MOYERS: You
recently did a very radical thing. You called
on the children of Abraham - Muslims, Christians
and Jews - to engage in an act of refusal.
HOUGH: Well,
my perception, Bill, is that there is a definite
intentional move on the part of political leadership
in this country. In the direction that I think
is not at all compatible with the prophetic tradition
in Islam, Christianity, or Judaism. And that is
the obligation on the part of people who believe
in God to care for the least and the poorest.
That central teaching, that sacred code, I think,
is very well summed up in Proverbs where the writer
of Proverbs says, "Those who oppress the
needy insult their maker." "Those who
oppress the needy insult their maker."
And I think that it would be
a wonderful thing if we could stand together,
these three great Abrahamic traditions, and say,
"Look, we do not countenance this
sort of thing. It is not only unfair, it is immoral
on the basis of our religious traditions, and
we believe it's an insult to God."
MOYERS: And
it is what?
HOUGH: The
growing gap between the rich and the poor which
has become almost obscene by anybody's standards,
and the stated intentional policy of bankrupting
the government so that in the future there'll
be no money for anything the federal
government would decide to do.
MOYERS: We've
all heard this from economists.
HOUGH: Yes.
MOYERS: And
political pundits, and analysts, think tank experts.
But we're hearing this from the president of a
seminary?
HOUGH: Yeah.
You are. And the reason you are is because I think
that it's not just a political pundit issue. It's
not just a think tank issue. It is a deep and
profound theological issue. And it has to do with
whether we are faithful to the deepest convictions
called for by our faith.
Because the central teaching
of Jesus is-announced when he says, from Isaiah
61, "God has anointed me to preach good news
to the poor, deliverance to the captives, freedom
to the oppressed, and the year of Jubilee."
And as you know, the year of Jubilee was the
year when land reform was supposed to take place,
debts were to be canceled, slaves freed.
Jesus drew from that Jewish
tradition, that Covenantal tradition, and the
obligation to care for the needy. Jesus Christ
was a Jew. To his soul, he was a Jew. By the time
he was 11 years old, people were absolutely astounded
how well he knew the Jewish tradition.
He crafted his message in direct
connection to the Jewish tradition, and it was
no accident that Luke put Isaiah 61 in Jesus'
mouth at Nazareth. "The spirit of God is
upon me because God has anointed me to preach
good news to the poor." If you go through
the Gospel to Luke, the entire theme of Luke is
this.
It appears also in the Sermon
on the Mount. It appears indirectly in the feeding
of the five thousand or four thousand, whichever
you want. It's reported four times in the Gospel,
more than any other single event in the life of
Jesus. In every case, and it also, in a way,
it foreshadows the Eucharist. Because the Eucharistic
meal was first a meal for the people who were
the followers of Jesus. And if you look it Acts
3, you will see that those followers of Jesus
saw to it that people who didn't have enough to
eat could come to that table and get enough to
eat. That was the radical model they put out there.
Nobody likes to talk about that very much. But
there it is. Right in the middle of Acts.
And they continued to worship
in the temple. This is a continuity with the best
in the Jewish tradition, and it is also no accident
that there are some strong similarities in the
Koran. And that is why I think all of us in the
Abrahamic traditions who share this
conviction about care for the least fortunate
should simply make some kind of public declaration
that enough is enough. We've gone far enough.
And it is not at all in the
spirit of American democracy to generate inequality,
and to contradict equal opportunity in our society.
Those are not the norms we've lived by.
MOYERS: Again,
I come back to the paradox, which is that-these
policies to which you are protesting, which you
say are immoral-were enacted by a Congress and
an
Administration elected to a significant degree
with the support of the religious right –
Conservative Christians who got active in politics
and saw that their candidates were elected, and
they're seeing now the policies that they believe
they elected those officials to carry out.
HOUGH: Well.
That's true, Bill, but my Dad, as I told you,
is a Baptist preacher. He was until he was 84.
And there was a notorious drunk in town who when
he got drunk, he really went after preachers.
But he said he was born-again Christian. And one
day, someone asked my father if he thought Brother
Suggs was a born-again Christian. And my father
said, "Only God knows that."
But, you know, the Lord Jesus
said, "By their fruits, you shall know them."
And speaking as a humble fruit inspector of the
Lord, I'd say that if this person is a Born Again
Christian, there's a mixed signal somewhere."
I feel the same way.
