Potluck Perspective

by Jim Wallis 03-06-2009

The “Church Potluck” is an old and cherished tradition in this country. Churches of all denominations and backgrounds ask their members to bring and donate a dish to share with the rest of the congregation for a lunch that they all eat together. Each person or family brings a salad, a “main dish,” or a desert and lays it out on the table to share with everyone else.

There is of course always the person who fails to bring a dish but seems to eat the most. There are those who bring a full roast chicken cooked to perfection and those who bring a crunched loaf of white bread they picked up at the store on the way. There is the woman who has brought the same unpalatable looking casserole that no one has yet to try for the past 20 years, and every once in a while everybody brings desserts.

Almost always, the church potluck is “unfair.” People eat more than they brought, or eat better food than what they offered. There are even the people who come expecting to give nothing and leave with a lot. And yet, for generations, this tradition has survived and is even growing among a younger generation in their 20s.

A church potluck is not the American economy. I would never suggest that we try to run it as such. But this simple tradition teaches a few lessons. First, in all aspects of life, there are always going to be times when things seem a little unfair and some people will try to get away with whatever they can. Second, most people, in their own way, want to contribute to the common good, and when that happens there is always more than enough for all of us.

According to a recent poll conducted by the Wall Street Journal and NBC, Americans seem to think of the administration’s housing plan a lot like they think of a potluck. A significant majority, 68 percent, support the plan, with only 25 percent in opposition to it. However, when asked about the “fairness” of the plan, 48 percent of respondents said that it unfairly benefited those who were fiscally irresponsible. In a separate poll conducted by Quinnipiac University, 64 percent responded that the plan is unfair to those that pay their mortgages on time.

It is natural to feel uncomfortable or upset at the idea of paying for your neighbor’s house because they acted irresponsibly. Indeed, it is of the utmost importance for this plan to be monitored and safeguarded from abuse. In spite of that, it will also certainly benefit some people who we feel are “undeserving” or even just should have known better. But, as indicated in the poll, that doesn’t stop most people from supporting it. A significant majority of the American people look at the plan, recognize its faults, and support it anyway because they understand that what is good for their neighbor is not just the right thing but is good for them as well.

Earlier this week, U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown addressed the U.S. Congress and said:

Let us remember there is a common bond that unites us as human beings across different beliefs, cultures, and nationalities. It is at the core of my convictions, the essence of America’s spirit, and the heart of all faiths. And it must be at the centre of our response to the crisis of today. At their best, our values tell us that we cannot be wholly content while others go without, cannot be fully comfortable while millions go without comfort, cannot be truly happy while others grieve alone.

And this too is true. All of us know that in a recession the wealthiest, the ten most powerful, and the most privileged can find a way through for themselves. So we do not value the wealthy less when we say that our first duty is to help the not so wealthy. We do not value the powerful less when we say that our first responsibility is to help the powerless. And we do not value those who are secure less when we say that our first priority must be to help the insecure. These recent events have forced us all to think anew. And while I have learnt many things, I keep returning to something I first learned in my father’s church as a child. In this most modern of crises I am drawn to the most ancient of truths; wherever there is hardship, wherever there is suffering, we cannot, we will not, pass by on the other side.

It is a danger in this crisis to assume and expect the worst of your neighbor; to live as if they are ready to take from you what you have left if only given the opportunity; and for our only hope to be to separate ourselves more from others, act as solitary individuals, and pursue our own selfish interests more than ever before. But the lessons we learn in church, from potlucks and pulpits, show us a better way.

Categories: Economics

Tags: America, church, churches, class, common good, dish, Economic, Economics, economy special focus, Family, food, Gordon Brown, Housing, mortgages, neighbor, Politics, potluck, Privilege, recession, serving, tradition, trust, values, Wall Street, wall street journal, wealth, wealthy

duhsciple

This column reminds me of a helpful parenting book, "Siblings without rivalry."

According to the book, you can never love your children "the same." You must treat them differently.

You love each child based on what he/she "needs." And, at any particular time, one child will need more than another:

Trying to treat each one "equally" does NOT mean that you are treating each one with "love" or "justice."

That's what I think is going on here.

And when you give to each child what he/she needs, everyone benefits.

