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Disruptive Christian Ethics
the deepest problems of the spirit.”109He then offered an analogy, further
explaining, “You don’t fix the crack in the wall until you fix the founda
tion.”110President Bush’s comments and policy reflect the viewpoint that
people lack socioeconomic resources and need assistance because their
“foundation” is broken, and fixing it (them?) is most appropriately the role
of the church. Further, when describing Bush’s plans to visit local com
munities touting his marriage promotion policy as a remedy for the poor,
one White House aide told the press, “The president loves to do that sort
of thing in the inner city with black churches, and he’s very good at it.”111
Black churches are continually targeted as crucial audiences for sup
porting and carrying out welfare reform policies. There are undoubtedly
benefits for leaders of these local churches, such as media attention, the
possibility of desperately needed resources, and status rewards of publicly
receiving approval from the “thrones” of power (of the empire). Agreeing
to hand over their churches to the president and others as a stage for their
pronouncements about what is wrong with the poor churches may, how
ever, lead to abandoning their advocacy of any gospel values that are in
opposition to the state’s, but those gospel values characterize the church’s
distinctiveness.
It is not only churches in poor communities of color that face an ethical
challenge in this social and political climate. In some ways white Chris
tians, within varying economic groupings, face one of the hardest chal
lenges. They must choose to resist the comfort they can find in supporting
values that point to the superiority of their own white racial group. When
black and Latina poor single mothers who need public assistance are
depicted as having a cracked foundation and innate tendencies toward lazi
ness, criminality, and prostitution, whites receive an unearned reward of
being excluded from this depiction. This is comforting for them. A sense
of the superiority of whiteness is reinforced because, based upon their
white racial identity, they are not and will never be known as lazy-criminal-
whore-broken blacks and Larinas. Not surprisingly, whites will most often
cling to this superior status attached to their racial identity, and to public
policies that reinforce this understanding.
Moreover, distributing “tough love” or supporting the goal of “fixing”
the impaired moral foundation ofwelfare recipients can make white Chris
tians feel especially good about themselves. These strategies reenact a
familiar scenario of white Christian paternalism mentioned earlier. One
performs charitable acts for objectified others that fit into a universalized
Christian notion of the other-in-need of help. Welfare recipients may eas