Evangelical Left All Shook Up About Affordable Housing

Book Review: Making Housing Happen: Faith-Based Affordable Housing Models By Jill Suzanne Shook, editor and co-author Chalice Press, 2006 $34.99

Through her new book, Jill Shook, a housing activist in Pasadena, California, has become the de facto spokesperson of the Evangelical Left's new social movement to combat the so-called "affordable housing crisis", mostly focused on the U.S situation. The book jacket contains endorsements by many leaders of the Evangelical Left - Tony Campolo, Ronald J. Sider, and oddly has a preface by Dr. John Perkins, who doesn't fit the label. Given that the November 2006 elections have energized the political Left, Shook, who fashions herself as the next Jane Addams, may very well be used as one of the centerpieces of the Democratic Party's missionary ventures to evangelical Christianity. As such her Biblically-populist book is important but problematic both on empirical and theological grounds.

In Shook's hometown of Pasadena the reality of housing affordability is the reverse of what Shook portrays. One-third of the population by the U.S. Census is low income, mostly migrants from Mexico (God bless them). If there truly was an "affordable housing crisis" for the poor, how could one third of the populous afford housing in such an upscale suburban community? By doubling-up in housing and gobbling up the lowest rung on the housing affordability ladder, migrants have driven up rents and have driven the working class out of affordable housing.

Contra Shook's notion that scattered gentrification drives the poor out of affordable housing, California court decisions such as Serrano vs. Priest (1971) and urban riots partly organized by those on the political Left have made migrants into a protected class in neighborhoods in the first concentric ring surrounding Los Angeles. Moreover, Shook has no comprehension that her advocacy of inclusionary housing, "smart-growth," rent control, landlord divestment of properties to the poor, and her opposition to gentrification actually will worsen the affordable housing crisis rather than lessen it.

Theologically problematic is Shook's disguising of the neo-Marxist advocacy model of Saul Alinsky and the Industrial Areas Foundation as what she calls the Biblical "Nehemiah Strategy" (Chap.15). The theological underpinning for her cafeteria of affordable housing models is mostly based on the Old Testament concept of "justice," by which she means wealth redistribution by coercive government. Shook and her co-authors fail to tell readers that nearly all of the "faith-based" affordable housing case studies in her book relied on government funding and tax credits.

Shook is oblivious to Jesus' observation that "man does not live by bread (or housing) alone." As such she doesn't recognize that religiosity (i.e., Max Weber's Protestant Ethic) can be conducive to housing affordability in a capitalist society. Her advocacy of compulsory "inclusionary housing," which diminishes the value of land of small property owners (not real estate developers) without "just" compensation runs against the commandment "thou shall not steal." Even Shook's Biblical preference for homeless immigrants runs against the moral of the scriptural story of King David taking a sheep from a rich man to give to a traveler in II Samuel 12.

A responsible Christian approach to such a complex issue as housing affordability in a modern society should entail the necessity of economic and sociological competency but also an understanding that our best efforts may lead to unintended consequences for which one needs to rely on humility, grace and repentance. How so many affordable housing advocates from such institutions as Fuller, Denver and Gordon-Cornwell Theological Seminaries, Chalice Press, and many para-church organizations could unquestioningly contribute to and endorse this Marxist-based model of housing is indicative of how the Evangelical Left have already successfully infiltrated and co-opted formerly conservative Protestant institutions. Whether Shook's affordable housing social movement, which may be funded by the new Democratic Party-controlled Congress, may meet opposition from The Minutemen and the property rights movements remains to be seen.

The theological underpinning for her cafeteria of affordable housing models is mostly based on the Old Testament concept of "justice," by which she means wealth redistribution by coercive government. Shook and her co-authors fail to tell readers that nearly all of the "faith-based" affordable housing case studies in her book relied on government funding and tax credits.

What I have read and understood from the Bible is that God and Jesus wants us to help each other by using our own time, treasure and talent and to give from our hearts ("Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver." - 2 Corinthians 9:7). Nowhere have I found anything along the lines of "Go out and institute huge bureaucracies that will take money from some people at the point of a sword and give that money to other people as a politician sees fit."