Duh

Palosaari

I grew up unchurched, in a Christian commune. So I don't know a lot of American Christian church traditions, and you taught me some things new about the church potluck today. But it seems to me that what you describe is not negative in the slightest- some coming with little or nothing, and leaving haven eaten a great deal. Remember the widow's mite. What matters is not how much we bring, but how much we sacrifice. It could be that the guy who brings a small bag of chips to the potluck has, for his finances and life, brought far more than the one who brought the giant pasta. And it seems to me that the potluck should be a time when we celebrate the opportunity to make sure that all of our brothers and sisters are fully fed, regardless of what they brought- just as the Love Feasts were for the Early Church.

paradoxtor

The problem with the potluck analogy is that it is voluntary. The church leadership doesn't tell certain people that they must bring a lot because they are wealthy. They may encourage but it is still voluntary. Therefore the issue of being unfair is very different. With the government, you are forced to give whether you choose to or not. If this was done in the church, it would be considered a cult.

hammerud

When Gordon Brown mentions "we" he means government, and that is separate from me. I would like to have the money I have to be available to me to help others, not taken from me by government so it can help others. Government, by the way, is not compassionate. It simply likes social stability.

Lord_Voldemort

The thing about the church pot luck is that if you add up all the materials for all the dishes and then add a generous adjustment for all the preparation time, the whole thing still probably adds up to substantially less than $800,000,000,000. We're all quite capable of putting up with the petty unfairnesses of life, but the Obama program isn't exactly petty.

LV

Minnesotan

I agree with Paradoxtor that Jim Wallis is confusing a voluntary pooling of resources with the government compelling people to contribute - and contributing the amounts that the government dictates. Pres. Obama's plan is nothing like the voluntary model of the New Testament Church or the church potluck.

Also, the president's plan feels like it is based on envy or bitterness, that the "rich" have to cough up the money they owe "us." Obama's confiscatory and class-envy policies are destroying wealth, causing entrepreneurs to stop creating jobs for all of us, including the poor, etc. The president would do much better to eliminate the wasteful "stimulus" bill, cut spending and reduce taxes, like cutting the payroll taxes for workers and cutting the capital gains tax to bring stability to the markets and cause investors to start creating jobs again.

I fear that President Obama is beginning to look more and more like Jimmy Carter - a failed one term president who drove the economy into the ground - with the best of intentions. Obama's leftist philosophies are not grounded in economic realities and will hurt the poor he wants to help.

jonabark

Your "solutions" have been tried in spades with disastrous results. The principal of graduated taxes is a very rich-person-friendly version of the principle of redistribution set forth in the Biblical Jubilee from Mosaic Law. The rich have tremendous "confiscatory" power in the current system spending millions in lobbying efforts to receive billions in returns. Such arrangements are not available to people who work at Wal-Mart , only to those who run it.

Citizenship is in fact voluntary and can be given up. A government of the people is in many ways akin to a pot luck. Americans did not stop paying taxes under Republicans they just watched an orgy of Republican spending. In the Eisenhower time and under Nixon the Rich payed 2 or 3 times more in taxes and the economy thrived. Reagan reversed it and the economy dived. Ultimately the Friedman notions have led to an international financial collapse.

Blaming Obama for the mangled mess he inherited is in my opinion intellectually dishonest in the extreme.

Are you Kevin? If so, why did you change your name?

JacobS

The economy thrived under Nixon?

jonabark

Job growth better than the average Republican. No major recession. better distribution of wealth. Fewer households with both parents working. Perhaps thrive is an overstatement, but at this point it looks like economic health. One thing is sure. Jobs grow significantly and consistently under Democrats, so Minnesotan is wrong about liberal policies hurting the poor. Way wrong.

BlueDeacon

I wonder if it occurs to anyone that when the poor get more money they spend it -- and the rich folks who complain actually get their money back.

jonabark

Here are some arguments about pot luck banking from attorney Ellen Hodgson Brown and her book blog "Web of Debt" , which includes a very intriguing quote from Ben Franklin which sounds pretty Keynesian.

