The US debt crisis has dominated the headlines for months.
First, because of the wrangling between the two main parties that took the US economy to the brink of a theoretical default (which everyone knew all along was more posturing than reality). But then in the aftermath, as the implications of the crisis — and the way it is being handled — have continued to send aftershocks through the world economy.
Losing allure
The human face of this crisis is its impact on ordinary American families. The ‘peace and plenty’ dream that has drawn so many to this country has lost much of its allure. Indeed, given the way the American economy is structured, the pain of the global economic downturn has been felt more keenly here than many would imagine. For those who have lost their jobs, the limits on unemployment benefit in the USA have put major pressure on individuals and families struggling to survive. And the fact that medical insurance is one of the ‘benefits’ that come with being employed, when employment goes, then so too does health cover. There are many families — even from the middle classes — for whom this crisis has become a nightmare.
Church response
Whereas it is easy for someone who has been used to socialised medicine and generous social security benefits to be critical of the apparent callousness of the American system, one cannot but be impressed by the way the church responds. Many US churches have ‘Compassion Funds’ designated to help those in need — not just within their own congregations, but in their wider community and beyond. These have been put in place out of a very real sense that diaconal responsibility in New Testament terms goes well beyond ‘fabric and finance’ issues, but should have ministries of mercy very much at their core. It is quite astonishing to see the generosity of Christians as they give to these funds to help those in need.
Impact on liberty
There is, however, another face to the current economic woes of the USA and that is their impact on the cherished notion of liberty. There is probably no country in the world that is so obsessed with the idea of liberty than America. It is enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, immortalised in the lyric ‘land of the free’ and, in a brief moment of national pique, replaced ‘French’ as the epithet for the national dish. Yet there is no nation that has been more deluded by the idea of freedom — not helped by the way it has been idealised even further by the church.
As the mightiest nation on earth begins to wake up to the scale of its debt crisis — very much as Johnny Come Lately in relation to other countries — it is beginning to realise that being in hock means a serious curtailment of freedom. Indeed, given the way successive democratically elected American administrations have struggled to deal with these problems, the Achilles’ Heel of democracy itself has also been exposed: namely, that the electorate always gets what it chooses. (The problem being that the electorate rarely reads the small print as it casts its vote.)
What the church in the USA needs to appreciate more fully, if it is to function as the conscience of the nation, is that there is no such thing as freedom as this world perceives it. The human condition is one of enslavement to sin and the desire to have what we cannot afford is but one symptom of that. The greatest contribution the church can make to the nation is to continue to freely proclaim the good news of the Son who, when he makes us free, will make us free indeed — regardless of national crises.
Mark Johnston is Senior Pastor of Proclamation PCA Church in Bryn Mawr, Philadelphia.