If Tom Delay is acting out
of his Born Again Christian convictions in pushing
legislation that disadvantages the poor every
time he opens his mouth, I'm not saying
he's not a Born Again Christian, but as a the
Lord's humble fruit inspector, it sure looks suspicious
to me. And anybody who claims in the name of God
they're gonna run over people of other nations,
and just willy-nilly, by your own free will, reshape
the world
in your own image, and claim that you're acting
on behalf of God, that sounds a lot like Caesar
to me.
MOYERS: Can
a secular democracy, in a pluralistic society,
where there are many faiths, including people
of no faith, can that democratic government be
expected to represent the religious, prophetic
imperatives of people like you?
HOUGH: Well,
maybe so, maybe not, Bill. But I'm getting tired
of people claiming they're carrying the banner
of my religious tradition when they're doing everything
possible to undercut it. And that's what's happening
in this country right now. The policies of this
country are disadvantaging poor people every day
of our lives and every single thing that passes
the Congress these days is disadvantaging poor
people more.
MOYERS: I don't think even
conservatives dispute that the inequality is growing
in this country. You somehow sense that inequality
is more profoundly disruptive and dangerous than
others.
HOUGH: I think
some inequality in terms of economics is necessary.
That doesn't alarm me a great deal. It is the
obscene degree to which economic inequality has
taken hold in America that I think is highly questionable.
There is no justification under Heaven for some
corporate executives to make 1,000 times as much
as their average worker. Their contribution may
me great. But it's no less than Peter Drucker,
my colleague at Claremont for 25 years, said...
MOYERS: Management
guru par excellence.
HOUGH: Management
guru and certainly nobody's fuzzyheaded liberal.
Peter Drucker says, "This compromises the
integrity of a corporate executive. Why?"
Because it does not accept, and it does not in
any way acknowledge the incredible contributions
of people who work at various levels, the various
constituencies of a corporation to its well being.
It is driven by other factors than acknowledgement
of who contributes to the well being of the corporation.
Now Bill, I'm not naive. Nobody
believes that everybody can be exactly the same,
get the same. But there's certain bare minimums,
what Amartya Sen, my favorite development economist
calls. A Nobel Prize winner, Amartya Sen calls
the capability to function
in society. And Sen says that no society can claim
to be fair if there are substantial numbers of
its citizens who are not receiving enough assistance
or income to have the capability to function.
Now, what does that mean? It means to buy food,
to have a place
to live, to have their children educated, to get
reasonable health care and a job.
And we want to ask the people
of our traditions to join us is asking every single
political leader we encounter, "What are
you gonna do in order to help make this happen?"
Let's make that the litmus test of whether or
not we're gonna vote for a particular leader.
It's not a partisan issue.
I mean, my God, who in the world could possibly
stand up and say, "I'm a Christian. I don't
think we should really give much attention to
the life of the poor." Some do. But I don't
think it's a party line thing.
I mean, I'd like for this debate
to be carried on in such a way that we could,
and here I'm talking about Abrahamic traditions.
We could ask ourselves "What changes in the
direction of this country are necessary if it
really is gonna make a claim to be a democracy?"
We're not asking it to be a theocracy. A democracy.
That's what it's about. Politically, that's what
it's about.
MOYERS: It's
about?
HOUGH: It
is about whether Democrats and Republicans who
are sensitive to this move, where people who are
sensitive to this move in our society politically,
are able to get the will to say, "Enough
is enough." I mean, let's stop this business,
and let's look again
and ask the question, "What will really make
this a country that we can be proud of, and one
that that pays attention to all the people, not
just a few."
MOYERS: A
recent Nobel Laureate has said that he thinks
the time is coming for civil disobedience again.
What do you think about that?
HOUGH: I think
it may come to that. I think it may come to that
- I really do. I don't know what form it's to
take. It's got to be civil disobedience that is
not destructive. One of the problems I have with
some of the demonstrations against for example,
the WTO and at Davos.
MOYERS: The
World Trade Organization?
HOUGH: The
World Trade Organization, and the Davos conferences
one of the problems I have with those is that
some people seem just bent on destruction and
violence. And I think Martin Luther King's exactly
right. If you try to advance your cause with violence,
you provoke violence, and the way the world is
structured, if you try to promote your cause with
violence, you're gonna lose. The only way to promote
your cause is civil disobedience and the willingness
to take the consequences for it. And I think we're
just about there.
MOYERS: Joe
Hough, thank you very much.
HOUGH: Thank
you.
From PBS
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