Economics has moral implications.
I believe that’s so. I spend a fair amount of time here talking about that, in terms of how government spending and taxation policies help or hurt people, promote or discourage activities that have a moral character, etc.
David Barton believes that’s so, too. But for him, he’s less interested in whether a particular economic policy — in this case, taxation — produces good results, or treats people justly. He’s interested in whether he can figure out whether a given tax or type of tax is Biblical.
Not surprisingly, his conclusions magically line up with conservative views on taxes. Capital Gains, Income Taxes, Estate Taxes, even the Minimum Wage are all condemned, not for what they do, or for how people are treated under them, but because David Barton thinks the Bible says they are evil — and thus it’s really cool to repeal them, not because we’re repealing taxes (which is always a good thing, right?) but because we’re “repealing anti-Biblical taxes.”
Here’s a snippet of Barton at the Rediscover God In America Conference:
Well, that certainly sounds definitive, doesn’t it? I mean, he has chapter and verse as to why God dislikes all those taxes.
Of course, it might help if we actually look at what those passages say. Even if you’re going to argue that the Bible should be the basis for deciding whether a tax is moral or not, it would be good to understand what the Bible actually says.
Capital Gains Taxes
Luke 19:13-26:
So he called ten of his servants and gave them ten minas. ‘Put this money to work,’ he said, ‘until I come back.’
“But his subjects hated him and sent a delegation after him to say, ‘We don’t want this man to be our king.’
“He was made king, however, and returned home. Then he sent for the servants to whom he had given the money, in order to find out what they had gained with it.
“The first one came and said, ‘Sir, your mina has earned ten more.’
“‘Well done, my good servant!’ his master replied. ‘Because you have been trustworthy in a very small matter, take charge of ten cities.’
“The second came and said, ‘Sir, your mina has earned five more.’
“His master answered, ‘You take charge of five cities.’
“Then another servant came and said, ‘Sir, here is your mina; I have kept it laid away in a piece of cloth. I was afraid of you, because you are a hard man. You take out what you did not put in and reap what you did not sow.’
“His master replied, ‘I will judge you by your own words, you wicked servant! You knew, did you, that I am a hard man, taking out what I did not put in, and reaping what I did not sow? Why then didn’t you put my money on deposit, so that when I came back, I could have collected it with interest?’
“Then he said to those standing by, ‘Take his mina away from him and give it to the one who has ten minas.’
“‘Sir,’ they said, ‘he already has ten!’
“He replied, ‘I tell you that to everyone who has, more will be given, but as for the one who has nothing, even what they have will be taken away. (Luke 19:13-26, New International Version, ©2011)
A capital gains tax is a taxation upon the increase in value of an investment. If I buy stock at $10/share, and then sell it at $15/share, a capital gains tax would tax me on that $5/share profit. I’ve made money on the investment, the same as my making money on a job.
The Right tends to dislike capital gains taxes because, well, a lot of the money theymake is from capital gains, vs salaries (though we’ll get to income taxes later).
This story is also known as the Parable of the Talents, and shows up in Matthew 25:14-30 (the other passage Barton quotes). (A talent was a measure of silver worth about 60 minas.) There are several interpretations to it — the most common being that we should take the gifts that God has given us (wealth, “talent,” etc.) and put them to good use, as we’ll be called to account for it.
Barton, however, seems to think this is a condemnation of capital gains taxes, since the parable doesn’t mention any taxation on the minas that were earned, thus it must not have existed, therefore any tax on capital gains is against the Bible. Of course, the parable doesn’t mention anyone wearing clothes, but I don’t think we can assume that the participants were nude. Also, the parable is about the king, who presumably gets to skip taxes. And, finally, it’s a parable, a tale told to teach a moral point. It’s clearly not meant as a teaching in economics, but as a teaching on, as suggested, making use of your life and what you have been given.
Barton, of course, would probably also note the final passage, “to everyone who has, more will be given, but as for the one who has nothing, even what they have will be taken away.” See! The rich should get richer, and the poor poorer, and certainly the rich should not have anything taken away!
