Abstract
Renewing America’s domestic fiscal and educational condition participates in the Spirit of Pentecost. It is a matter of discipleship. This chapter revisits America’s fiscal and educational decline and argues that the Spirit of Pentecost calls Christians to engage in their renewal. Although Pentecostal rhetoric is often otherworldly, Pentecostal praxis and experience of the Spirit is material. The call for fiscal justice and renewing public education falls in this trajectory of Pentecostal praxis. The Spirit of God breathed life into human beings so that they could build cities in this world. Carrying on the work of creation and embodying the Spirit-breathed image of God, in contemporary American society requires education and professional skills and fiscal freedom for our children and the generations to come.
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Notes
- 1.
Madeline K. Albright, “Interview on NBC-TV ‘The Today Show’ with Matt Lauer,” U.S. Department of State Archive, February 19, 1998, accessed January 6, 2016, http://secretary.state.gov/www/statements/1998/980219a.html.
- 2.
See U.S. Pledge of Allegiance.
- 3.
“Pneumato-logic” is a logic of the Spirit. Amos Yong develops the pneumatological imagination in Sprit-Word-Community: Theological Hermeneutics in Trinitarian Perspective (2002; reprint, Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2002).
- 4.
Niall Ferguson and Laurence J. Kotlikoff, “Going Critical: American Power and the Consequences of Fiscal Overstretch,” The National Interest 73 (2003): 29.
- 5.
Ferguson and Kotlikoff, “Going Critical,” 29.
- 6.
Congressional Budget Office, The Long-Term Budget Outlook, June 30, 2010 (revised August 2010), xi, accessed July 19, 2012, https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/111th-congress-2009-2010/reports/06-30-ltbo.pdf.
- 7.
Social Security, 2012 OASDI Trustees Report, “IV.B.4. Summarized Income Rates, Summarized Cost Rates, and Actuarial Balances,” accessed July 20, 2012, http://www.ssa.gov/oact/tr/2012/IV_B_LRest.html#267528.
- 8.
CBO, Long-Term Budget Outlook (2010), xi.
- 9.
Laurence J. Kotlikoff and Scott Burns, The Clash of Generations: Saving Ourselves, Our Kids, and Our Economy (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2012), 31.
- 10.
Peter A. Diamond, “Macroeconomic Aspects of Social Security Reform,” in Brookings Papers on Economic Activity 2 (1997): 6–7.
- 11.
William A. Galston, “Have We become a ‘Nation of Takers’?” in A Nation of Takers: America’s Entitlement Epidemic, by Nicholas Eberstadt (West Conshohocken, PA: Templeton, 2012), 96–97. [93–113].
- 12.
Luigi Zingales, A Capitalism for the People: Recapturing the Lost Genius of American Prosperity (New York: Basic Books, 2012), 28.
- 13.
Elizabeth Warren, “Libor Fraud exposes Wall Street’s Rotten Core,” The Washington Post, July 19, 2012.
- 14.
For an account of the unfunded public and private pension liabilities, see Roger Lowenstein, While America Aged: How Pension Debts ruined General Motors, Stopped the NYC Subways, Bankrupted San Diego, and Loom as the Next Financial Crisis (New York: Penguin, 2008).
- 15.
Full disclosure, my father receives a union pension, though unlike many, his is not lavish.
- 16.
Galston, “Have We become a ‘Nation of Takers’?” 104 and Kotlikoff and Burns, The Coming Generational Storm, 231.
- 17.
Jim Wallis, “Republican Budget is an Immoral Document,” God’s Politics: A Blog by Jim Wallis and Friends, August 2, 2012.
- 18.
For a similar view of the Christian right and left, see Kenneth J. Collins, Power, Politics and the Fragmentation of Evangelicalism: From the Scopes Trial to the Obama Administration (Downers Grove: IVPAcademic, 2012), 206–20 and James Davison Hunter, To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 111–149.
- 19.
Jim Wallis, “The U.S. Supreme Court: Health Care, Immigration, Juvenile Justice and More,” Sojourners, June 28, 2012.
- 20.
National health care spending on average was lower between 2009 and 2012, but due to the economic downturn, reduced Medicaid and Medicare reimbursements, and the significant reductions in certain prescription costs and not the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). See Anne B. Martin, Micah Hartman, Lekha Whittle, Aaron Catlin, and the National Health Expenditure Accounts Team, “National Health Spending in 2012: Rate of Health Spending Growth remained Low for the Four Consecutive Year,” Health Affairs 33, no. 1 (2014): 67–77. The Congressional Budget Office reports that federal spending on health care will increase in 2015 by about 13 percent ($106 billion), the ACA’s increase of enrollees to Medicaid accounting for nearly half of the increase. See Congressional Budget Office, “An Update to the Budget and Economic Outlook: 2015 to 2025” (August 2015), 10–11, accessed October 2, 2015, https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/114th-congress-2015-2016/reports/50724-Update-OneColumn_1.pdf.
- 21.
Zeke J. Miller, “Huckabee Aims for Seniors with Social Security Pitch in Florida,” Time, June 2, 2015 and Eliza Collins, “Huckabee defends his defense of Social Security,” Politico, May 10, 2015.
