The 'Undeserving Poor' Today: the Rhetoric and Theological

Swithinbank, Hannah. "The ‘Undeserving Poor’ Today: The Rhetoric and Theological Development of a Problematic Category." Poverty in the Early Church and Today: A Conversation. Ed. Walton Steve and Swithinbank Hannah. London: T&T Clark, 2019. 146–157. Bloomsbury Collections. Web. 29 Sep. 2021. <http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9780567677747.ch-023>. Downloaded from Bloomsbury Collections, www.bloomsburycollections.com, 29 September 2021, 19:19 UTC. Copyright © Steve Walton, Hannah Swithinbank and contributors 2019. You may share this work for non-commercial purposes only, provided you give attribution to the copyright holder and the publisher, and provide a link to the Creative Commons licence. 146 2 3 Th e ‘Undeserving Poor’ Today: Th e Rhetoric and Th eological Development of a Problematic Category Hannah Swithinbank Introduction What is poverty? Why do people fi nd themselves living in poverty? What does it mean to be living in poverty and to be deserving or undeserving of support from your neighbours and fellow citizens – or to be thought to be so? Do we think of and talk about people as being the ‘undeserving poor’ today, and what does this kind of labelling do to our understanding of poverty and of people living in poverty – and what does it do to our society? Th ese are all big questions, probably too big for one essay. In this essay, I shall explore the way that we currently talk about poverty and the people who live in it, looking at one recent political debate to provide focus. I shall suggest that we do indeed have a concept of deserving and undeserving poor, one in which the ability to work is fundamental within an understanding of society that sees it as unfair for those who contribute to have to support those who do not. I shall then explore some of the consequences of this rhetoric in a world where poverty is complex and briefl y suggest that the story of the Bible presents the church with an alternative perspective to which it could give a constructive public voice in our contemporary conversations about helping people out of poverty. D e fi nitions To begin, it is worth briefl y off ering some defi nitions. First, poverty . We must begin by saying that it is probably impossible to defi ne poverty simply, for the moment that any simple defi nition comes into contact with the experiences of those living in poverty, its inadequacy becomes clear and we start to feel the need to adjust it to encompass what we see and what people tell us about their lives. We may perhaps best describe poverty as lack . But lack of what? Here is a non-comprehensive list: money, food and water, housing, education, health, freedom, independence, dignity, community, power, 99780567677761_pi-228.indd780567677761_pi-228.indd 114646 009-Nov-189-Nov-18 22:29:57:29:57 PPMM 1 47 Th e ‘Undeserving Poor’ Today 147 hope. 1 A lack of any of the above – either absolute or relative to those among whom you live – may contribute to impoverishment. Tearfund, for whom I work, describe poverty in the following terms: Poverty is holistic: it is not just economic or physical but is also social, environmental and spiritual. It is complex and multi-faceted. Th e root cause of poverty is broken relationships which entered the world as a result of humanity’s rebellion against God. At this time, we moved from a life of wholeness, living in perfect relationship with God, creation, ourselves and each other, into a life of broken relationships, broken off from God, family and community, broken off from others further removed from us (diff erent communities, cultures or countries) – and even from ourselves, as a result of false images of identity and self-worth. 2 In this, too, poverty is a lack , with the spiritual aspect of this lack clearly and specifi cally identifi ed as the fundamental loss of relationship with a loving Creator God. What might it mean to deserve to be poor? To start with the above theological understanding of poverty, it might mean thinking that we all deserve some kind of poverty. If all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, then perhaps we all deserve to live with the lack of that relationship and with the poverty that follows, in any or all of its aspects as they affl ict us. Biblically, I suggest this is not quite the whole picture: the narrative in the Bible presents poverty as the consequence of the broken relations arising from human sin and the fall, and that this aff ects the whole of creation, separating us from God and damaging the way that we live together. We see this begin in Gen. 3.16-19, where God’s