The political process undermines the impulse to engage in Christian(and Jewish) charity largely because, I think, that Social Darwinism remains a strong current of thought for many Americans.
All religions applaud charity, which is understood as giving assistance to the needy, whether the poor or the sick or the drug addled. And yet in politics, legislators and executive officials work hard to short circuit or avoid providing charity, however profound their sense of religious belief. Why do people circumvent their own deepest feelings about a feeling and belief that is a simple idea and feeling and a fundamental part of their beliefs?.The reason is that charity is not at all simple and neither is politics, which can be thought of only by some as a vehicle of charity.
The ideas of faith, hope and charity are thought of as theological virtues because all three depend on a general appreciation of God for any of the three to exist. Faith is the process whereby people can appreciate God in the first place, hope is an expectation that can exist in this hopeless material existence without God, and charity, in the larger sense of love, will not obtain, people reaching out to one another so as to embrace them in one way or another, without faith and hope, charity the best of the three because it is the living action in the world of these first supernatural understandings. There would be no charity, no impulse to do so, were there no supernatural intervention.
But charity is a complex or derived emotion rather than a simple or most primitive emotion. Charity as almsgiving and aside from the generality of engaging with the soul of another or embracing all of humanity, is an inversion of the idea of sacrifice, which does come close to being a primitive emotion in tata sacrifice is the only thigh up to one’s own life to be given to appease a perhaps angry God, which means have enough power not to need anything but obedience so as to possibly placate that power. A person sacrifices because that is all a supplicant can do, just as when capital punishment is invoked because there is nothing else that can be done to restore a person into the human community, the miscreant beyond rehabilitation or sufficient other suffering, like long jail sentences so that a sense of justice can be balanced however much the penalty has nothing to do with the crime and just adds punishment to a previous infraction.
As humanity evolves, more and more restrictions are limited to sacrifice. Child sacrifice was already recognized as bad when Agamemnon sacrificed her daughter and Abraham replaced the sacrifice of his son with a sacrificial lamb. Sacrifice is limited so as to eliminate more and more cruelty. Torture even of an enemy becomes considered inhumane, harsh remedies such as long term incarceration, are given review so that the prisoner is ascertained as getting his due rather than being a victim, wich is a condition that should be regarded withcharity, sometone whose burden is lifted as best as possible rather than justified in obliqey. Seminary students learn not to feel prideful for giving charity because those given alms deserve respect rather than pity and giving alms is the least that a seminarian can do.
In the Chrustian view, making a sacrifice is a virtue, an additional way to enhance one’s own stock of good will, whether it means fasting during Lent or giving an extra pear to a neighbor, or giving your life as a martyr or just to your nation. A strict reading of charity in the Jewish tradition does not treat it as a warm, glowing feeling but as an obligation. The law commands people to be charitable because it is the right thing to do and so not to crow about, no matter how many plaques are named at synagogue pews or, in secular circles, on park benches. As the Talmud says, giving charity anonymously is to be greater than Moses.You give alms because you must.
So given the long and complex development from sacrifice to offering to the poor, and the restrictions on what can be sacrificed, all the way down to making a donation to save the animals, what counterforce is there to deal with the curated emotion to be generous to others? Itis politics, an institution as complex as religion itself and viewing with religion, the claims of politics even more severe and opposite to charity however many political officials claim they are in keeping with religious thoughts and emotions.
Consider the passage of Trump’s “big, beautiful bill”, perhaps the most significant legislation since the New Deal and the Civil Rights Bills of the Sixties, and the worst bill in the history of the nation, worse than the Alien and Sedition Acts and the Smoot-Hawley Tariff because the Trump bill does so many bad things, not just one. Trump’s bill can hardly be regarded as charitable. It cuts back significant Medicaid funding . It cuts back from the poor by eliminating food stamps (SNAP). It cuts back hospital services, especially to those in rural areas. It also is ungenerous to immigrants illegal only to the equivalent of a traffic ticket. It does not restore USAID which will lead to millions of deaths from starvation and disease in Africa. How could these Christian fearing Senators disregard the injunction to charity when taxes are a perfect way to accomplish charity in that taxes are anonymous and provide recipients with entitlements rather than alms?
