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08/29/2003 Entry: "Tax Reform"
The Gutless Pacifist reports some work on tax reform by the United Methodist Church of Northern Alabama. Here's a snippet from their introduction:
Throughout the scriptures there is a mandate to God's faithful people to ensure the welfare of the poor. This call to action on behalf of the poor is articulated nowhere better than this passage from James (James 2: 1-17), which happens to be the common lectionary epistle reading for the Sunday preceding Alabama's vote on tax reform on September 9. We invite Sunday School classes and faith communities to study this significant passage and to answer its call to action on behalf of the poor, elderly and children of our state. We call on Christian women and men to consider what is good for all of us.Sounds reasonable to me, and the Bible Study material looks good. Well worth a look I'd say.
The American Prospect has also picked up this story.
MONTGOMERY, Ala. -- For the first time since black ministers and some of their white brethren marched arm in arm in the civil-rights era, a group of Christians in the South are championing social and economic justice for the dispossessed as a matter of spiritual imperative. Curiously, or perhaps inevitably, the spawning grounds of this progressive movement are Montgomery and Birmingham, Ala., those fiery stations of the civil-rights cross. But as if determined to defy the most cherished stereotypes and bedrock prejudices of enlightened liberals everywhere, the primary actors in this campaign are the kind of white, conservative, Billy Graham evangelicals to whom Martin Luther King, Jr. addressed his Letter from Birmingham Jail -- a missive that, in its day, achieved a resounding absence of effect.Update: there's a robust coversation about this over at Josh Claybourn's blog.
Replies:
Well, quite.I'm sorry if the "no" was a bit curt. The truth is I don't beieve in tithing in the sense of a strict 10% or whatever."Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's" about covers it for me. That might seem a bit vague, but since all of what we have properly belongs to God his call is to use all that we have for his glory.
Posted by Richard @ 08/31/2003 08:10 AM CST
No? Oh well, it doesn't matter because tithing isn't part of the New Testament law anyway. It is only mentioned twice in Mt23:23 and Luke 11:42 and neither of these comments by Christ encourage one to tithe, though as you suggest we do need to be charitable to the poor.
Posted by Roberta @ 08/31/2003 12:46 AM CST
No
Posted by Richard @ 08/30/2003 12:13 PM CST
And is it fair for church members to 'cost' this kind of charity and deduct it from their tithe?
Posted by Roberta @ 08/30/2003 09:00 AM CST