pronouncement over Adam and Eve as he sends them out of the garden describes a brokenness in their relationships with God, each other and with the earth that will make it impossible to fl ourish as God intended. Th e world becomes a place where brother kills brother (Genesis 4) and where, as God says, ‘Th e poor will be with you always’ (Deut. 15.11). Yet the narrative arc of the Bible presents God as a God on a mission to redeem his creation, reaching out to humanity and the wider creation which he loves in order to overcome the fall. We see this in the calling of Abraham (Genesis 12) and the establishment of the Israelites as God’s people, and in the promise, the coming and the life, death and resurrection of Christ, which makes restoration to God possible. 3 Th at 1 H e l p f u l r e fl ections on the nature of poverty include Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert , When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty without Hurting the Poor . and Yourself ( Chicago : Moody , 2014 ), 51–68 ; Bryant Myers , ‘ Progressive Pentecostalism, Development, and Christian Development NGOs: a Challenge and an Opportunity ’, International Bulletin of Mission Research 39 . 3 ( 2015 ) 115–20 . 2 Tearfund , ‘ Overcoming Poverty Together ’ (internal document, 2012 ). 3 See, e.g., Isa. 53, where verse 5 describes the Messiah as the restorer of shalom ; Jn 1.1-14 and 14.6, which describe Jesus as coming to show humanity the way to the Father; and Eph. 2.1-10, in which Paul describes our salvation in Christ. For fuller discussion, see Christopher J. H. Wright , Th e Mission of God ( Downers Grove, IL : IVP , 2006 ), 53–5 , 62–6 ; N. T. Wright , Th e New Testament 99780567677761_pi-228.indd780567677761_pi-228.indd 114747 009-Nov-189-Nov-18 22:29:57:29:57 PPMM 148 148 Poverty in the Early Church and Today God desires his people to fl ourish, free from oppression and injustice, can be seen in the exodus from Egypt and the fi nal (long-delayed) establishment of the nation of Israel. What this should look like can be seen in the laws of Israel, particularly the Jubilee laws and the voices of the prophets, which call Israel to live in ways in which their love for the Lord their God goes hand in hand with their love for their neighbours. 4 In the synagogue in Nazareth, Jesus declares himself as the one who will bring this Jubilee and open the way to the Father through his death and resurrection. 5 He comes ‘to reconcile to himself all things whether things on earth or things in heaven’, 6 an act that will cumulate in the new heaven and new earth (Revelation 21). Poverty may be a consequence of sin, but regardless of whether we really deserve to be poor or to be redeemed and lift ed out of this situation or not, the Bible tells us that this is what God is doing. In the day-to-day, however, defi ning poverty as lack means that to deserve poverty is to lack through some fault of one’s own. Th is fault or failing, whatever it is, is then taken to mean that a person is undeserving of support because it would be a misuse of resources that would very likely go to waste. Th is assumes that people, fundamentally, do not change and have forfeited trust through their failure. Th e removal of support might be from government and taxpayers, from civil society bodies such as charities or churches, and even from immediate neighbours, friends and family. However, what constitutes this kind of fault? What is considered a great enough personal failure to make a person undeserving? In their work Th e Myth of the Undeserving Poor , Martin Charlesworth and Natalie Williams discuss the evolution of the categorization of the poor in Victorian England through the administration of the Poor Laws: children, the aged and infi rm, and the genuinely unemployed were to be given opportunities and relief, while the work-shy were to be given harsh corrective treatment in order to encourage them to change their wilful idleness. 7 Ideas have staying power – and the authors argue that this idea of an undeserving poor has never fully gone away. But what does this category look like now? Th e rhetoric In order to try and focus my discussion in what is a very large body of discourse about people living in poverty, both nationally and internationally, I have chosen to look and the People of God ( London : SPCK , 2013 ), 139–43 ; Craig Bartholomew and Michael Goheen , Th e Drama of Scripture ( London : SPCK , 2014 ); and Kevin J. Vanhoozer , Th e Drama of Doctrine ( Louisville, KY : Westminster John Knox , 2005 ), who uses the metaphor of a drama in a number of acts to illuminate this.

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