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Thinking theologically about economics and development

May 23, 2012 — 1 Comment

While in Portland for a conference earlier this year, Katie and I got to visit the famed Powell’s Books, along with our friend Elise. We had a ridiculously tiny window of about 30 minutes to explore the place between conference sessions, while it would take a full day or two to do the place justice. Nonetheless, I split my time between the Religion and Latin America sections (no surprise, right?). I ended up buying a book dealing with both.

God and Production in a Guatemalan Town (University of Texas Press) was written by Sheldon Annis 25 years ago, and focuses on the rise of Protestantism in Guatemala by honing in on social and economic trends in San Antonio Aguas Calientes, a small village near Antigua, a big tourist town in Guatemala.

There’s a lot less God than production in the book’s pages. The author himself concedes as much, but I was disappointed with that lopsidedness nonetheless. Throughout the book Annis attributes the rise in Protestantism largely to economic, social, and political trends in the country during the mid-80s. Only at the end does he concede that there may be more going on than meets the researcher’s eye when it comes to dramatic shifts in religious belief and practice. I think Catholics and Protestants alike would agree that their deeply held beliefs aren’t explainable in merely socio-economic terms. Nonetheless, for those who are accustomed to exploring how religion shapes culture (or how it ought to shape it), it’s helpful to consider how culture possibly shapes religion as well.

German sociologist Max Weber famously argued that a “Protestant work ethic” lay behind the rise of capitalism and the rapid creation of wealth in the West, and Annis draws on this argument when he explores the simultaneous rise of Protestantism and changes in economic activity in San Antonio. He suggests that the typical village in Guatemala has found its identity largely in Catholicism and its sense of “Indianness,” both remnants of the country’s colonial past. Additionally, the traditional village revolves around the milpa, a small plot of land used for growing corn and beans. This system is reliable for subsistence farming and it contributes to a sense of community harmony, but it doesn’t really work for economic growth. As milpas become overcrowded, those on the margins find themselves rethinking traditions and considering new ways of life.

It is here, in Annis’s view, that Protestantism finds an opening. While most Protestants begin from a place of social exclusion and economic hardship, many become entrepreneurial and end up doing comparatively well for themselves. Having left behind the “milpa logic” of their Catholic neighbors, Annis says, Protestants now embrace a very different “rags to riches” sort of logic, not unlike Weber’s analysis.

Though the findings of this book are by now a bit dated, I find all of this to be especially important and timely food for thought for Christians, whether Protestant or Catholic, who are working in the field of development. Several big questions come to mind.

What’s gained when shifts like these take place? Equally important, what’s lost? Is economic growth the absolute goal, trumping all other values including the “community harmony” represented in the more traditional way of life? Could there be a way to preserve traditional values alongside economic growth? How do we understand the connection between faith and development? Does one explain the other? Is the relationship symbiotic?

Our answers to these important questions hinge on our definition of development and our vision of “the good life.” And as Christians, we can’t define these things apart from our understanding of who God is, how he relates to the world, and how he calls us to respond.

Ultimately, of course, outsiders can’t be the ones to determine how those in villages in San Antonio will live. The men and women of San Antonio must be the ones to make their own decisions because they will be the ones left to live with the outcomes.

Yet this book serves as a reminder of something crucial: Christian development practitioners must be able to think theologically about their work, even while affirming the central role of community residents in shaping their own future, lest we contribute not to the community’s development, but to its eventual ruin.

[Photo credit: ejfood.blogspot.com]

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Repaso: Easterly on institutions; Springsteen’s latest; Christianity in the Americas; Undocumented.tv interview; famous last words; FLW’s unbuilt projects; Half the Sky film

March 30, 2012 — Leave a comment

1. Easterly on the roots of hardship
Bill Easterly, economics professor at NYU, has a review of a new book on development economics in the Wall Street Journal, emphasizing the critical role healthy and inclusive institutions play in overcoming poverty. In what he says here (and particularly the part where I’ve added italics), I see this as a huge challenge for Latin America:

The arrival of “Why Nations Fail” is thus a hugely welcome event, since economists Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson take on the big questions and in doing so present a substantial alternative to the dominant thinking about global poverty. For Messrs. Acemoglu and Robinson, it is institutions that determine the fate of nations. Success comes, the authors say, when political and economic institutions are “inclusive” and pluralistic, creating incentives for everyone to invest in the future. Nations fail when institutions are “extractive,” protecting the political and economic power of only a small elite that takes income from everyone else.

