How forcefully will Christian churches condemn it?

By Herbert Rothschild

Gustavo Gutiérrez died last year on Oct. 22. A Peruvian-born Dominican priest, he is widely regarded as the father of Liberation Theology. While there is actually no one such theology, all its varieties share the same tenet — the centrality of the poor in the kingdom of God.

It’s hard to argue with that understanding of Jesus’ ministry and teaching. He was himself poor, and he experienced the political oppression of Roman rule and the economic burden of Jewish ritual. His healings were mostly of people socially marginalized by their afflictions. And his teachings are unequivocal about the spiritual danger of wealth and the absolute necessity of caring for the needy. The writer of the Gospel of Matthew attributes to Jesus the assertion that our treatment of the hungry, the sick, the naked, the stranger and the prisoner will determine the final judgment on us (Matthew 25.34-45).

Historically, the Catholic hierarchy in Latin America made common cause with the European-descended economic and political elites. Indeed, the bishops were usually drawn from that stratum of society. So, when the Catholic Bishops of Latin America (CELAM) met in Medellin, Colombia, in 1968 and proclaimed a Preferential Option for the Poor, it was a momentous change. The social teachings of the Vatican II Council, which had been held earlier in the decade, were a primary impetus, but so were the teachings of those like Dom Helder Camara, archbishop of Olinda e Recife in Brazil, and Gutiérrez.

At Medellin, CELAM declared, “The poverty of the church and of its members in Latin America ought to be a sign and a commitment — a sign of the inestimable value of the poor in the eyes of God, an obligation of solidarity with those who suffer.”

Liberation theologians went beyond asserting the necessity of caring for the poor, beyond charity understood as the rich “shak[ing] the superflux to them,” as King Lear puts it at the start of his awakening. They called for systemic change that would liberate them from the structures of oppression and allow them greater agency over the conditions in which they lived.

This understanding of Jesus’ call to “free the captives” alarmed conservatives. As Camara famously said, “When I feed the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.”

Nonetheless, the bishops gathered in Medellin endorsed this replacement of philanthropy with justice: “The present situation, then, demands from bishops, priests, religious and laymen the spirit of poverty which, ‘breaking the bonds of the egotistical possession of temporal goods, stimulates the Christian to order organically the power and the finances in favor of the common good.'”

All of which leads me to Elon Musk and his begrudging of even the superflux. On Feb. 2, he posted on X, his social media platform, “We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper.”

Near the beginning of an excellent column in the New York Times, Nicholas Kristof wrote, “By my calculations, Elon Musk probably has a net worth greater than that of the poorest billion people on Earth. Just since Donald Trump’s election, Musk’s personal net worth has grown by far more than the entire annual budget of USAID, which in any case accounts for less than 1% of the federal budget.” 

Kristof defends the U.S. Agency for International Development from the outrageous lies Musk and President Trump have told about it, and while conceding that there was much to reform, spoke of the enormous good it has done in the world, some of which Kristof has witnessed personally.

He concludes his piece this way: “Trump’s moves are of uncertain legality, not least because USAID was established by Congress, but the outcomes are indisputable. Around the world children are already missing health care and food because of the assault on the agency that President John F. Kennedy founded to uphold our values and protect our interests. To billionaires in the White House, it may seem like a game. But to anyone with a heart, it’s about children’s lives and our own security, and what’s unfolding is sickening.”

I didn’t expect any better from Musk or Trump. As my mother would say on such occasions, “What do you expect from a pig but a grunt.” What I’m watching closely is how Christian leaders respond.

From what I’ve read so far, unsurprisingly the Vatican has done best. On Feb. 10, Caritas, which coordinates Roman Catholic international charity work, issued a statement saying, “Stopping USAID will jeopardize essential services for hundreds of millions of people, undermine decades of progress in humanitarian and development assistance, destabilize regions that rely on this critical support, and condemn millions to dehumanizing poverty or even death.” It called the action “ruthless” and “reckless.”

In this country, the response — such as it has been so far — has been milder. On Feb. 6, Trump spoke at the annual National Prayer Breakfast. He said, “I really believe you can’t be happy without religion, without that belief. So let’s bring religion back. Let’s bring God back into our lives.” Afterward, some of the clergy who attended the breakfast shared with the press their concerns about what was happening to USAID.

Galen Carey, the vice president of government relations at the National Association of Evangelicals, said, “Indiscriminate stop-work orders issued with little or no advanced notice have created chaos and confusion on the ground. This is damaging and wasteful. Some of our members and partners are experiencing crippling cash-flow crises, necessitating mass layoffs and abrupt termination of services with no time for responsible transitions.”

What seemed to motivate Carey most was the effect Trump and Musk were having on their own aid organizations, such as World Relief, which depend on USAID funding. Neither he nor others who spoke on that occasion were willing to condemn someone who had just signed the death warrants for millions of poor people for presuming to urge people to invite God and religion into their lives.

I’m still waiting to hear from other Christian churches in the U.S., including Black churches like the AME Church and the National Baptist Association (because the greatest toll of deaths and suffering will be in sub-Saharan Africa). If they can’t summon the courage to assert their core values now, what will it take?

Herbert Rothschild’s columns appear Fridays. Opinions expressed in them represent the author’s views. Email Rothschild at [email protected].