Versión de HTML Básico
Chapter Three
Policy
The Bible andWelfare Reform
I
am not sure if there is a more instructive subject than public policy for
examining how major institutions that the general public relies upon
can shape our moral values. Ideally, public policy is a formal expression
the moral priorities that we have commonly agreed upon as a society. This
expression of moral priorities involves multiple public arenas and is for
mulated as politicians legitimate policy ideas in public comments and leg
islative actions, the mass media disseminates those ideas, and officials in
government bureaucracies implement them through enforcement of
rules.
In order to investigate the moral priorities established by certain policy
initiatives related to poverty and then sketch out a Christian ethical
response, a small shift is necessary. We shift from thinking about the for
mulation of basic concepts and method that occupied our attention in the
previous chapters to focusing on the development of practices. We move
away from a primary concern with the conceptualization of Christian social
ethics—such as defining what autonomy and relationality might mean and
identifying criteria for recognizing the unjust use of power—to concen
trating more concretely on how to develop social practices that liberative
Christian social ethics could support. This approach will mean only a
slight shift in emphasis because integrating practice and thought remains
crucial for every aspect of liberative ethics.
Public discussions about how to create a national policy in response to
the problem of poverty provide a fertile basis for considering ethical social
practices that have a direct impact on women’s lives. Certain moral claims
about poor women that were made by public officials when welfare reform
legislation
was
developed in the
1990s
require special scrutiny.1 Major