MOST OF US KNOW that there is something drastically wrong with the American economy. In 2017, the richest 10 percent of the population owned 77 percent of the nation’s wealth and the 20 richest Americans had more wealth than the entire bottom half of the American population.
What is worse is that the new tax bill passed by President Trump and the Republican Congress will increase this imbalance. By 2027, according to the Tax Policy Center, 90 percent of its benefits will go to the richest of Americans. Because the changes will be incremental, they are not likely to be noticed by the vast majority of citizens until it is too late.
Financing these tax breaks for the rich is being accomplished in three ways. First, there will be cuts in benefits for the middle class, which that will mean less money for higher education, medical programs, and social security. Second, there will be dramatic cuts made to the programs that have heretofore provided a safety net for the poor, including cuts to the food stamps program, Medicaid, and housing subsidies. Third, there will be a huge increase in the national debt.
In April, the Congressional Budget Office reported that the GOP tax bill will add $1.8 trillion to the deficit over the next 10 years—and more than $12 trillion to the nation’s debt. Interest payments on the debt will mean even less money available for social programs that serve Americans of modest means.
This is not the first time that wealth has come to be concentrated in a small minority of the population. It happened during the Gilded Age, wherein the Leisure Class, as Thorstein Veblen called the very rich, lived in obscene luxury while massive numbers of Americans suffered from lack of basic sustenance.
There was another concentration of wealth in the upper 10 percent of the nation’s population following World War II. That fact, however, was counteracted by the growing power of the labor movement. By 1954, almost 35 percent of all American workers were unionized. They were well-organized and wielded great political power. They were able to gain great benefits not only for union members but for all Americans.
It was the unions that were responsible for getting the government to establish the minimum wage and for getting Congress to legislate safety regulations for factory workers and coal miners. Without unions, it is doubtful that anything would have been done to ensure that companies provided unemployment compensation and medical benefits for their employees. Vacation days and days off for holidays also were granted because of union demands.
The evangelical bias against unions
Conservative churches have tended to oppose unions, sometimes considering them to be oriented toward socialism or even deeming their members to be anti-capitalistic and therefore dangerously unpatriotic. Because corporate executives are often big contributors to religious colleges and universities, faith-based charities, and local churches, there has been a strong tendency for Protestant Christians to view union people with suspicion. Not surprisingly, therefore, the Republican Party with its pro-business bias has drawn support from conservative Protestant Christians, and at election time the party could count on the votes of the majority of church members. Statistics from the 2016 election demonstrate this. An overwhelming majority of Christians in general voted Republican, with 81 percent of white evangelicals voting for Donald Trump.
The bias of evangelicals against unions was testified to by Jay Kessler, once president of Youth for Christ and a former president of Taylor University. Kessler told about being embarrassed among evangelical Christians because his father had been a union organizer, and feeling that his fellow evangelicals looked down on him when they found out. I can remember my own father having to explain to friends at our church that he wasn’t a communist just because he was a member of the United Electrical Workers Union. Francis Schaeffer, an intellectual icon of evangelicals, could have testified to the bias against unions among Protestant Christians, himself having been a union organizer at the RCA Victor Corporation in Camden, N.J.
Unions have declined since their high point in 1954, and now only 10.7 percent of American workers are unionized. Were it not for those workers in the public sector serving as school teachers, police personnel, fire fighters, and those in government offices, the figures for union workers would be even lower. In 2017, only 6.5 percent of American workers in the private sector were unionized.
With the decline of strong unions, which served as a countervailing power checking big business and big government, the American middle class has had a hard time. Its buying power has remained flat for the last 20 years, even while enormous wealth was being accumulated by the very rich. Most middle-class families have been able to keep up with the rising cost of living only by having both husband and wife gainfully employed outside the home. In addition, Americans have been seduced by corporate advertising into buying everything from television sets and automobiles to houses “on time.” The indebtedness of the typical American family has soared, and now very few families have money set aside for retirement or for hard times, if their debts are even paid off. The prospects for the middle class will not be good without strong unions to stand up for ordinary Americans.
The union makes us ... more equal
It is time for the church to recognize that labor is among the principalities and powers it needs to bring under the lordship of Christ. We might begin by looking at Christian higher education. At Eastern University, an activist school committed to social justice, where I have taught for decades, there has been a concerted effort to make business a focus of our curriculum. We have a wide range of courses to prepare our students for the corporate world, with a strong emphasis on clarifying biblically based values and ethics for Christians who are in management. Little to nothing, however, is taught to train students to serve in unions.
What is true about Eastern is probably true about most, if not all, of the evangelical schools that are part of the Coalition of Christian Colleges and Universities. Right now, if a student at a typical Christian university wants to study labor relations and help Christianize unions, their only option would be to transfer and to attend a secular university such as the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania or Harvard Business School, where the value and importance of labor unions are understood and taught.
Some constitutional scholars argue that the survival of our democratic republic is dependent upon reducing the gap between the rich and the poor. Political theorists have contended since the 17th century that truly representative government requires a more-equitable distribution of wealth, and strong unions can play a role in making that happen. Congress, however, is too dependent on special interest groups other than unions to approve changes that could meaningfully lead to a redistribution of America’s wealth.
Pastors should preach on how labor unions can be instruments of God for creating a more equitable society that stands on the side of American workers. Seminaries should be teaching courses on how labor unions can contribute to the mission of the church. Denominational convention seminars should help church people understand how unions have helped America live out the requisites of scripture to bring good news to the poor. Churches can do so again if the negative attitudes toward unions among Christians in general, and white evangelicals in particular, can be overcome, and support for organized labor encouraged.
The churches’ role
There is little doubt that the church can have a role to play when it comes to dealing with some serious problems within unions. We know that there are cases where unions have protected employment for members who should have been fired. For example, consider reports of school teachers in New York City who were proved to be incompetent or derelict in their duties, yet continued to be paid and receive full benefits because unions demanded it. Such things only provide reasons for the church to step in and exercise a call for righteousness and justice.
Church people remember that unions long have been a progressive force. Check out the civil rights movement of the 1960s and review those photos of union leaders marching with Martin Luther King Jr. and supporting the Poor People’s Campaign. Unions have played significant roles in various peace movements throughout the 20th century.
The church should help inspire Christians who belong to unions to be active members who stand up for biblically based justice, not only for its own members but for the good of society in general. It is time for the church to call unions to hold true to their historic ideals, to work to bring about expressions of God’s kingdom “on earth as it is in heaven.”
Unions have done so in the past. The time is at hand to make unions in America great again.
Tony Campolo is founder of the Evangelical Association for the Promotion of Education (EAPE) and professor emeritus of sociology at Eastern University.
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