions, followed by Presidents George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush.
Fiscal responsibility is usually considered a conservative value, although the Democratic Party has been more fiscally responsible than the Republican Party for more than thirty-five years. From 1981, when Reagan’s first budget took effect, until 1993, when Bill Clinton became president, the Republicans ballooned the debt. Part of the debt under Clinton was 2.2 trillion dollars of interest because of the Reagan–Bush debt. Clinton left a surplus of about 523 billion dollars by the end of his term. Economists projected that at the rate we were going, we could pay off the entire national debt by 2012. But George W. Bush stopped this process and again ran up the debt.
When George Bush took office, the House was Democratic and the Senate was split 50–50. The Congress suggested a budget that was 20 billion dollars less than what Bush requested. George Bush then ran up the debt because of the two wars that he began and his tax cuts which mainly benefited the rich. George W. Bush took control of the budget on October 1, 2001 when the debt was 5.8 trillion dollars, and his last budget year ended October 1, 2009, leaving the next president, Barack Obama, with a debt of 11.9 trillion dollars. Since Obama’s first budget in 2009, the debt has continued to grow, partly because of the recession which began under Bush, partly because of the interest on the debt, and entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare. If Bush had not taken us into two expensive wars, we would have had a surplus and we would have been able to pay for the social programs that have suffered many cuts in the last few years.23
It is estimated that the policies of the 2016 Republican candidates would balloon the debt, favor the wealthy, and further cut social programs. All of the major candidates believe their policies would stimulate the economy by giving money to the wealthy, which would create jobs, and the money would trickle down to the middle class. This is called “trickle down economics,” and during the last 35 years it’s been proven wrong.
Pope Francis has denounced this “trickle down” economic theory on moral grounds and sees it as part of an overall policy that puts money above people. Certainly, it favors the rich and diminishes the importance of the poor.
According to the Citizens for Tax Justice and the Tax Foundation, Donald Trump would swell the National Debt by 10–12 trillion and the “richest 1% would receive a 27% increase in their incomes.” Trump’s idea to complete the wall between Mexico and the United States is estimated to cost over 12 billion and perhaps as much as 15–25 billion dollars. It would then take another 750 million a year to maintain the wall and another 1.4 billion dollars to add the necessary border patrol personnel. Trump intends to have Mexico pay twelve billion dollars to build the wall, something they couldn’t afford. He would threaten to change our trade agreements if they didn’t, which would leave Mexico even poorer and Mexicans more desperate and more eager to emigrate. This is not feasible for improved international relations nor for helping the poor and dispossessed.24
Both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders want to increase the taxes for the wealthy, who are often defined as those in the top one-tenth of 1% or 1% of the population, or sometimes defined as those making more than $250,000 a year.
The plans of Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz would add between 768 billion and 12 trillion dollars to the National Debt over the next decade, and both these plans would favor the most wealthy.25
The Liberal Values of Jesus
Although both the Republican and Democratic parties contain conservatives and liberals, the Republican Party has increasingly sided with its more conservative members.
Our country was founded on liberal and liberating values. The Founding Fathers were willing to change the status quo, overthrow an oppressive government, and create a new form of government by the people, of the people, for the people.
All men are created equal under God, but in the period of time leading up to 1860, they were born into an unequal system. Only white men who owned property enjoyed inalienable rights. Blacks were considered three-fifths of a person. Married women had almost no civil rights at all. Many Christians, but not all, supported this idea, quoting the Bible to justify slavery and oppression of women. Many Christians limited and resisted extending equal rights to others.
How did this change? Through the work of more liberal Christians. Most of the first abolitionists were Christians—mainly Quakers, Methodists, and Congregationalists. Over time, the impulse to liberate women also grew from Christian roots.
The most recent and extraordinary example of this process was the civil rights movement in the twentieth century, led by a Baptist minister, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The movement was conceived in African-American churches and sustained by Christians of all racial and ethnic groups. Many Christians have been, and continue to be, at the forefront of the fight for the civil rights for others.
Throughout the Gospels, we see the portrait of Jesus as a man who questioned the prevailing religious and social establishment. Many actions that Jesus took, and stories that he told, were about liberating people from legal, religious, and governmental oppression. Rather than demanding adherence to religious dogmas and the hundreds of religious laws, he questioned the way things were, and followed the freer Law of Love.
Jesus transcended sexism when he talked to a woman at the well in Samaria.26 Men were not supposed to interact with women except within the family, yet he spoke theology to a woman of a despised class and understood her. He affirmed Mary’s desire to listen and to learn, rather than fill the traditional woman’s role played by her sister, Martha.27 Women followed him around the countryside and he accepted them, even though this would have been against the social customs of his age. Women became some of his most beloved followers, and some of the leaders in the early Church.28
He challenged the racism of his day by telling a story about a man he perceived as good and righteous—a Samaritan, one of the most hated people in that time.29 This would be similar to telling a Klansman a story about a good and righteous African-American.
He challenged classism, by associating and even dining with the lowlifes of society—the rejects, the prostitutes, the tax collectors, the outcasts, the sick, the lepers, and the untouchables, saying that they would enter the kingdom before the religious leaders of the day.30 He pardoned the repentant thief on the cross, telling him that he would join Jesus in Paradise.31
Jesus, as well as Paul, brought liberal values to the idea of marriage. A Jewish man and woman were supposed to marry and to have children. Jesus was single, and didn’t fulfill the appropriate social and religious customs of his age. Paul clarified that it didn’t matter if a person were single or married; each was to be valued.32
Jesus was against capital punishment, a position that is considered a liberal value. He forgave the woman caught in the