Poverty in the Promised Land Quotes

“has been tempting and easy for the church to reach a long-running settlement of the public/private matter by accenting charity as the work of private good while at the same time remaining silent about public matters while the market works its ruthless will. But such a bifurcation does not finally work, because it yields a major disconnect between faith and actual lived reality. Thus, in the face of our current economic crisis, our work is to show how and in what ways the claims of covenantal economics are indispensable for our public practice. This will require the church (at the local level) to do the work of teaching and interpretation that it has too often failed to do.”
― Walter Brueggemann, Poverty in the Promised Land

“The alternative to “wealth” (mammon, capital) is a recognition that a commitment to money-making, money-taking, and money-coveting practices is elementally inimical to the God of the gospel.”
― Walter Brueggemann, Poverty in the Promised Land

“Practically, that deep commitment to capitalism is expressed as trust in the market that has come to dominate the economy through an ideology of individualism.”
― Walter Brueggemann, Poverty in the Promised Land

“Thus, covetousness is equivalent to idolatry. Inappropriate desire is tantamount to the worship of false gods. An economy of acquisitiveness that is willing and able to violate vulnerable neighbors is the embrace of a false world presided over by false gods that cannot save.”
― Walter Brueggemann, Poverty in the Promised Land

“Thus, the church—the Christian congregation—unlike the world is a community that gives and gives up in response to the needs of others, propelled by the example of self-giving that Jesus carried to extremity. Thus, the habit of the church in giving and in self-giving is a quite countercultural habit, for the way of the world is to acquire, to hoard, and to accumulate to monopoly—so “bigger barns” and “storehouse cities.” But not the church!”
― Walter Brueggemann, Poverty in the Promised Land

“His wondrous action is a defiance of the entire security system of Rome and official Judaism. The action and outcome of the narrative is that Jesus, not unlike God in the wilderness, exposes the myth of scarcity as a ruse designed to protect exploitative monopoly.”
― Walter Brueggemann, Poverty in the Promised Land

“Here’s the playbook. First, allow elites to hoard a resource like money or land. Second, pretend that arrangement is natural, unavoidable—or better yet, ignore it altogether. Third, attempt to address social problems caused by the resource hoarding with only the scarce resources left over. So instead of making the rich pay all their taxes, for instance, design a welfare state around the paltry budget you are left with when they don’t. Fourth, fail. Fail to drive down the poverty rate. Fail to build more affordable housing. Fifth, claim this is the best we can do. Preface your comments by saying, “In a world of scarce resources . . .” Blame government programs. Blame capitalism. Blame the other political party. Blame immigrants. Blame anyone you can except those who most deserve it. “Gaslighting” is not too strong a phrase to describe such pretense. (174–175)”
― Walter Brueggemann, Poverty in the Promised Land

“It is an endless temptation to read the Bible according to our vested interests. That is a longstanding practice of the well-off church.”
― Walter Brueggemann, Poverty in the Promised Land

“It is worth seeing the tension in the Bible between the assured teaching of wisdom concerning laziness (idleness), and the function of “laziness” as a dismissive label in the propaganda of Pharaoh, used both to legitimate endless production, and to diminish the dignity and viability of the slave population.”
― Walter Brueggemann, Poverty in the Promised Land

“But you shall require of them the same quantity of bricks as they have made previously; do not diminish it, for they are lazy. (Exod 5:8) You are lazy, lazy; that is why you say, “Let us go and sacrifice to the Lord.” (5:17) Thus, Pharaoh is an anticipation of our later dismissive labeling of the poor as “lazy.” That verdict is reached by a simple appeal to a quid pro quo calculus read backward. Read forward, one can see that the labor force has ended in desperation and poverty. When the calculus is reversed, it is no wonder that their desperation and poverty are caused by laziness. There is, however, no evidence in the narrative that the Hebrew slaves are lazy. They kept getting larger and larger brick quotas, not unlike the cotton quotas of Black slaves in the US as the English needed more cotton for their mills.”
― Walter Brueggemann, Poverty in the Promised Land

“In 2020 the federal government spent more than $193 billion on homeowner subsidies, a figure that far exceeded the amount spent on direct housing assistance for low-income families ($53 billion). Most families who enjoy those subsidies have six-figure incomes and are white. Poor families lucky enough to live in government-owned apartments often have to deal with mold and even lead paint, while rich families are claiming mortgage interest deductions on first and second homes. The lifetime limit for cash welfare to poor parents is five years, but families claiming the mortgage interest deduction may do so for the length of the mortgage, typically thirty years. A fifteen-story public housing tower and a mortgaged suburban home are both government-subsidized, but only one looks (and feels) that way. (90–91)”
― Walter Brueggemann, Poverty in the Promised Land

“Poverty is not coincidental with human societies but rather the product of a conspiracy of the powerful to retain their benefits and status.”
― Walter Brueggemann, Poverty in the Promised Land