The Injustices at the Extreme Court

 I have been through an emotional and intellectual rollercoaster this week as I observe the Supreme Court and it's barrage of end-of-term decisions.  Most years this final week of June is the time when many decisions are unveiled.  This past week was the first anniversary of the horrendous Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade.  I think that was an anti-life decision, not a pro-life one.  I do not see how putting a mother's life, health, or well-being at risk for the sake of an unborn baby is pro-life.  The life of the mother should matter more.  I will no doubt write about that in the future.

I am also unhappy about the court striking down President Biden's student-loan forgiveness program.  I can think of several reasons why this should not only not be struck down, but should be expanded.  I am sure that is another blog post.

But today I want to focus on a couple of court decisions, and the tension I see between them, and what I think amounts to the court making our societal life situation a minefield, whether they intended to or not.  Those two decisions are the one rendered yesterday which functionally eliminates affirmative action, and this morning's ruling in the Colorado case which permits a website designer to refuse to do a wedding website to a same-sex couple.  I believe both of these are nothing short of morally disastrous, and I also think the two decisions have within them an internal contradiction which people have not perceived as of yet.

The problem is a simple one.  I think the fundamental premise of American jurisprudence is a moral disaster.  I think the US Constitution is so morally flawed that I am not sure it can be repaired.  This country is supposed to be about individual freedom and liberty--although that was a lie from the beginning.  I believe our entire system of jurisprudence is built on a heinous lie and that lie is so baked into the cake that it cannot be fixed.  We need to start over and bake a different cake.  Any document which is based on the premise of individual liberty but at the same time states that certain persons are only 3/5 human is beyond repair.  The undoing of Jim Crow, the abolition of slavery, and the 160 years since that decision reveal that the problem was never really addressed, and that is why it keeps popping up.  It is like a cancer, where the surgeon thinks she removed it all, but, alas, that is not true and the cancer keeps coming back.   The constitution cannot repair this problem because the constitution itself has the same disease.  Racism is this country's raison d'etre.

It seems hilarious to me (in a not-funny way) that we have a document which is all about individual freedom (albeit for only some persons) and we are surprised that our highest court renders decision after decision which favor those who are white, wealthy, and propertied, over those who are a minority in terms of ethnicity, sexuality (and among this I include both sexual identity and sexual orientation,) religion, and economic status.  I am sure there are more categories I could come up with.  The court uses a document designed to favor the white, wealthy Christian and we feign shock when it renders decision after decision which favor the white, wealthy Christian.  The US Constitution is not an instrument of justice, it is an instrument of injustice.  It was designed for that purpose.  We all grew up with our hand over our heart reciting the words "with liberty and justice for all."  But this country was never intended to provide liberty and justice for "all."   The founders would not be ashamed of the Roberts court--they would pat them on the back.

Here is where I see the problem with the web-designer decision and the affirmative action decision.  The court is saying the web-designer does not have to serve people she does not want to (and the most shocking part of this case is no same-sex couple ever approached her, therefore she was not harmed, and therefore she should not have been granted standing.)  I think any business should have to be willing to serve all the public or not be  in business.  This court has opened the door to signs in windows like "Whites Only" or "We don't serve Catholics."  They have explicitly said this web-designer can refuse anyone she wants.

At the same time, a college, which want a diverse student body for the enrichment of the entire campus community, cannot go out of its way to be inclusive.  So our web-designer can refuse a customer because of their sexuality but the college cannot reach out and include someone because of their race. So this individual in Colorado can operate according to her values but Harvard and UNC cannot.  I think the court got both of these decisions wrong, on moral grounds.  But there seems to me to be this gaping, wide contradiction between the two decisions and I do not see anyone even mentioning that.

In whose name are we giving a cup of water?

I have been pondering the legislation the governor of Texas just signed into law prohibiting localities from mandating water breaks for outdoor workers like construction workers. He signed this into law while his entire state is suffering from triple digit heat.

On one hand, there should be no need to mandate this because a business owner who would subject workers to that kind of heat and not encourage them to hydrate is a foolish business person. It is not good for your bottom line to you have your workers dropping like flies due to heat stroke. I don't think it would be too strong to call that stupid.

On the other hand this legislation seems to me to be antithetical to the teaching of Jesus who talked about giving a cup of cold water in his name. People who claim to follow him, as the governor does, demonstrate the opposite when they deny a cup of cold water to someone. Georgia has the same problem with this idea that you cannot pass out water bottles when people are in line to vote. This is just despicable.

The bottom line is if you do not mandate water breaks in this kind of heat you are sending the message to workers that they are just a piece of human machinery. Karl Marx said that in crafts the worker makes use of a tool. In capitalism the worker is a tool. This legislation treats workers as though they are objects instead of subjects. It operates on the intellectual premise that that workers are chattel. It dehumanizes them.

I grew up in the evangelical tradition. I remember in my youth hearing things proclaimed from the pulpit like "Capitalism (and conservatism, and/or the Republican Party) is based on a spiritual view of life. Socialism (Marxism, and/or the Democratic Party) is based on a materialistic view of life. " I did not really question this until I went to seminary myself. But as a mature theological thinker I have concluded the exact opposite of this is true.

In the past year I have spent a good deal of time reading Karl Marx for myself. I have read The Communist Manifesto, and Das Kapital. I imagine I have read about 1000 pages of what Marx actually said. I have come to believe the world has never seen Marxism in action. Remember, Marx was a German who lived in Britain. He died in 1883, a full 34 years before the Russian Revolution of 1917. He never lived in Russia. Josef Stalin was only 5 years old when Marx died. I believe Stalin falsely laid claim to the vision of Marx, much as today's religious right has falsely laid claim to the vision of Jesus. Marx did not envision the state owning everything. His vision was for WORKERS to control the means of production. I have come away from my reading believing the best version of Marxism is employee-owned companies.

