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Policy: The Bible and Welfare Reform
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ily be seen as another set of needy persons of color who are receptacles for
benevolent attention that whites bestow upon them to help them.
However, Christian practices can offer alternatives. Studying scripture
passages like the Magnificat proclamation by Mary of Nazareth could be
a public practice of the church that helps Christians make decisions about
the church’s role in welfare reform. As Latin American liberation theolo
gians Ivone Gebara and Maria Clara Bingemer declare:
It is from the mouth of a woman that this song of the battle against
evil emerges, as though a new people could only be born from the
womb of a woman. The image of a pregnant woman, able to give
birth to the new, is the image of God who through the power of God’s
Spirit brings to birth men and women committed to justice, living
out their relationship to God in a loving relationship with other
human beings.112
To live out this distinctive Christian commitment to justice, churches
need to carefully identify which of their routine practices indeed break with
social values and policies that help to marginalize and degrade people.