2. Springsteen’s “Wrecking Ball”
Last weekend my buddy Matty (who’s also a remarkable singer-songwriter and music guru in general) let me know I ought to check out The Boss’s new record, Wrecking Ball. “I got a sneaky feeling you’d really like it,” he texted. I got it and he’s right: it’s great. Here’s what Roger Nelson at ThinkChristian.net had to say about it:

Originally written as acoustic folk tunes, Springsteen took this collection of songs to producer Ron Aniello, who pushed them into new sonic territory. Using samples, drum loops, trumpets, choirs and the guitar solos of Tom Morello from Rage Against the Machine, Wrecking Ball has a glossy and varied musical texture. Lyrically, it stands in a direct line with Nebraska and The Ghost of Tom Joad, but this collection is an eclectic-electric mash-up of gospel, blues, Irish stomps, protest songs, big-stadium rock anthems and even a little rap. What was conceived in the tradition of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger is transformed into a post-modern pastiche.

3. Christianity in the Americas
In December, the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life published the latest data on the size and distribution of the Christian population in the Americas. There’s a cool  interactive map and a couple of charts, in case you’re a nerd like me when it comes to these kinds of things.

4. Mexico’s evangelical shift
Speaking of Christianity in the Americas, PRI’s The World took a look at the changing religious demographics of Mexico, with a visit to the town of Zongozotla in the central highlands:

It was once unheard of in Mexico to consider not being Catholic. But here in Zongozotla, where different faiths are gaining ground, spiritual shifts are possible—and underway. And while some members of the Catholic Church stress that change is needed to compete with the evangelical presence, it’s unclear whether Catholicism’s centuries-old traditions and hierarchies will be flexible to reverse its losses here.

5. Evangelicals on the rise in Latin America
How about one more while we’re at it? This is from Al Jazeera English, ahead of the Pope’s visit to Mexico and Cuba. This piece by Chris Arsenault provides some helpful background on the history of religion in the region, including Pope John Paul II’s visit, the liberation theology movement during the Cold War years, and recently, the rise of evangelical churches throughout Latin America.

6. Interview with undocumented student
In case you missed it last week, here is part one and part two of my interview for Undocumented.tv with Ricardo, an undocumented college student here in Phoenix.

7. Last words in Texas
Texas, as well all know, sends a lot of people to death row. Of the 1289 people who have been executed in the United States since 1976, over a third of them — 481 – have been in Texas. Another 317 are on death row in that state. Whatever you think of the merits of capital punishment, GOOD has an infographic with the most common last words said by death row inmates.

8. Frank Lloyd Wright’s unbuilt projects
Katie and I recently got to see the FLW exhibit at the Phoenix Art Museum. It was really interesting, and while it’s cool that he lived in this area and some of his projects were built here, I really don’t know why I never visited Fallingwater when I lived in Pennsylvania. At any rate, we were both curious about the fact that so many of the renderings on display were for unbuilt projects. Lo and behold, the polis blog (a Repaso favorite, as you may have noticed) has a post taking a look at three of Wright’s unbuilt projects.

9. Half the Sky: The Movie
I’m looking forward to watching the Half the Sky documentary when it airs on PBS this October. I read the book a couple of years ago, and had this to say about it. Here’s the trailer for the film, laden with celebrities.

Repaso is intended as a thought-provoking compilation of news and commentary from the past week related to the intersections of faith, development, justice and peace. As always, I welcome your thoughts on any of the links and ideas in this roundup!

[Photo credit: thepolisblog.org]

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Repaso: Market economy vs. market society; Easterly for president; Brooks on original sin; Latin America’s prison problem; interview with Kuyper translator

March 23, 2012 — Leave a comment

1. Market economy vs. market society
Brian Dijkema comments on Michael Sandel’s piece in The Atlantic, “What Isn’t for Sale?” — which has to do with “the hidden costs of a price-tag society.” Sandel makes good arguments, Dijkema says, but Gideon Strauss made the same arguments seven years ago:

There are many spheres of human life where economic considerations appropriately play a role but do not dictate decision-making. Families, schools and hospitals all have to balance their books—but they don’t exist to balance their books. In each of their cases, love, learning, and care, respectively, trumps the bottom line. One of the great challenges facing us is cultivating a society in which economic markets can flourish, but without overwhelming other spheres of human life.

