Lawrence M. Mead was one of the theoretical architects of welfare reform of the 1990’s. This book focuses on identifying the cause of poverty and the cure.
“The difficulty is that poverty involves more than low-income.” This key conclusion of Mead does away with that any solution to poverty that focuses on handouts whether it is tax credits, food, or housing. At best these solutions are a band-aid to temporarily solve a problem, at worst they are an enabling solution that destroys dignity and self-initiative of many people. In any case, these programs usually fail.
A more comprehensive solution is to “restore community.” Mead suggests that the key problem of the poor is lack of community. The poor are above all isolated, as poor in relationships as they are in resources. Programs to help the poor should help them to reorganize their lives to undertake the standard relationships of society.
Mead points to a Success Sequence: get through school, go to work, marry, have children. The most important of these is marriage. In the middle of all the talk on redefining marriage, the surprising fact is that traditional marriage is becoming a better indicator of whether someone is in poverty than race or even income.
While the word “Prophesy” is in the title, this book is not at all a careful attempt to analyze and synthesize the biblical material on prophesy related to the poor. For example, Mead writes, “While the biblical tradition respects private property, it does in principle permit some transfer of wealth from the better off to help the less fortunate. That is implicit in the prophets’ call to the authorities to do more to succor the needy.” No reference is given nor explanation how he came to this conclusion. He is asking his readers to just believe him.
From Prophecy to Charity is worth reading for those whose aim is to develop the objectives of organizations and governments seeking that provide services for the poor. It is a short book, 108 pages, and should be regarded as a brief introduction from a public policy perspective to the topic of poverty.
See also: Connection between marriage and poverty
Related posts:
- Friday Book Review: Toxic Charity by Robert D. Lupton, 5 Stars
- Connection between marriage and poverty
- Friday Book Review: Ministries of Mercy by Timothy J. Keller, 5 Stars
- Friday Book Review: To Transform a City: Whole Church, Whole Gospel, Whole City by Eric Swanson, Sam Williams, 5 Stars
I think you’re right to note the scarcity of Biblical Support for redistibution. I think there may be more evidence for some modified form of it than he suspects but the fact one can’t even bother to quote a verse (even out of context!) shows how lazy people become in asserting that their views are “Biblical”.
While we tend to minimize the social impact of evangelism, evangelism repeatedly, world wide not only creates “community” and an impetus for “learning” and “traditional marriage”, it orients one’s life to these things and not only establishes them as ideals but – through God’s Word and Spirit – empowers us to work towards them!
In discussions about alleviating poverty the white elephant in the room nobody’s talking about is evangelism!
Yes, I agree. The result of evangelism and creating community is meeting these needs. Just meeting these needs is a short term and limited solution.