LEAWOOD - United Methodists today can learn much from the Wesley’s focus on poverty and from Old Testament references to the freeing of the Israelites from Egypt.
Rev. Dr. Pamela Couture, a former member of the Saint Paul School of Theology faculty and new chairperson in Church and Community at Emmanuel College, was one of two plenary speakers to address issues around poverty at the 2010 Kansas East Annual Conference. Couture worked for eight years with the United Methodist Council of Bishops on the Bishop’s Initiative on Children and Poverty and is a well-known author on issues related to children and poverty around the globe.
“Poverty is a language construction,” Couture said. “It means different things to different people. It’s a generalization about a living environment that gets closely connected with the qualities of people.”
Internationally, the term is used to determine which countries deserve aid and which countries don’t. Nationally, it determines which populations are worthy of receiving aid. The measures of financial poverty were created in 1955, when a family used one-third of their income to purchase food. The poverty level was set at three times the level of income used for food, and that measure hasn’t changed in more than 50 years, Couture said.
“But now, the food cost is 11 percent of household costs,” she said. “Health and medical care has rapidly outstripped the cost of food, so what we’re really talking about is a measure that is inadequate.”
Today, many programs designed to assist those living in poverty use measures that are more than 100 percent of the poverty level to make determinations of need and eligibility.
Our assumptions about poverty have been handed down to us from the Middle Ages, Couture said. At that time, a distinction was made between the deserving poor, those who tried their hardest to make a living and meet community expectations, and the undeserving poor, those who were lazy, drunk or who intentionally lived outside the community’s expectations.
“We still wrestle with this today,” Couture said. “But when we think of poor children, these distinctions really break down.”
Some leaders have been able to use the terms of poverty as a positive, such as Martin Luther King Jr. and the Poor People Movement of the 1960s.
Throughout the Old Testament, every time the Israelites were reminded of God’s grace in delivering them from slavery. They also were reminded that they were once outsiders and that they should care for those outside society’s norms – the widows, orphans and sojourners.
The Israelites are commanded to show the same liberating generosity that God showed them when they were liberated from Egypt. They were commanded to include vulnerable populations in worship and community festivals. Tithes and offerings are to be brought to the Temple to be used to support the poor in the community, including the Levites (priests), orphans, sojourners and widows.
“What we learn from the way this phrase is repeated is that God delivered the people from Egypt because they were in need,” Couture said. “It’s an example of God’s grace freely given.”
With this scriptural framework undergirding them, the Wesleys saw something they didn’t like in England. John writes that he observed several destitute women suffering from the changes brought on by the Industrial Revolution. The country was flowing with milk and honey, but poverty was rampant. No one was caring for the poor.
“The horses of the wealthy are treated better than the children of the poor,” Wesley wrote.
The Wesleys paid attention to what was happening in their communities and began to wrestle with the issue of poverty. They told their followers to spend time with the poor so they would understand what was going on.
“They noticed that the poor and the sick are often the same,” Couture said. “You’ll notice in the four foci (of the United Methodist Church) that we have one that focuses on poverty and another that focuses on killer diseases. They are interrelated, and they were interrelated in Wesley’s sermon.”
Wesley thought that one reason why the rich in general have so little sympathy for the poor is because they so seldom spent any time with them, and then the rich would plead ignorance as an excuse for their hardness of heart.
“As the Wesleys got deeper and deeper into this kind of ministry, they became friends with people who were poor,” Couture said. “Engagement with people who are poor interfaces with Christian discipleship. John and Charles Wesley went into the world and brought people into Christ. The relationship went back and forth between what it meant to be a follower/disciple and what it meant to be in ministry.”
To address poverty, we must start by listening to the poor. The poor say poverty is a lack of access to resources. The Christian community, just by doing what they do, have tremendous knowledge of what’s going on because they are working in the trenches.
“Church is the most widely distributed network of information and service in the world,” Couture said.
When the four areas of focus were unveiled, the leadership at Saint Paul sat down and started talking about how they could equip their graduates to work on these issues. A new curriculum with intentional hands-on work in the community surrounding the campus was developed. Through this program, students learn to study the dynamics of poverty in their communities as well.
Couture said to address poverty within the community, the church and its members must commit to long-term relationships. Through small projects, churches and church members can develop trusting relationships over time that result in real change within the community.
“I tell my students, if you drive in to school, and you never look left or right, then you’re going to drive into your neighborhood and never look left or right,” Couture said. “Acts of mission and advocacy and acts of piety combine.”