2. Easterly for president?
The World Bank is looking for a new president, and among others, Jeffrey Sachs is working hard to position himself for the job. When I heard that, I immediately thought of Bill Easterly, Sachs’s arch-nemesis in the field of development economics. I waited for him to speak up. Well, Easterly wrote this passionate op-ed, showing pretty clearly how he’s not the man for this particular job:

I would not lead the World Bank by perpetuating the technocratic illusion that development is something “we” do to “them.” I would not ignore the rights of “them.” If the New York Times should happen to report on the front page that a World Bank-financed project torched the homes and crops of Ugandan farmers, I would not stonewall the investigation for the next 165 days, 4 hours, 37 minutes, and 20 seconds up to now. I am deeply moved by the universal agreement that my decades of experience in development do not qualify me for the job of World Bank president. I would not lead the World Bank by hiring myself.

3. David Brooks on original sin
It’s not every day a New York Times columnist refers to John Calvin, G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis in the same column, but David Brooks does so here in an effort to make sense of the actions of Sgt. Robert Bales, who recently “snapped” and killed 16 Afghan civilians. Our worldview, he says, doesn’t adequately take sin into account:

Any of us would be shocked if someone we knew and admired killed children. But these days it’s especially hard to think through these situations because of the worldview that prevails in our culture. According to this view, most people are naturally good, because nature is good. The monstrosities of the world are caused by the few people (like Hitler or Idi Amin) who are fundamentally warped and evil. This worldview gives us an easy conscience, because we don’t have to contemplate the evil in ourselves. But when somebody who seems mostly good does something completely awful, we’re rendered mute or confused.

4. Latin America’s prison problem
Following the huge prison fire in Honduras last month, the New York Times takes a look at the broader problem of overcrowded prisons and substandard justice systems across Latin America. The story is here and there’s a photo essay accompanying it.

5. Interview with Kuyper translator
The Patheos Book Club has chosen Abraham Kuyper’s recently translated Wisdom & Wonder: Common Grace in Science and Art (Christian’s Library Press) as its latest book. I read it earlier this year, and really appreciated it. They have an interesting interview with Nelson D. Kloosterman, the book’s translator. Here, he explains why he thinks translating Kuyper for English readers is important today:

First, educational: to overcome ignorance of a vibrant tradition of integrated Christianity that seems to be slipping into obscurity as another generation of Kuyper-knowers passes on. Second, evangelistic: so that the English-speaking world may benefit from ideas that have empowered believers for several generations in terms of public Christian cultural witness and service. Third, apologetic: so that both the advocacy and criticism of Kuyper’s proposals can be evaluated in terms of the very words of Kuyper himself, rather than in terms of any selective spin to which his ideas may up to this point have been subjected.

Repaso is intended as a thought-provoking compilation of news and commentary from the past week related to the intersections of faith, development, justice and peace. As always, I welcome your thoughts on any of the links and ideas in this roundup!

[Photo credit: photo-dictionary.com]

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The elefante in the room

March 12, 2012 — Leave a comment

There’s much to be puzzled by when it comes to U.S. politics, but for me one of the biggest is the underappreciated the Latino vote.

TIME’s cover recently featured a collage of Latino faces (and a Norwegian-Chinese-Irish one; oops), along with the words: Yo Decido. The cover story, written by Michael Scherer, is “Why Latinos will pick the next President.” He looks at national politics, but focuses his writing on things here in Phoenix. Simply put, Latinos are changing not only this state, but also the face of the country, and they will change its politics. Currently about one sixth of the total population, by 2050 one in three in the U.S. will be Latino. That’s a big piece of the pie.

But Obama, who won in 2008 with two-thirds of the Latino vote, failed to deliver on promises to pass immigration reform during his first year in office, and instead stepped up deportations like never before. The Republicans, meanwhile, are going to great lengths to outdo each other in anti-immigrant rhetoric (without much interest in differentiating between those with documents or without) that sees immigration as a simple problem with simple, if costly and/or strange, solutions. The most creative solution proposed by a one-time leading candidate entailed an electric fence at the border, guarded by alligators; he later called it “a joke.”

While Latinos are not a homogeneous voting bloc, they tend to be young and socially conservative. And immigration is far from the only issue on the table. Latinos have suffered disproportionately during the recession, and while the national unemployment rate holds steady at 8.3% — happily a three-year low — unemployment remains above 10% among Latinos. The economy matters a lot to all of us this time around, but even more so to Latinos.

Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, says in the TIME story, “We really look like Republicans on paper, but they don’t want us. The Democrats don’t look like us on paper, but they really want us.”

