The Gospel According to Paul of Janesville
"Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God."
-The Gospel According to Luke 6:20
"We have got this tailspin of culture, in our inner cities in particular, of men not working and just generations of men not even thinking about working or learning the value and the culture of work, and so there is a real culture problem here that has to be dealt with."
-The Gospel According to Paul of Janesville, 3/14
Speaker Paul Ryan sent shockwaves through the GOP establishment this week with his decision to forego re-election and retire from congress. Liberal commentators immediately raised their solidarity fist bumper stickers in celebration, gleefully wishing good-riddance to the representative from Janesville. Admittedly, I enjoyed a smug Madisonian moment of glee, even suggesting that Ryan should seek employment in the human resources department of a firm that needs to layoff employees and slash health insurance. Is that not where he would be truly happy?
But liberals be warned - while congressmen are elected for two-year terms, ideas have no term limits. And Paul Ryan's ideas - embattled though they were, by a far-right house caucus and by the 45th President - will certainly linger long after the November midterms.
Like most politicians, Paul Ryan's ideas are the product oflots of special interest funding an ideological confluence of both political and social theory. In a predominantly religious nation whose leaders regularly boast ownership of the values of a "Judeo-Christian" heritage, political ideology always have a theological underpinning.
The Gospel According to Paul of Janesville is essentially a tale of sin, told from a medieval point of view.
In the medieval Christian church, sin was largely seen as acts committed by an individual against the will of God. There were many ways a person might sin and be sinful in the pre-Reformation church. Some might sin by stealing a loaf of bread, others by viciously booing a knight at a jousting tournament, or some by plotting feudal insurrection (I assume medieval Europe had a problem with bakery thefts, knight heckling, and peasant revolt).
The church had the authority to define what acts were sinful. They also had the authority to prescribe acts of penance, or good works, that could pull an individual away from their sinful acts and back into the good graces of God. Sin was a consistent moral failing that could be conquered at the personal level - and if the person did not succeed, they would pay with their suffering, in this life and in the next.
Contrast this with St. Augustine of Hippo, who saw sin as less about the acts themselves and more about a systemic problem of our very nature. Augustine, and later Martin Luther, believed sin just not to be a series of things we do, but a fundamental problem requiring external transformation through the grace of God, rather than through one's own attempts at moral bootstrapping. Sin was a condition, not an act. For Augustine and Luther, it is the death and resurrection of Jesus that transforms the system, so that all might be made righteous through faith. In this system, it is not up to the individual to get out ofDog's godhouse God's doghouse.
The debate over sin and redemption is pivotal to understanding the ideology of Paul Ryan and the like-minded conservatives who will replace him.
Paul Ryan is effectively a medieval bishop, who writes poverty and joblessness on his laundry list of sins. Seeing poverty as a moral failure at the individual level allows Ryan and his zealots to remove the scaffolding (Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare, Social Security) that one might use to climb out of poverty. If one remains impoverished and unemployed, such is the necessary penance, and such is the fault of the individual sinner. Only when one has completed their penance, and made their way to an office and a three-bedroom home in Janesville, WI, can one be put back into the good graces of the state. Only then is one truly forgiven for the deep individual failure that is poverty.
For the adherents of Paul Ryan, the state has no role in the fight against the individual failures of poverty. Since the state, for them, does not exist to influence morality, all government programs to combat poverty are effectively useless until poor people confess their guilt and commit to doing better.
Whether we view poverty as an individual failure or a systemic issue has profound implications on what we do about it, on if we do anything at all. The Gospel According to Paul of Janesville will continue to be preached from the pulpit of far-right orthodoxy. America needs a theological response to this heresy. A theological view of the issue is the only way to combat a view of economic issues that blames and shames the individual. Will we crack the spine of the canonical Gospels to understand what Jesus has to say about sin, redemption, transformation, and mercy towards the poor? Or will our country canonize the teachings of Paul of Janesville? This is the question that presses onward as Speaker Ryan fades into history.