- 22.
From Hope to Higher Ground: Huckabee 2016, “Fighting for Seniors, Social Security and Medicate.” http://mikehuckabee.com/seniors.
- 23.
In 2010 Social Security payments began to exceed. CBO projects an indefinite deficit, in which “outlays would exceed the programs revenues by almost 30 percent in 2025 and by more than 40 percent in 2040.” With Medicare benefits, the largest driver of federal expenses, the differential between benefit received and taxes paid is the following: 1940s cohort 2 to 1, 1950s cohort 3 to 1 and 1960s cohort 4 to 1. See CBO, The 2015 Long-Term Budget Outlook (June 16, 2015), 47 and 53–56, Tables 2–5.
- 24.
Gary J. Gates, “How Many People are Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender,” The Williams Institute (April 2011): 1, accessed August 1, 2012, http://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/Gates-How-Many-People-LGBT-Apr-2011.pdf.
- 25.
“Financial Accounts of the United States. B.100 Balance Sheet of Households and Nonprofit Organizations 1,” Federal Reserve Statistical Release (January 6, 2016), accessed August 1, http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/current/accessible/b100.htm.
- 26.
Kotlikoff and Burns, The Clash of Generations, 17. Total debt numbers vary based on a variety of factors, such as time horizon of future debt obligations—e.g., 20 years vs. infinite. All agree the debt is massive and its ongoing growth without serious policy reform means long-term insolvency.
- 27.
State Budget Solutions, “State Profiles 2011,” accessed August 1, 2012, http://www.statebudgetsolutions.org/publications/detail/report-reveals-aggregate-state-debt-exceeds-4-trillion-2.
- 28.
Galston, “Have We become a ‘Nation of Takers’?” 97–98.
- 29.
Ibid., 106–7.
- 30.
Ibid., 98.
- 31.
Nimi Wariboko argues that monetary relations are intrinsically social and, therefore, inescapably invoke the ethics of justice. On the basis of a trinitarian vision of God, he proposes a denationalized and relational theology of money for the global monetary system. See Nimi Wariboko, God and Money: A Theology of Money in a Globalizing World (New York: Lexington, 2008).
- 32.
Jim Culbertson, “Payroll Tax Cut Extension Passes in House,” Tea Party Patriots, December 18, 2011, accessed July 5, 2012, http://www.teapartypatriots.org/2011/12/payroll-tax-cut-extension-passes-in-the-house/.
- 33.
See Tea Party Patriots, https://www.teapartypatriots.org/ourvision/.
- 34.
Laurence J. Kotlikoff and Scott Burns, The Coming Generational Storm: What You need to know about America’s Economic Future (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2005), 231.
- 35.
Yukio Hatoyama, “A New Path for Japan,” The New York Times, August 26, 2009.
- 36.
For relational theism and God’s interactive manner with human beings, see Thomas Jay Oord, The Uncontrolling Love of God: An Open and Relational Account of Providence (Downers Grove: IVPAcademic, 2015).
- 37.
National Endowment for the Arts, Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America, Research Division Report #46 (Washington, D. C.: NEA, 2004), xiii, accessed December 23, 2015, http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED484208.pdf.
- 38.
NEA, To Read or Not to Read; A Question of National Consequence, Research Report #47 (Washington, D.C.: 2007), 5, accessed December 24, 2015, https://www.arts.gov/sites/default/files/ToRead.pdf.
- 39.
Education at a Glance 2009: OECD Indicators, “Chapter A: The Output of Educational Institutions and the Impact of Learning,” 28 and 26–29, charts A1.1 and A1.2, accessed July 16, 2012, http://www.oecd.org/education/skills-beyond-school/43636332.pdf.
- 40.
Howard L. Fleischman, Paul J. Hopstock, Marisa P. Pelczar, and Brooke E. Shelley, “Highlights from PISA 2009: Performance of U.S. 15-Year-Old Students in Reading, Mathematics, and Science Literacy in International Context” (U.S. Department of Education/Institute of Education Sciences, December 2010), accessed July 16, 2012, http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2011/2011004.pdf.
- 41.
E.g., see Anna Badkhen, “Anti-evolution teachings gain foothold in U.S. schools/Evangelicals see flaws in Darwinism,” SFGate, November 30, 2004.
- 42.
David Brooks, The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement (2011; New York: Random House, 2012), 147.
- 43.
Condoleezza Rice, “US must recall It is not just any Country,” The Financial Times, July 26, 2012.
- 44.
Brooks, The Social Animal, 133–57.
- 45.
Grace Kena, Lauren Musu-Gillette, Jennifer Robinson, Xiaolei Wang, Amy Rathburn, Jijun Zhang, Sidney Wilkinson-Flicker, Amy Barmer, and Erin Dunlop Velez, The Condition of Education 2015 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, 2015), 46, figure 1, accessed December 20, 2015, http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cbc.asp.
- 46.
Kena, et al., The Condition of Education 2015, 45, figure 4.
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Studebaker, S.M. (2016). Fiscal Justice and Renewing Education. In: A Pentecostal Political Theology for American Renewal. Christianity and Renewal - Interdisciplinary Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-48016-3_10
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