I blogged about this strange phenomenon last month, quoting Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio as Republicans who seem to get it and are pleading with their party to stop being so irresponsible and foolish. A little respect would go a long way. Sensible policies wouldn’t hurt either.

Though the cover story itself is unfortunately by subscription-only on TIME’s website, they do offer a photo essay with faces and quotes from different Latino voters here, and there’s another photo essay on being Latino in Arizona here. Finally, it’s interesting to note that while Mitt Romney won big in Arizona’s primary, and while he has said he favors “self-deportation” for undocumented immigrants, 63% of Republican voters in this state disagreed (36% thought they should be able to apply for citizenship, and 27% thought they should be allowed to stay as temporary workers). If the numbers are that high in Arizona, they’re certainly higher elsewhere, and if he becomes the nominee he’ll have no choice in the fall but to find a more moderate position. But by then, will he be able to rebuild the bridges he and others in his party have burned?

I’ll have more to say in future posts about civility and citizenship, two themes more timely than ever, but I’ll leave it there for now.

If you’re Latino, what do you plan to do in November?  Has any party or candidate won your vote? What do you wish politicians, or any non-Latinos for that matter, understood?

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Christianity Today tackles poverty and development

February 20, 2012 — 4 Comments

This month Christianity Today‘s cover story is focused on international development. CT’s editor-in-chief David Neff introduces the issue by mentioning the unique historical moment in which we find ourselves, exemplified by the 58: campaign, a collaboration of Christian relief and development organizations making the bold claim that we as Christians can end extreme poverty. I praised and critiqued the campaign’s book here.

The 58: campaign raises some important questions, and so does CT’s two-part cover story. For instance, What sorts of development initiatives really work? And as Christians, how do we understand the proper roles of governments and individuals in alleviating poverty? Those are good questions to consider.

First, the roles. Mark Galli, CT’s senior managing editor and author of several books, writes in “The Best Ways to Fight Poverty — Really” that while good macroeconomic policies have lifted millions out of poverty in places like India and China, as Christians we shouldn’t underestimate the significance of small, relational acts of neighborliness toward those in need wherever we are. This, of course, is something the state is too clumsy to do, though he suggests governments do have a role to play in creating good economic environments, and I’d agree. The government getting out of the way is essential for economic growth in many ways, but the state also has a responsibility to uphold justice, particularly for the vulnerable, and this has definite economic implications. Finding that balance is a source of contention for many on both sides of the aisle, but it’s essential that we try. While I wouldn’t consider Galli a development expert (and I don’t think he’d claim to be one), I do think he gives all of us some good food for thought nonetheless.

Second, the practicalities. Bruce Wydick, an economist at the University of San Francisco, writes “Cost-Effective Compassion.” Wydick is a development expert, and a Christian too. He surveyed a number of fellow development economists at places like Duke, Yale, Stanford and the World Bank, asking them to rank in terms of cost-effectiveness and impact ten approaches to poverty intervention that ordinary donors are commonly asked to support. The findings may surprise you: providing clean water, funding de-worming programs for children, and providing mosquito nets ranked as the three most effective approaches, with child sponsorship coming in at number four. Buying fair trade coffee and providing laptops for children were the two that came in with the lowest rankings.

At the end of the piece, Wydick offers some good take-aways — things that all of us should keep in mind when seeking to do the most good with the money we give. Most important, I think, is his point that great marketing doesn’t necessarily mean any given anti-poverty strategy is a good one; so it’s always good to do your research before giving. Additionally, judging organizations merely on the basis of the percentage of donor money spent on programs (as opposed to funds used for marketing and other overhead costs) isn’t enough; we need rigorous, independent scrutiny of programs to show whether those programs actually do any good, and whether they might also do some harm.

I’m grateful that a magazine like CT would give this topic such prominence, and I do hope you’ll read both parts of the cover story in full. As Wydick emphasizes, it’s good to be educated about which initiatives and campaigns work and which ones aren’t as good of an “investment.” But it’s also important to be reminded that an over-emphasis on pragmatism — an obsession with “what works” — can paradoxically be dehumanizing. People shouldn’t be viewed as projects, after all.

What are your reactions to these two perspectives on development from CT? Does any of it change how you’ll engage with issues of poverty? Does it change which projects or organizations you’ll support? Do you think it’s possible for NGOs to pursue “what works” while also keeping front and center the need to honor the dignity of those they serve?

[Photo credit: Blood Water Mission via permissiontoperuse.com]

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