Ryan Panzer is a Badger, a Lutheran, and a corporate trainer. He sees panhandlers and homeless people on the Capitol Square - and thinks it's probably not their fault. Preaching Sunday, April 22nd at Spring Prairie Lutheran Church in Deforest, WI. @ryanpanzer on Twitter.
-The Gospel According to Luke 6:20
"We have got this tailspin of culture, in our inner cities in particular, of men not working and just generations of men not even thinking about working or learning the value and the culture of work, and so there is a real culture problem here that has to be dealt with."
-The Gospel According to Paul of Janesville, 3/14
Speaker Paul Ryan sent shockwaves through the GOP establishment this week with his decision to forego re-election and retire from congress. Liberal commentators immediately raised their solidarity fist bumper stickers in celebration, gleefully wishing good-riddance to the representative from Janesville. Admittedly, I enjoyed a smug Madisonian moment of glee, even suggesting that Ryan should seek employment in the human resources department of a firm that needs to layoff employees and slash health insurance. Is that not where he would be truly happy?
But liberals be warned - while congressmen are elected for two-year terms, ideas have no term limits. And Paul Ryan's ideas - embattled though they were, by a far-right house caucus and by the 45th President - will certainly linger long after the November midterms.
Like most politicians, Paul Ryan's ideas are the product of
The Gospel According to Paul of Janesville is essentially a tale of sin, told from a medieval point of view.
In the medieval Christian church, sin was largely seen as acts committed by an individual against the will of God. There were many ways a person might sin and be sinful in the pre-Reformation church. Some might sin by stealing a loaf of bread, others by viciously booing a knight at a jousting tournament, or some by plotting feudal insurrection (I assume medieval Europe had a problem with bakery thefts, knight heckling, and peasant revolt).
The church had the authority to define what acts were sinful. They also had the authority to prescribe acts of penance, or good works, that could pull an individual away from their sinful acts and back into the good graces of God. Sin was a consistent moral failing that could be conquered at the personal level - and if the person did not succeed, they would pay with their suffering, in this life and in the next.
Contrast this with St. Augustine of Hippo, who saw sin as less about the acts themselves and more about a systemic problem of our very nature. Augustine, and later Martin Luther, believed sin just not to be a series of things we do, but a fundamental problem requiring external transformation through the grace of God, rather than through one's own attempts at moral bootstrapping. Sin was a condition, not an act. For Augustine and Luther, it is the death and resurrection of Jesus that transforms the system, so that all might be made righteous through faith. In this system, it is not up to the individual to get out of
The debate over sin and redemption is pivotal to understanding the ideology of Paul Ryan and the like-minded conservatives who will replace him.
Paul Ryan is effectively a medieval bishop, who writes poverty and joblessness on his laundry list of sins. Seeing poverty as a moral failure at the individual level allows Ryan and his zealots to remove the scaffolding (Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare, Social Security) that one might use to climb out of poverty. If one remains impoverished and unemployed, such is the necessary penance, and such is the fault of the individual sinner. Only when one has completed their penance, and made their way to an office and a three-bedroom home in Janesville, WI, can one be put back into the good graces of the state. Only then is one truly forgiven for the deep individual failure that is poverty.
Whether we view poverty as an individual failure or a systemic issue has profound implications on what we do about it, on if we do anything at all. The Gospel According to Paul of Janesville will continue to be preached from the pulpit of far-right orthodoxy. America needs a theological response to this heresy. A theological view of the issue is the only way to combat a view of economic issues that blames and shames the individual. Will we crack the spine of the canonical Gospels to understand what Jesus has to say about sin, redemption, transformation, and mercy towards the poor? Or will our country canonize the teachings of Paul of Janesville? This is the question that presses onward as Speaker Ryan fades into history.
Ryan Panzer is a Badger, a Lutheran, and a corporate trainer. He sees panhandlers and homeless people on the Capitol Square - and thinks it's probably not their fault. Preaching Sunday, April 22nd at Spring Prairie Lutheran Church in Deforest, WI. @ryanpanzer on Twitter.
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