There are six reasons that are part and parcel of the institution that lead it to set aside charity. First, there is the ideological presence of Social Darwinism which proclaims and has done so for 150 years, that the world is a dog eat dog competition and there is a zero sum game which means there are winners and there are aso losers. The poor and the disabled are losers rather than victims and so can be blamed for their misfortunes rather than be given assistance so people can overcome adversities by providing some crumbs of money from the rich. The Social Darwinist perspective imagines ethnic groups and nations in competition with one another for dominance, as tit believes is also the case in the animal kingdom where each species is out to survive and fitness as a virtue comes to those who do survive. There is no idea of right independent of that and so it is right to do whatever results in domination. In Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged”, a big railroad can gobble up a smaller one. There is no compunction, no sense of fair play, only victory or defeat. The idea of competition has never evolved to the idea of charity as going beyond subservience, People and groups jus engaged in offering tribute to placate the domineering figure. Trump says in the oval office that Vladimir Zelenskyy has no cards to play and so should accede to all demands including fealty rather than make arguments of right.
Never mind that philosophers and historians have challenged the Social Darwinist approach by saying that there is cooperation as well as competition and that human beings have the capacity to overcome raw competition bycreatingval;ues and rights out of their own minds, and so charity becoming “natural” for people. The Social Darwinist view is also contrary to the view of Leo XII who contested Social Darwinism at the beginning of the twentieth century, arguing that human dignity was available to all and not just those economically successful. The Social Darwinist perspective has been elaborated into trickle down economics which means that making rich people richer will eventually benefit the poor and that government programs are inefficient as if cutting or slimming some programs justifies cutting back worthwhile programs. Some Senators ascribe to their rhetoric, however tortured it may be, and its presence persists for politicians otherwise charitable. Mitt Romney said when he thought noone but his followers were listening that the world was divided between the makers and the takers and the Democrats were the takers and so Republicans had to win so as to restore the order where the makers are in charge.
A second reason legislators eschew their belief in charity is the rhetoric of contempt which pervades political discourse. You always have to find a villain whose point of view is simply ridiculous. I am thinking of the Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana who is known for showing up candidates for the federal bench to being woefully ignorant of the law by asking one witness whether there were two or more sexes, the answer apparently obviously two and anyone saying otherwise ridiculous and worthy of anger. The witness said that she was not an expert on that area and so demurred giving an answer. That may have been a politic answer butI would have answered differently. I too am not an expert but I would offer that there are two basic sexes but that there are also sports or variations, as happens everywhere in biology and that there is no need to get all excited and condemnatory about that obvious fact and treat people with unusual attributes as with respect, which is part of charity, whether considered as providing aid or love.The political inclination to cut off discussion by asking for yes and no answers is just the opposite of the sociological view that one describe reality objectively or even more the Biblical view of separating good from evil when life is mixed and erring whether or not to give the benefit if the doubt to people as fallible souls to be encouraged to ne better and so be charitable to people‘s selves and not just their condition of penury. Blame as the first and final judgment of people is not charitable.
Here are two excuses for avoiding charity as an emotion and obligation. Charity is not a question of compensating for slights such as reparations. Give money to poor Africans because they are poor, not because you are in debt to them because of previous wrongs you have inflicted upon them So Germany may have for a few generations provided reparations to Holocaust servivors and to Israel because those people needed compensation just as in a tort case, But reparations arenot appropriate to the descendents of their black ancestors Should a mixed marriage child get half a loaf? Should OprahWinfrey geta whole share? Just consider paying forgood programs to the poor not for guoil;t but because of charity. Anyone needy can apply and the program to be evaluated on its merits. Provide free school luches to the poor because good nutrition leads to better school outcomes not because the children are the descendents of slaves
Fourth, charity should be provided so long as you can afford it. The little old lady shouldn’t spend her entire Social Security check on orphaned animals or even St. Judes or a Shriner’s Hospital. Be prudent You don’t have to bankrupt yourself to offer charity But there is plenty of excess wealth to use in the United States. The nation can afford to be generous and provide condoms for Africa. The United States also felt better about itself for being generous quite aside from charity serving as an instrument of foreign policy. But charity offered through religious organizations are to be appreciated as a token of charity, a nod to the virtue of charity, while taxation based charitycan make a substantial difference if the American people will treat taxes as an offering.
