Finding religion on the minimum wage
Turns out that the State Treasurer of North Carolina isn't the only one who has recently found religion about the need to boost the minimum wage.
The Arkansas Daily Blog points us to Lowell Grisham, an Episcopal priest in Fayetteville. In a piece in the Northwest Arkansas Times, he offers a Biblical view of the rightness of an increase in the minimum wage -- and argues that even the Family Council should join in:
The Arkansas Daily Blog points us to Lowell Grisham, an Episcopal priest in Fayetteville. In a piece in the Northwest Arkansas Times, he offers a Biblical view of the rightness of an increase in the minimum wage -- and argues that even the Family Council should join in:
Raising the minimum wage ought to be something that Biblical Christians can unite around regardless of denomination or theology. When Jesus pictured the last judgment in Matthew 25, his sole criteria was how we have treated "the least of these" — did we feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, and clothing to the naked? The apostle James says, "If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill’, and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?" These New Testament words reinforce the tradition of prophets like Amos, Isaiah and Jeremiah and the obligations of the Torah to advocate on behalf of the poor.Amen.
Biblical voices tell us that it is immoral when people are working full-time and living in poverty.
3 Comments:
Just to be clear, you're arguing that the federal government should be forcing employers to comply with Christian morality?
no stormy, he's just pointing out the hypocrisy, of politicians claiming the mantle of "good Christian" while not actually living it. There can be hypocrites of all faiths - it's an equal opportunity moral failing.
Not to mention, the moral necessity of helping the poor is one that crosses pretty much all religious lines. and even a good many atheist/humanist ones, too.
Funny, isn't it, that such a neo-Darwinian "survival of the fittest" mentality has been so widely adopted by those who claim to hate Darwin's theories of evolution?
One ought to at least ask the question about whether Jesus meant that we should use the state to coerce generosity in the population, or whether he was asking that people, individually make sacrifices to benefit the poor around them. I don't think it is a stretch to say that the latter is a better interpretation.
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