Church Inc. by Brian Merritt

“Companies’ third-quarter results should be very good. That doesn’t mean they will be good enough for investors.”

“Actual earnings growth should still surpass analyst estimates-it almost always does. The risk is that it will fall short of elevated expectations.”

These two quotes are the first and last paragraph from an article below the fold in the Business and Finance section of the Wall Street Journal on Thursday, October 4, 2018. The article, “Corporate Earnings Must Meet Great Expectations”, was written by Justin Lahart, a very competent columnist who writes the WSJ’s column “Heard on the Streets”, as well as teaching classes in the Program for Financial Studies at the Columbia Business School in New York City.

This article is such a pedestrian and common example of business writing and its culture that it may leave a reader to ask, “why would we look at such a piece when talking about poverty and wealth?”

It is that when reading such commonplace and regularly-published articles, members of Church Boards, Elders, Deacons, Pastors, Judicatories and other ecclesial institutions do not respond by challenging the principles and understandings underlying these statements. This is because the structures currently in place have created and live as the obscenity that is the 21st Century Capitalistic Church in the US. The assent to bankers and investment brokers for voluntary ethical standards is our shame as churches, a shame that furthers the exploitation and wage captivity of most of our neighbors in our communities. Also, to say that our mostly-white ecclesiological structures have not benefited from this systemic sin by having anything to do with money co-oped by a radical investment culture or the language of commerce is to deny our reality as financially powerful entities in the United States of America.

If you missed the point of the article, then let us be clear. The article addresses the idea that publicly-traded stock in huge corporations, the kind that employ a huge number of our society, could lose their value because a company does not make enough millions or billions of dollars in profit during a quarter of the year. If their earnings disappoint stock holders, this disappointment will inevitably hurt stock prices. They are not saying that these companies will lose money, just that they may not make enough to satisfy investors. Once this was called greed; now, it is understood as smart investment strategies.

From Lilly Grants, to Boards of Pensions, to Seminaries, all the way to individual congregations, we have fallen into the trap of looking at corporate earnings and stock prices as ancillary to the good that can come from making 12 to 17% earnings on investments. We know that some push for ethical investment. But what if the system itself is part of the corruption?

Let us think of a few terms that directly impact the under-employed that make up the largest percentage of the poor in the United States (40.8%). What does it mean when a corporation like Walmart says that they have “heightened productivity”?

The global group The Organisation for Co-operative and Economic Development defines productivity as:

“Productivity is commonly defined as a ratio between the output volume and the volume of inputs. In other words, it measures how efficiently production inputs, such as labour and capital, are being used in an economy to produce a given level of output. Productivity is considered a key source of economic growth and competitiveness and, as such, is basic statistical information for many international comparisons and country performance assessments.”

So, we know what productivity means from above, from the perspective of the Capitalistic machinations of Government, Corporation and Business. How does that translate to the 40.8% of workers who are from below, struggling from paycheck to paycheck? It can mean a variety of consequences for your work environment. More work in less time, less support with more expectations, less benefits for the labor-extended, less hours of work for more expectations from labor, the limit of freedom for scheduling, pressure to not report on work injuries, layoffs, furloughs, less equipment with more expectations of product…

This becomes productivity at the expense of worker’s health, pay and even employment. Many times, we are unable to see the consequences of a push for productivity because we are constantly told that productivity is “good for the bottom line.” If it is good for the bottom line, then it is good for our investments, and pays to keep our structures going.

Another example of the exploitation of the capitalistic system that is ignored by the church at large is the almost non-challenged status of the Lilly Foundation and its much-heralded grants in the Church itself.  Eli Lily was the founder of a pharmaceutical company that championed the first mass production of polio vaccine and insulin in the United States. Insulin has been a major part of the company’s profit portfolio. It has also been the reason that they have fought so vociferously in court against losing the patent on this drug so that the prices would drop. The company is #132 in Fortune 500 companies. It hopes to keep that status, in part by fighting generic drugs hitting the market which would impact Lilly’s profit margin.

In turn, insulin is a big part of the pharmaceutical market. The American Diabetes Association estimates that there are 30.3 million people in the US with diabetes. The American Diabetes Association has also concluded in a study that, “In Western economies, low-income populations have been found to be more likely to develop diabetes.” Also, 1.5 million Americans are diagnosed with diabetes every year. This is big money medicine. It translates into huge profits for Eli Lilly and Company.

The Lilly foundation is “an Indianapolis-based, private philanthropic foundation created in 1937 by three members of the Lilly family – J.K. Lilly Sr. and sons J.K. Jr. and Eli – through gifts of stock in their pharmaceutical business, Eli Lilly and Company.” So, how much does the Lilly foundation have invested in the company that makes a major part of their profits on insulin? In 2016 the Eli Lilly Endowment had $9,236,100,384 invested in Eli Lilly and Company. As the foundation itself claims, “The gifts of stock remain a financial bedrock of the Endowment.”  We can easily surmise that grants given to churches and pastors by the Lilly Foundation are in foundational ways subsidized by the economic exploitation of the poor to prop insulin prices up for profits. That this is almost never challenged either theologically, Biblically or ethically by pastors, theologians and Bible scholars in mainline churches tells a chilling narrative of the co-opting by the corporatist raiders’ influence into the church militant.

These are but two examples of how systemic sin is by and large accepted by both a secular and church culture. There are hundreds, if not thousands of other companies which are rarely studied and put through a rigorous Biblical, Creedal or theological test.  It is time for us to put away childish faith and dig deep into the systems of oppression that conspire to keep some people permanently oppressed.

The author of Proverbs tells us that a dishonest scale is detestable to the Lord. The prophet Micah tells us that bad scales against the poor are part of the injustice we are called to address in the oft-quoted section from Micah 6: “Do justice, to love kindness, and walk humbly with your God.” James decries those who have withheld the “pay of the laborers who mowed your fields.” It is time for us to no longer be content with only superficial solutions to the increased distance between the poor and the wealthy in our society. We must confess that our adoption of unhindered capitalism amongst our ecclesial systems plays deeply into the exploitation and poverty of our neighbors. Will we choose to walk with Christ, or will we grievously turn away from the demands of discipleship like the rich young ruler? We must confess this sin and turn from it in redistribution of our aggregated church wealth and in acts of repentance that show that we will shake the foundations of capitalistic structures that run counter to the kingdom of heaven and justice in this world.

 

The Rev. Brian Merritt is the Interim Senior Pastor at Immanuel Presbyterian Church in Albuquerque, NM. Brian previously founded the ecumenical and interfaith worship community Mercy Junction Justice and Peace Center. As one of the Protest Chaplain organizers for the Occupy movement and decades of organizing for justice, human and civil rights, Brian has a unique perspective on the role of the church in the public sphere. He has engaged in 20 years of ecumenical and Interreligious work in Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico, the District of Columbia, Rhode Island, and Nebraska.