Over the last two or three months, the churches in the town where I minister have seen a major uptick in calls for financial assistance. Some callers tell us that they’ve recently lost their jobs, but the majority are on disability insurance which, for whatever reason, isn’t enough to keep the lights on. On most days it feels like we’re pretty good at treating the symptoms of financial hardship (past-due rent and empty gas tanks) but powerless to get at the root cause (in this case, physical disablement).
To switch metaphors from the hospital to the battlefields of WWI, our churches are up against “entrenched” poverty, the kind that can’t be dislodged by a quick barrage of money. And in many places across the US and for all kinds of reasons, poverty has been digging in for generations. Some towns have never recovered after the local factory closed decades ago; some neighborhoods suffer the ongoing effects of the racist policies of the past. In St. Louis, where I live, sections of the northern part of the city look like they’ve been through a literal war. Whole blocks are abandoned, and once-venerable buildings collapse in on themselves, victims not of bombs but of long-term economic malaise.