Did You Pray and Then Walk Away? You've Done Nothing

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Calls for prayer pop up immediately.

Everybody’s “thoughts and prayers” are posted in public places. Churches open with prayer services advertised. Religious leaders offer statements to be read in worship. Legislative bodies routinely practice their mandatory moment of silence. Citizens gather in civic spaces for ecumenical prayer. During Sunday worship, many if not most churches will mention the latest shooting/terrorist/police-related tragedy in their times of prayer.

And then what? Most who have prayed, or who mentioned “thoughts and prayers” will just return to their usual pursuits, feeling justified that they have done their part. Lives are busy, concerns press on every side. No more energy available for other actions.

What a waste.

Every one of these tragedies exposes a deep societal festering and infecting sickness. I am coming more and more to the conclusion that the problem is primarily economic, not spiritual. Prayer is not going to fix this, as good as it may make us feel. There are basic needs that are not being met. Without dealing with those, there is no space for the luxury of spiritual development.

I recently came across a fascinating utility put out by MIT called the “living wage calculator.” The creators have set up a series of charts setting out how much various family groupings must bring in per year to live without desperation.

They made, to me, a set of fascinating assumptions.

  • One: families will select lowest cost foods and ALL meals and snacks are prepared at home.
  • Two: Child-care costs must be the lowest available in the area.
  • Three: Housing costs use HUD fair market rent estimates. Since those estimates tend to be lower than most of the cost of rental units in given areas, housing will be hard to come by within those estimations and may not be available as lower cost units fill quickly.
  • Four: Employer-sponsored health insurance plans, harder and harder to come by.
  • Five: Cars/trucks have been bought used. Although allowance for other vehicle expenses is included, I don’t know if that means space for often expensive repairs on significantly older vehicles.
  • Six: This budgeting process does include space for clothing, housekeeping supplies and other personal care items (note that housekeeping and personal care items cannot be purchased using SNAP, Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, leaving the poorest of the poor without some absolute basics for healthy living.
  • Seven: A forty hour work week, 52 weeks a year. Underlying this assumption is that no one will get sick. Ever.
  • Eight: There will be no purchases of expensive household times like appliances or computers. No vacations. No other recreation time.
  • Nine: absolutely no provision for charitable giving.

 live in the fairly wealthy Denton/Collin County area in Texas. Using their calculator, I checked the living wage necessary for a household of one adult and two children in Collin County: $52,790.

That is $25.38/hour. Minimum wage: $7.25/hour. Using the same 40 hour/52 week assumption, the minimum wage yearly income is $15,800, not even a third of what is necessary for decent but spare living. And there is no way a single parent has time to purchase the least expensive food and prepare it all at home.

Even two working parents, both at minimum wage, can’t make this work–that only puts them at $32,600/year. With no sick days. And two children? Right.

No wonder people are increasingly desperate. Our economic models have no place for the least among us, and almost no way to enter a more healthy way of living for those who have been long and systematically excluded.

And pastors and other church leaders, take note: there’s nothing in this budget for a 10% tithe. Or even a 1% giving option.

As much as these folks need the church, spiritual and social support, a place for their children to be with other children and be loved and taught well, they cannot give financially and will have little time for volunteer work. Remember, they have to cook all their own meals after shopping for the lowest cost foods.

You want to heal society? Then start addressing the economic realities of those living on the absolute margins.

In a longer post written right after the Dallas tragedy, I summarized what we must do if we are actually going to bring about some healing:

  • We must remember to take care of the least among us in a way that offers the dignity of useful and adequate employment, not the disgrace that currently confronts those who have no economic hope.
  • We must do something about the disastrous state of education in our inner-city schools.
  • We must provide absolutely top-class day care for all who need it, particularly single mothers. We need this far more than we need free tuition to universities. Without a good start in the earliest of infancy, higher education is useless.
  • We’ve got to figure out a way to manage health-care so it is actually affordable and accessible. Poor health, especially when caused by poor diets, so strain the body and soul that the achievement of any sense of hope in anything is nearly impossible.
  • And we need churches filled with motivated individuals who understand basic economics, who are willing to do mission that is less, “I will come and build something for you” and more, “let me listen to you and learn your world so we can figure out what you need and how we can tap into your creative energies to make it happen.”

So, folks, go and pray. I’ve done my share of it. My 2 am wakefulness hit hard last night, leading to a long season of fervent prayer.

But I’ve got to do more than pray and walk away. And so do you.

The Rev. Christy Thomas of Frisco, Texas, is a retired clergy member of the North Texas Annual Conference. An author and columnist, she blogs at The Thoughtful Pastor on Patheos.com, from which this post is republished with the author's permission.