Income and Wealth Inequality: Why Religion’s Current Efforts Won’t Cut It

Income and Wealth Inequality: Why Religion’s Current Efforts Won’t Cut It November 24, 2014

The only remaining, major, organized institutions in the US with enough scope and moral authority to launch efforts to reverse this country’s growing income and wealth inequality are the religions. Other institutions have waned; today’s labor unions represent only 7% of private sector employees. Delays matter: as income inequality increases, more children are going to bed hungry. When religious institutions turn their attention to legislation, legal codes, and regulations, they can effect change. The successful (though ultimately doomed) Mormon-led effort to rally support in 2008 for California’s Proposition 8—an anti-same-sex-marriage initiative—is a recent case in point. The success of the civil rights movement is a less recent example. The religions, however, have yet to mobilize or build coalitions to address income inequality, which has reached levels not seen in the US since 1913. Though it seemed that the disparity couldn’t worsen, it has.

Currently, the 400 richest Americans possess more wealth than the bottom 150-million Americans, combined. Two living Americans, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, appeared on Business Insider’s 2010 list of the twenty richest men, not just in the history of the US, but in the history of humankind. By contrast, in 2012, 46.2 million Americans lived in poverty, a significant increase from 37.3 million in 2007. Today, working class or working poor families suffer from significant levels (14.3% of households in 2013) of what is euphemistically called “food insecurity” (source: 2014 USDA Report).

Where, then, are the religious denominations in all this? 


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