PCUSA Affirming Higher Unemployment

The Presbyterian Church U.S.A. (PCUSA) has the reputation for being an “affirming” denomination. Church officials recently voted to affirm same-sex marriage. Before that, they affirmed non-celibate homosexual clergy and abortion. The church’s affirmations even extended to its investment philosophy—which resulted in divestment from companies doing business in Israel.

Right before Labor Day, the PCUSA released its latest affirmation: “We affirm the church’s stance on labor and offer up examples of our work in pursuit of dignified work, better conditions, and fair wages.”

Affirming various progressive political fashions has become a regular project of the PCUSA, specifically for the church’s governing body, the General Assembly. These affirmations are couched in euphemistic rhetoric that obscures the divisiveness of the issues and alienates those in the church with dissenting views. For example, when the PCUSA affirmed “reproductive options” using words like “justice” and “compassion,” it failed to acknowledge that the issue may be contentious for pro-life members.

What the PCUSA euphemistically calls “reproductive options” might more accurately be called “anti-reproductive medicines and medical procedures.” Similarly, I would submit that the PCUSA’s campaign to increase the federally mandated minimum wage might more correctly be described as a campaign for a smaller job pool.

Although the Labor Day missive’s author, PCUSA Stated Clerk Gradye Parsons, does not explicitly call for raising the federal minimum wage, his support for para-church organizations that do so is unmistakable: “Even though political deadlocks have blocked action by our national government,” he writes, “a growing number of cities and states have increased their minimum wages, a clear sign of respect for the dignity of all labor.” Then, buried in the next paragraph, Parsons aligns the church with Interfaith Worker Justice, an organization dedicated to lobbying for a higher federal minimum wage.

The effect of a federal minimum wage increase is clear: It would result in fewer jobs for the people who need them most. In fact, when President Obama was pushing for a $10.10 minimum wage, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office released a report that clearly outlined this economic reality: federal minimum wage increases result in lower employment rates—especially among minimum wage workers. Furthermore, the local minimum wage increases that Parsons celebrates have already begun to reduce employment in the areas where they were implemented.

Unfortunately, the superficial understanding of economic realities goes well beyond a federal minimum wage. It is an all-encompassing worldview for Parsons who expounds on the church’s support for misguided economic policies like “public investment” in jobs for minorities, “progressive taxation”, and even anti-austerity for Southern Europe.

The Labor Day message is a prime example of good intentions unmoored from economic realities. At the organization where I now work, the Acton Institute, we have found that religious leaders are a group of cultural influencers who tend to be woefully ignorant of basic economics. (After all, most pastors don’t enter the vocation because they have a heart for enterprise and commerce!) Because of this ignorance, they often lend their moral credibility to bad social policies and government interventions that actually hurt the very poor and marginal they set out to help.

To address this problem, we have organized perhaps the largest and most comprehensive economic educational conference for religious leaders, Acton University. Using the tagline, “Connecting Good Intentions to Sound Economics,” we annually bring together over 800 business and religious leaders to (re)form their economic worldviews and equip them with tools to carry forward the message of economic freedom. It is Acton’s mission to win the hearts and minds of influential religious leaders because their work, in turn, provides the moral framework for government officials and captains of business.

The PCUSA has built a reputation for being a highly educated denomination. Some studies boast that the membership and clergy earn postsecondary degrees at many times the rates of other denominations and the general population. One might think that having such a well-educated church might motivate leaders to avail themselves of the highly-developed critical thinking skills of their congregants. Perhaps the PCUSA could encourage these folks to debate and actively discern what workplace equity means in their spheres of influence. Instead they have cut their own members out of the discernment process. It ought to be alarming to all thoughtful Presbyterians when their church leaders fail to encourage deep moral reflection among the laity.

The problem of ignorant religious leaders advocating for misguided policies is not a new one. 20^th-century French philosopher Étienne Gilson wrote about this very subject: “We are told that it is faith which constructed the cathedrals of the middle ages. Without doubt, but faith would have constructed nothing at all if there had not also been architects; and if it is true that the facade of Notre dame of Paris is a yearning of the soul toward God, that does not prevent its being also a geometrical work. It is necessary to know geometry in order to construct a facade which may be an act of love.” In other words, the most zealous faith is useless without some understanding of the real world. Just as the great European cathedrals could never be built without a thorough understanding of the laws of geometry, an ardent desire for worker justice is impossible if it is unmoored from the economic realities of our world.

“Piety is never a substitute for technique,” Gilson wrote. “For technique is that without which the most fervent piety will be unable to make use of nature for God’s sake.” This is a truth that the PCUSA needs to rediscover if it wants to actually advance justice for America’s poor.