While culture wars rage, economic injustices grow

Greed knows no bounds:

Growing income inequality has a number of sources, but a distinct aspect of rising inequality in the United States is the wage gap between the very highest earners—those in the upper 1.0 percent or even upper 0.1 percent—and other earners, including other high-wage earners. Driving this ever-widening gap is the unequal growth in earnings enjoyed by those at the top. The average annual earnings of the top 1 percent of wage earners grew 156 percent from 1979 to 2007; for the top 0.1 percent they grew 362 percent (Mishel, Bivens, Gould, and Shierholz 2012). In contrast, earners in the 90th to 95th percentiles had wage growth of 34 percent, less than a tenth as much as those in the top 0.1 percent tier. Workers in the bottom 90 percent had the weakest wage growth, at 17 percent from 1979 to 2007.

So, for 90% of Americans, their wages grew 0.6% per year over the three decades before the Great Recession. Factor in the Great Recession, the numbers look even worse. In other words, they did not keep up with inflation. Meanwhile, the top 1% saw their wages grow an average of 5.6% per year.

And what about the pigs in the executive suites?

From 1978 to 2011, CEO compensation increased more than 725 percent, a rise substantially greater than stock market growth and the painfully slow 5.7 percent growth in worker compensation over the same period.

So where is all that trickle down from supply side economics that we hear so much about? Oh, never mind. We should forget about economic injustices and the growing ranks of the poor, instead keeping our eyes on culture wars.

Certainly, when building coalitions around initiatives and projects like “Justice Invitationals,” issues like the environment, slavery, poverty, natural disasters, and the like are going to build more consensus, allowing for us to re-build the bridges burned by so much demonizing in the past. However, we have a responsibility to both publically denounce the practice of homosexuality and abortion as well as give our young evangelicals the tools to learn for themselves why these practices are not the way God intended the world to be. Speaking and writing such in today’s secular milieu is certainly more dangerous than it used to be but it is still our responsibility before God.

There are more than 2000 references to the need to care for the poor, sick, aged, and disabled in the scriptures. Obsession with issues like homosexuality, abortion, and contraception indicates a heart to disobey God. When you have young evangelicals lead by the heart of God to answer the prayers of those that suffer, the culture warriors are nothing but false prophets.