Jesus and the BREXIT
Since Great Britain voted last week to exit the European Union (BREXIT,
as it is popularly known), I've pondered what Jesus might have to say about the
vote if he were still among us as an itinerant rabbi. My thoughts have
coalesced around two themes.
First, I think Jesus would have great concern for the people whose
anger, feelings of exclusion from both economic progress and political power,
and sense of being overwhelmed by uncontrollable tidal waves of immigrants motivated
them to vote against remaining in the European Union. Voters with some subset
(or even all) of those feelings are not unique to the United Kingdom. In the
United Sates, for example, Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders apparently garnered
a majority of their support from voters with similar feelings.
The unprecedented numbers of immigrants across Europe and in the US are
irreversibly altering community landscapes. Illustratively, some people are discomfited
when they hear pedestrians, customers, business employees, government workers,
and others speak a language other than the heretofore dominant language in that
locale.
Walking around Honolulu today, compared to twenty years ago, I much
more frequently hear people speaking Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Russian, and occasionally
Spanish or another Romance language. I enjoy hearing the diversity. The different
languages evoke memories of different trips abroad. I admire the willingness of
people to travel to a place in which few people speak their native tongue and
value travel for its abilities to broaden one's horizons and tolerance of
diversity.
However, I also understand that other persons can perceive the growing
number of persons in the US and elsewhere who do not speak the dominant local language
as representing a threat to a cherished but imperiled way of life. A recent
poll of Americans found that 70% of them are concerned by the lack of English
they hear in the US and that 80% think the US has too many recent immigrants. The
shift of power away from local communities and regional governments to distant centers
of power (Washington for the US and Brussels for the EU) has had the
unfortunate, unintended consequence of leaving people feeling disempowered and
alienated. Government, as I have repeatedly contended in Ethical Musings'
posts, is becoming less and less "of, by, and for the people." Concurrently,
the most important economic engines of prosperity have shifted from
manufacturing to service businesses, technology, finance, healthcare, and government.
Workers displaced by that shift have frequently received little useful
assistance in acquiring a new set of marketable skills and consequently see
little hope for regaining a lost prosperity. No wonder that plenty of voters
are angry and feel left behind.
What policies or
programs might Jesus recommend? Here are ideas:
- Governments
and businesses have a moral obligation to develop programs and policies
that effectively aid displaced workers in acquiring skills appropriate to
the modern economy and then in obtaining jobs with pay comparable to their
former position.
- Governments
and non-profits should help people acquire the skills and knowledge to
cope with the accelerating pace of change while concurrently slowing the
pace of change, when practical, to reduce the number of people who feel
alienated or left behind.
- Governments should decentralize the
locus of power as much as possible, reengaging citizens in the work of
government even if this means living, at least in the short run, with a
greater diversity of laws and government policies.
Second, I think that Jesus would regard the BREXIT vote as a speedbump
on an irreversible trajectory toward the emergence of a unified global community.
Human history reveals an expanding circle of concern that began with the
nuclear or extended family, enlarged to include clan and tribe, widened to
encompass one's ethnicity or nationality, is still broadening to include states
closely aligned with one's own and one's co-religionists regardless of their
geographic location, and is progressing toward encompassing all people. Forces
propelling us along this trajectory are globalization and an inherent human reciprocal
altruism that pushes toward maximizing the circle of one's concern. This latter
idea is another formulation of the ethic that exhorts us to love our neighbors
as ourselves, a teaching intrinsic to all of the world's great religions.
Hitting more speedbumps seems probable. Tracing the human trajectory
that appears to lead toward emergence of a global community reveals many
detours, steps backward, and pauses between steps forward. Tracing that
trajectory of uneven progress also tells a story of conflict and opposition,
often violent.
Jesus, I think, would caution us against yielding to evil forces, which
include xenophobia, narcissistic self-interest, believing the sword to be mightier
than love, practicing injustice, failing to do good and to practice mercy, and
not respecting the dignity and worth of every human being.
Jesus would also exhort us not to lose hope. God is at work bringing
creation to the destiny God envisions. In the words of Julian of Norwich, "All
will be well; all manner of things of will be well."
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