Unless, again, you’re not treating this as a literal guide to economics (which it pretty clearly is not), but, again, discussing applying one’s gifts to God’s work, where there is reward for those who do, and banishment for those who do not. That interpretation is enhanced by looking at the introduction to this passage, in verse 10: “While they were listening to this, he went on to tell them a parable, because he was near Jerusalem and the people thought that the kingdom of God was going to appear at once.”
It’s not about economics and tax policy. It’s about how you need to be doing God’s work until God (the king in the passage) returns. Duh.
(Barton also ignores the next verse, where the king orders that those who spoke out against him should be executed — I would hope that’s not the basis for his beliefs on freedom of speech and jurisprudence.)
Income Tax
Barton hops back to the Old Testament for this:
- Leviticus 27:32: “Every tithe of the herd and flock—every tenth animal that passes under the shepherd’s rod—will be holy to the LORD.”
- Numbers 18 — which talks about the Levitical priests and how they are to be supported by Israel, and how they are to tithe their sacrifices to God.
- Numbers 28 and 29 — which talks about required food offerings to God.
- Deuternomy 14:22: “Be sure to set aside a tenth of all that your fields produce each year.”
So none of this is really talking about taxes. It’s about holy offerings to God. (Deut. 14:22-29 spells out that 1/10 tithe is essentially to be eaten at the temple, or turned to money so you can go to the temple to buy food and drink for such a feast, except for once every three years when it’s to be given to the Levites, per the passage in Numbers 18.) It’s about tithing in thanksgiving. But that has nothing to do with taxes for the functioning of government, or taxation of income.
(For that matter, later Biblical injunctions against burnt offerings invalidate Numbers 28 and 29, so why are we even paying attention to them?)
Ah, but Barton adds another word to the category: Progressive Income Tax. That’s what he (and the rich) really dislike, because it means that they have to pay taxes at a higher rate than those who have less.
Barton’s suggestion seems to be that the Biblical injunction about everyone in Israel tithing 10% of their agricultural production as a religious offering means that government taxation should also be a single, flat number (maybe a teeny-tiny 10% as well). The Bible doesn’t say that, of course (though it does have some choice words for those who are rich), but Barton seems willing to contort the text to make it fit what he wants it to say.
Estate Taxes
Barton indicates the Bible is all against taxation on the estates of the rich who have died.
Proverbs 13:22: “A good person leaves an inheritance for their children’s children, but a sinner’s wealth is stored up for the righteous.”
Barton would seem to be arguing that there’s no mention of an estate tax here, thus the estate tax is un-Biblical. There’s no mention probate court, either — is that also un-Biblical? Nobody in the Old Testament inherited any automobiles. Is inheriting automobiles un-Biblical?
Actually, reading this passage literally, it sounds like the only people who can Biblically inherit from your estate are your grandchildren. Is that what Barton would suggest? Or would he interpret this to mean that you must leave an inheritance to your family, rather than cutting them off and giving it all to charity?
For that matter, the passage simply says “an inheritance,” not that the inheritance is everything they own. Estate taxes never consume the full inheritance (by definition, they are a tax on a portion of the inheritance — and they only kick in, in the US, at a very high level of inheritance).
In reality, this passage has nothing to do with estate taxes, but about building up something to leave the following generations, rather than squandering it all on yourself. (The second half of the verse doesn’t have an obvious meaning to me.)
1 Chronicles 28:8: “So now I charge you in the sight of all Israel and of the assembly of the LORD, and in the hearing of our God: Be careful to follow all the commands of the LORD your God, that you may possess this good land and pass it on as an inheritance to your descendants forever.”
This is King David speaking to the Israelites. I assume Barton’s argument is that estate taxes interfere with “passing on this good land as an inheritance to your descendents forever.” Of course, as prophecy, the Israelites didn’t get to do that (presumably, in the eBible, beause they didn’t follow all the commands of God). But, again, it’s silly to turn this into an indictment against estate taxes. It’s like saying sales taxes are un-Biblical because when there’s a command in the Bible to buy something, no mention of a sales tax is made.
The point of this passage is certainly not about inheritance law in Ancient Israel (even if we assumed that we were ordered by the Bible to structure our law around how Israel ran things — which, to me, sounds like we would also need to reinstitute a kingly theocracy … is that what Barton would argue?).
