Fighting against inequality helps us fight for Jesus!

I guarantee you’ll be touched by reading this article:

It really underscores the need for strong families – in particular a strong adult male presence to guide young men.  This was something we had all agreed with during our Board Meeting and why we, as Christians, have always been committed to this process (aka discipleship)

So, we should continue our endeavors there, but here’s how we could increase the probability of seeing fruit in our labors:

1)  There is a direct correlation between Inequality and Imprisonment rates (see attached chart from Richard Wilkinson, a social epidemiologist, who gave that TED talk I posted on the home page of thelight.com)

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2)  The overwhelming majority of prisoners are men

3)  While these men are imprisoned they are not mentoring their sons (perhaps they are also in prison because nobody mentored them)

4)  If we fought for a way to reduce Inequality and, assuming the correlation holds true, the Imprisonment rate would also go down.

5)  If we coupled that with the work we are doing in the church to help the increased number of men who are NOT in prison learn to reproduce themselves then maybe we could create a virtuous cycle where we can create a virtuous cycle towards a better society of less prisoners, better men mentoring younger men.

This is just one of the social ills that Inequality is so highly correlated with (for those of you with a statistics background, the p-value is < 0.05 which is the standard way of determining that we have a finding that goes well beyond chance)

Other ills that are incredibly correlated with Inequality that Wilkinson discovered in his research include:

1. Teen pregnancy 
   1. (fighting Inequality gives us a huge chance to reduce abortions)
2. Societal trust 
   1. (do you see how Republicans and Democrats are so much more at each other’s throats these days than when we were growing up?  Imagine if they trusted each other and could work in bi-partisan fashion to fix something like preventing these school shootings)
3. High school drop out rate
   1. (we did some inner city work in Milwaukee before and many of the folks we worked with could not read well enough to study the Bible…imagine if they could read God’s Word and how it might transform them)
4. Drug use 
   1. (opioid crisis anyone?)
5. and nearly a dozen more!

So, by fighting to reduce inequality we may be able to, at the same time, make a big difference in areas in desperate need of Christian witness!

Hopefully, you can see more clearly why I’m so bullish on how reducing inequality can be such a huge leverage point for many of the social concerns we care about as Christians.  Again, this is mine and Lena’s calling and not necessarily yours.  I just wanted you to see how both the “science” and the “spiritual” combined to make sense to us to devote resources to address inequality in conjunction with the normal church work we are all accustomed to doing.

Regards,

R&L

p.s.  As a reminder, note that Inequality is NOT the same as poverty (even though they might seem awfully close).  We are not necessarily fighting poverty although, for sure, some of it will be addressed as we make headway on Inequality.  This is not so much about being poor as it is we have a systemic issue in our country where the rich get way richer much faster than everyone else – leading to negative effects on our community at large