Yes, there is a huge shift going on right now within Evangelical circles. A new generation is pushing off against the last two decades. Francis Schaeffer and others convinced Evangelicals to become pro-life in the late 1970s, early 1980s. And then Falwell and Dobson began organizing to have a political impact.

Now the Left, having finally taken the "religious Right" seriously, has also become fairly successful at demonizing them not only to those who live and breath the NYSlimes, not only to secularized chattering classes, but what's significant is that they have converted the Evangelical intellectual elites. While Dobson and Falwell were organizing the footsoldiers in the pro-life cause, the story nearly everyone missed (there were hints of it a few years back in Christianity Today and other Evangelical media) was that after 20 years of going to the top graduate schools, getting degrees, trying to upgrade the reputation of Evangelical colleges, the Evangelical intellectual elites have become political liberals. They desperately want to be respected on the wine and brie circuit, so they need to put some distance between themselves and the redneck Religious Right.

It's interesting because originally Fundamentalists tended to be Democrats and populists--William Jennings Bryan. Republicans in those days were WASP elites. That changed, of course, with the realignment beginning with Nixon's Southern Strategy, creating the split Republican identity and the war by the Blue-Blood old-Republicans to take back their party that they think was hijacked by the Religious Right (that we call them RINOs is telling--they could make a strong case that they were the "original Republicans" as of the 1950s).

It's the Scopes Trial all over again. Before Scopes, Fundamentalism (which had originally had at least some leaders from the mainline denominations) enjoyed at least a modicum of respectability. By the time Mencken was through with them, many people who had up to that point identified with Fundamentalism, ran from it. That led to the New Evangelicalism of Billy Graham, Carl F. H. Henry, Harold Ockenga etc. in the very late 1940s and the 1950s, whose whole goal was to get national attention as "we're not those dumb Fundamentalists any more, we're mainstream, nice, normal folks." And it succeeded. It took 20 years of build up to make the 1970s and 1980s Religious Right political successes possible. The Left, of course, tried to demonize Falwell but the movement was too big to stop right away.

But now that tipping point has come. The build-up came from Church Growth which began in the 1970s at the same time as Falwell but had as its goal to do market research and give people what they want. That produced the Megachurches, of which the latest incarnation is Rich Warren and Co.

The Emergers like to think they are rebelling against the Megachurches but they have the same desire to be mainstream, to acculturate, not to be demonized by the Left, to be liked.

So they are glomming on to environmentalism and all the social liberal positions. They won't admit it openly but they are walking (no, running) away from pro-life. They put it in terms of "well, let's not be single-issue on pro-life, yes, abortion is bad but it's really a social problem and if we just solve all the poverty and other problems abortion will go away and we won't have to be viewed by Blue Staters as red-neck hill-billy Religious Right cave-men."

So that's what's coming. We saw hints of it already in the 1990s with Tony Campolo making nice with "conservative" "centrist" Democrats, namely, William J. Clinton who wanted to make abortion safe, legal and rare by, of course, solving all social problems the Dhimmicrat way.

That's what Rich Warren (a Megachurcher) and the Emergers both have signed on to. It's interesting that though the Emergers claim to be anti-Megachurch and pro-small group, pro-house-church etc. when Warren started acting like he's the United States National Chaplain (now that Billy Graham has retired from the job) and organized his social justice forums and was attacked by Redneck-Fundamentalist-Knuckle-Draggers for inviting Osama Obama (the new version of Clinton Centrism, complete with I'm-a-good-Christian-too-because-I-care-about-the-poor-unlike-you-Religious-Right-one-issue-capitalist-polluting-pigs), the Emergers came to Warren's defense, despite their distate for Megachurchers. It shows where their real allegiance lies: to be being liked on the wine-and-brie circuit.

So brace yourselves, Blue-State-Evangelicals are going to be with us for the foreseeable future and the Evangelical pro-life front is being fractured.

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