The fifth and sixth reasons for the lrgislative resistance to charity are structural rather than ideological or rhetorical. The fifth reason tha big beautiful bill is passed even if legislators were privately opposed to it or even publicly opposed to it just a few days before is that they care more about being reelected than using their good judgment, telling themselves it won’t be all that bad. They don’t want to be primaried and Trum[p would make sure that happened if they didn’t comply. So they make a deal to get something for their own states,part of the horse trading inevitable to make a legislature work, and so don’t face the wrath ofTrump. Lisa Merkowski of Alaska got state benefits for what she said was a bad vill but voted “yes” anyway. Only very few will simply refuse to rn rather than find a way to support Trump. Tom Tillis of North Carolina did that and there are no successful coalitions of despondent Republicans who will en mass reject the Trump vote, fearing all of them will be primaried or just lose in the next general election> To be primaried or defeated, that is the question. Itis hard to ride out the tornado until Trump can’t run again. Why oppose what is a passing fancy? Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy thought they could weather the storm, but they are gone or soon gone and Trump remains. Noone wants to bell the cat.
A sixth reason for why a Christian nation avoids its charitable instincts is an institutional one, having to do with how the legislative branch has changed in the last fifty years. There was a time when there was a vocal minority within each of the two parties. They stood by their own convictions and the pride of the Senate that it allowed mavericks to oppose and even filibuster bills coming to the floor. Strom Thurmond filibustered against civil rights legislation. Wayne Morse was such a maverick Republican that he switched parties. Jacob Javits and Arlen Specter voted often with Democrats, part of a regional rather than party alliance. But now,.perhaps because the two parties are so evenly divided, party loyalty is everything. No Margaret Chase Smith of Maine opposing Joe McCarty, but Susan Collins always giving nitro Trump appointments and legislation at the last minute even though this time being one of the three Republican Senators who did vote against “the Big Beautiful Bill”.. Forget about debate. The vote is what counts and that will remain the case until one or the other party gets a wide enough lead so that there is enough breathing room to tolerate internal diversity. Rand Paul is notable for being his own man and his own principles, however much he espouses the Social Darwinist philosophy.
How do religious Christians deal with their obligation to and the virtue of charity? Sen. Warnock of Georgia is a Black Protestant pastor who is quite comfortable in supporting Liberal measures to make the government more charitable. Father Robert Drinan was a Catholic who was a member of the House of Representatives in the Sixties and quite Liberal until the Pope insisted that all Catholic priests had to abandon legislative office everywhere in the world and he did. James Langford, the senior Senator from Olklahoma, is a white Protestant Baptist minister who fully supports Trump’s Big Bill. His book, “Turnaround” shows that he is an ideologue rather than an ideologist, just turning out platitudes rather than reasoned ideas. He amplifies his opposition to big budgets, however much betraying that ideal in the Big Bill, and support of a law and order that restores civility, with the apocalyptic sense that everything is quickly going downhill and so the world has to be radically reformed, but that is not the Christian idea that faith will allow charity to prevail over iniquity. Only punishing his enemies will. I guess that Social Darwinism has deeply infiltrated into white Protestant Christianity, just as a religious person like Dorothy Day who was an anarchist and devoted to charity might have palled around with Communists, who believed in necessity rather than charity. There is the enemy within Christianity, not the atheists or the Marxists, but those who think that Social Darwinism is the “natural” way to understand social and moral life..