Readily available credit has made America “the land of opportunity” ever since the days of the American colonists. What has transformed this credit system into a Ponzi scheme that must continually be propped up with bailout money is that the credit power has been turned over to private parties who always require more money back than they create in the first place. Benjamin Franklin reportedly explained this defect in the eighteenth century. When the directors of the Bank of England asked what was responsible for the booming economy of the young colonies, Franklin explained that the colonial governments issued their own money, which they both lent and spent into the economy:

“In the Colonies, we issue our own paper money. It is called ‘Colonial Scrip.’ We issue it in proper proportion to make the goods pass easily from the producers to the consumers. In this manner, creating ourselves our own paper money, we control its purchasing power and we have no interest to pay to no one. You see, a legitimate government can both spend and lend money into circulation, while banks can only lend significant amounts of their promissory bank notes, for they can neither give away nor spend but a tiny fraction of the money the people need. Thus, when your bankers here in England place money in circulation, there is always a debt principal to be returned and usury to be paid. The result is that you have always too little credit in circulation to give the workers full employment. You do not have too many workers, you have too little money in circulation, and that which circulates, all bears the endless burden of unpayable debt and usury.”

In an article titled “A Monetary System for the New Millennium,” Canadian money reform advocate Roger Langrick explains his concept in contemporary terms. He begins by illustrating the mathematical impossibility inherent in a system of bank-created money lent at interest:

“[I]magine the first bank which prints and lends out $100. For its efforts it asks for the borrower to return $110 in one year; that is it asks for 10% interest. Unwittingly, or maybe wittingly, the bank has created a mathematically impossible situation. The only way in which the borrower can return 110 of the bank’s notes is if the bank prints, and lends, $10 more at 10% interest . . . . The result of creating 100 and demanding 110 in return, is that the collective borrowers of a nation are forever chasing a phantom which can never be caught; the mythical $10 that were never created. The debt in fact is unrepayable. Each time $100 is created for the nation, the nation’s overall indebtedness to the system is increased by $110. The only solution at present is increased borrowing to cover the principal plus the interest of what has been borrowed.”

The better solution, says Langrick, is to allow the government to issue enough new debt-free dollars to cover the interest charges not created by the banks as loans:

“Instead of taxes, government would be empowered to create money for its own expenses up to the balance of the debt shortfall. Thus, if the banking industry created $100 in a year, the government would create $10 which it would use for its own expenses. Abraham Lincoln used this successfully when he created $500 million of ‘greenbacks’ to fight the Civil War.”

National Credit from a Truly National Banking System

In Langrick’s example, a private banking industry pockets the interest, which must be replaced every year by a 10 percent issue of new Greenbacks; but there is another possibility. The loans could be advanced by the government itself. The interest would then return to the government and could be spent back into the economy in a circular flow, without the need to continually issue more money to cover the interest shortfall.

Lord_Voldemort

The other thing about the church pot-luck is that some people actually enjoy cooking -- they're the ones who tend to be the best cooks -- so that what you get out of it isn't the entire point of the exercise. But hardly anyone I know really enjoys the exercise of paying taxes.

The more I look at this essay, the sillier it gets.

LV

Joe_Allen_Doty

The early church in the 1st Century invented "Church Pot Luck Suppers."

On the evening of the 1st Day of the Week, which we now call Sunday Evening, when believers in the local church gathered for worship services, they brought food to share with others.

That meal was a part of the worship service. They created a modified version of the Lord's Seder Meal in the Upper Room before he was crucified.

The Apostle Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians how some church members abused the purpose of the meal and they ate their own food and drank their own wine instead of sharing it with those who had less or nothing to bring at all.

These folks who didn't share are also like some of the rich folks and corporations in the USA. Here in Tulsa, Oklahoma, we have folks who are just middle class who are anti-government programs and some are even anti-faith-based charities. I know about them because they post comments to the online Articles of the Tulsa World newspaper website.

judithod

As people already have posted, a potluck is a disingenuous metaphor for the U. S. economy. Moreover, I don't agree with Wallis's contention that the "danger in this crisis" is that people are assuming and expecting the worst of their neighbors. Most of us don't have the time to mull over whether we're in the class of the "oppressors' or the "oppressed." We're just trying to meet our daily obligations to family, friends, and work. What I see as the real danger is the hypocrisy of the president and congress in claiming that the rapidly passed stimulus plan, the proposed budgets, and the proposed cap-and-trade tax will spur the economy. They're presenting the economic downturn as an excuse to push bigger government while blithely crippling generations with debt. More government may appear to be the ready solution, but in the long run, it will deprive citizens of their independence, integrity, and ingenuity.

nuclearferret

Excellent responses here!