Ezekiel 46:18: The prince must not take any of the inheritance of the people, driving them off their property. He is to give his sons their inheritance out of his own property, so that not one of my people will be separated from their property.
Aha! Now that sure sounds like a Biblical injunction against the estate tax, as passed on by Ezekiel, speaking for what a person in a dream told him on behalf of God.
A bit broader context changes that a little, if we look at Ezekiel 46:16-18:
“‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says: If the prince makes a gift from his inheritance to one of his sons, it will also belong to his descendants; it is to be their property by inheritance. If, however, he makes a gift from his inheritance to one of his servants, the servant may keep it until the year of freedom; then it will revert to the prince. His inheritance belongs to his sons only; it is theirs. The prince must not take any of the inheritance of the people, driving them off their property. He is to give his sons their inheritance out of his own property, so that not one of my people will be separated from their property.’”
Doesn’t sound very fair to his servants, does it? Does Barton support that part of the vision?
And the whole “prince” thing — we’re not talking about princes, are we?
In fact, the point here is that princes already have wealth. They can’t steal from the people to garner more wealth to hand out to their princely children. The federal estate tax is not about increasing Obama’s personal wealth so that he can give more money to his own kids. There’s nothing in common here.
And, of course, the prophecy is all about the restoration of the Kingdom of Israel. The passages all around this are all about how the temple should be rebuilt and so forth. Why is this one passage, about inheritance, supposed to be applicable to the contemporary United States when none of the rest of the surrounding chapters are?
Minimum Wage
Okay, I’m mildly annoyed that the video clip cuts out before we hear about what passages Barton thinks indicate Jesus dislikes the minimum wage. Looking around the web, I find that one justification he’s given previously is the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard:
“For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. He agreed to pay them a denarius for the day and sent them into his vineyard.
“About nine in the morning he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing. He told them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went.
“He went out again about noon and about three in the afternoon and did the same thing. About five in the afternoon he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, ‘Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?’
“‘Because no one has hired us,’ they answered.
“He said to them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard.’
“When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.’
“The workers who were hired about five in the afternoon came and each received a denarius. So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. ‘These who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, ‘and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.’
“But he answered one of them, ‘I am not being unfair to you, friend. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’
“So the last will be first, and the first will be last.” (Matthew 20:1-16, New International Version, ©2011)
Apparently this passage has become a huge hit amongst “biblical capitalists,” because, they say, it proves that employers can make any exploitative contract they want with their workers, with the Bible’s blessing, and the workers have no choice but to suck it up, because the Bible says they have to. Ergo, a minimum wage law is un-Biblical.
Jesus wept.
First off, this is a parable about the Kingdom of God, not instructions for the Kingdom of Earth. It’s not really an argument that an employer has a moral or legal right to cut whatever deal he wants, any more than it is an instruction to pay people a flat amount per day no matter how many hours they work.
Instead, it’s about how God treats humanity — and that the reward of Salvation (to put it in orthodox terms) is not dependent on how long you’ve been a member of the church, or when you repented or were born again or were forgiven of your sins. The saint who is born and baptized and leads an exemplary and holy life gets the same grace from God as the horrible sinner who only confesses and sincerely repents on his deathbed. That sounds unfair — but that very perceived unfairness is what the Parable is about. As with the Parable of the Prodigal Son, God’s love and forgiveness and grace are absolute.
That is, as I said, pretty orthodox, even conservative, theology. To turn that lesson into an instruction booklet on employment and wage law is not only ludicrous, it’s profane, ignoring the moral message in favor of a license to exploit laborers.
So, to summarize:
- Most of Barton’s passages have nothing to do with what he’s asserting. He essentially did a word search on the Bible and picked out passages that had key words like “inheritance” and claimed, taking a literal interpretation, that it demonstrated some Biblical law about what inheritance must (or must not) be.
- Barton treats Jesus’ parables — stories told to illustrate a moral point using examples from everyday life — as, quite literally, the Law, telling us how taxation and wages are handled in a Biblical fashion.
- David Barton, evangelical minister and pseudo-historian, is a dolt. At best. I’ll be charitable and assume he’s not simply coming up with excuses for the rich to get richer.
(via RightWingWatch)
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