In Marx's day the average workday in a factory was 12 hours. And after roughly 6 hours, a worker had produced enough value to cover their own wages and the production costs for what work they did, for the entire day. So for the remaining six hours the worker worked solely for the enrichment of the capitalist. This is why he suggested that in capitalism the worker is a tool. I think he was correct. And one result of this is, the more productive a worker is, the less per unit the labor cost to the employer. Marx called this "surplus value," which is not totally identical to, but is roughly equivalent to, profit. By the time profits are made, that is free money to the capitalist. The capitalist, said Marx, never pays anything at all for labor because the productivity of the laborer pays the cost of labor. I think the entirety of what bothered Marx could be boiled down to this idea of "surplus value."

For the life of me, I do not see anything contradictory to Christianity in what I have read.

Like I said, it would be stupid for a business owner to send workers into triple digit heat and not require them to hydrate. But if they do require water breaks they do not get any moral credit for that anyway if their reasoning is still one of treating the worker like an object instead of a subject. A wise worker will take good care of their tools. But when you are having your workers take a water break for reasons of productivity instead of just for reasons of their humanity, you are still treating that worker like they are only a tool. This is an inherent feature of capitalism and is why capitalism is fundamentally immoral.

My mentor, Elton Trueblood, wrote about the importance of Jesus' call to offer a cup of cold water in his name. He said it's not enough to merely offer the water, we need to tell the personal why. I'm not sure I totally agree. I do think sometimes offering someone a cup of water as a humanitarian thing apart from any attempt at evangelization still has value. But I am sure Trueblood was right on one level. Denying someone a cup of cold water, especially in triple digit heat, is a pretty clear indication that you do not respect the image of God in that person at all. If the primary reason for giving a water break is because it is good for business, you certainly are not offering that cup of water in Jesus name. You are offering it in the name of the almighty dollar.

What I am all about

 As I begin the undertaking of this blog, I wanted to start with a post about who I am and why I am doing this.  I am a 63 year old husband and dad, and in about a month I will be a retired college professor.  I taught mostly Ethics and the Philosophy of Religion, but I have also taught Introduction to Philosophy and Logic, all at Ivy Tech Community College in Columbus, Indiana.

I spent almost 30 years in pastoral ministry also.  I was a Quaker pastor in Iowa, North Carolina, and Indiana.  I also held credentials with the American Baptist Churches.

I graduated from West Virginia State College, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Bethel Theological Seminary, and also did coursework at the Earlham School of Religion (where my mentor was the well-known 20th century Quaker philosopher D. Elton Trueblood), the University of Louisville, the University of Iowa, and the University of Notre Dame.

In 2011, after almost eight years of discernment, I resigned my Quaker pastorate, and joined the Roman Catholic Church.  The Quaker values I held dear, I still do.  I tell people I have an "inner Quaker"  I still need to nurture.  Even after I became Catholic I still did pastoral ministry for several years as a volunteer chaplain at our local hospital.

I should also tell you that I was born with cerebral palsy (which caused almost everyone who knew me to doubt whether I could do the things I did, but basically I have been able to reach all the major goals I set out for myself.)  In 2021, I was also diagnosed with Parkinson's disease.  From the best I can interpret the data I have seen, the combination of CP and PD happens to one in every 138,000 people.  There are only about 2400 people in the US who have both of these, the way a mathematician friend of mine explained it to me. The weight of these two disabilities has gotten me to a point where I need to retire.

As I retire, I am anticipating two things which I want to talk about today.

First, I look forward to more time for a life of prayer and contemplation.  Prayer has been a major part of my life.  Since becoming Catholic I have plugged into the ancient practice of The Liturgy of the Hours, and other devotions like the Rosary. I feel a call to a prayer ministry.  Now, I have been told by some people that in terms of the fivefold ministry of Ephesians 4:11, I have the ministry of a prophet.  I do not know, but that seems to be true.  But prophets are people of prayer.  I have over 100 people I pray for by name each day.

I also pray over the needs I see in the world.  I feel a calling from God to be a prayer minister for social justice.  So daily I pray for things like an end to war and gun violence, economic justice, and racial and gender equality.   I pray for our leaders to bring about universal healthcare, and more open immigration policies because I believe the biblical injunction to welcome the stranger is more important than national security.  I pray that laws will be passed which expand who can vote rather than making it more difficult to vote. I do not believe a Christian should support a candidate for any office who wants to make it harder to vote, to restrict healthcare for anyone, make it easier for people to have guns, or implement economic policies which fail to redistribute wealth downward from the wealthy to the poor.  These all seem anti-gospel to me.

The second thing I am looking forward to with this blog is a space to write about the issues I mentioned in the paragraph above, because for me, these are not political issues, they are theological and moral mandates incumbent on everyone who wants to really follow Jesus Christ.  All of the above concerns arise for me, not out of a preferred political ideal, but out of a vision of what kind of world a Jesus-follower should be working to bring about.

My view on abortion is more nuanced. First of all, I do not think anyone can consistently be pro-life and support war, capital punishment, guns or "trickle-down economics."  I believe abortion is hideous.  But I believe forcing any woman, of any age, in any circumstances, to give birth against her will is even more hideous.

I can be blunt.  I think that is part of the prophetic charism.  

I hope through this blog, I can write about the theological ponderings on all of these and other issues, which spring from my heart and mind.

I am prayerful that there will be readers who will ponder and dialogue with me.