Gratuitous Grumpy Pre-Lenten Griping

What with the other goings on in the good ol' ECUSA at the moment, I really haven't paid much attention to its big MDG campaign. However, as my church will be using this campaign as the center of its Lenten programming, I've focused on it much more over the past week or so. And as seems increasingly the case whenever I tackle a church-related issue, I'm coming up with more questions than answers.

What's the MDG campaign, you ask? Well, MDG stands for the Millenium Development Goals. Basically, we're setting out to rid the world of nastiness by 2015:

- Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
- Achieve universal primary education
- Promote gender equality and empower women
- Reduce child Mortality
- Improve maternal health
- Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases
- Ensure environmental sustainability
- Develop a global partnership for development

Very good, you say. How are you going to go about it? Well, the best I can tell is that everybody is being asked to pony up some dosh:

ONE is a large and growing movement of more than 2.3 million Americans, supported by a coalition of more than 70 leading advocacy and humanitarian organizations. It seeks to convince the U.S. government to spend an additional ONE percent of its budget each year on MDG-related programs. The ONE Episcopalian initiative unites this work with the Church’s ongoing MDG work. Parishes and dioceses are asked to become “ONE Congregations” and “ONE Dioceses” and make a series of commitments to MDG advocacy. Individuals, likewise, are asked to sign the ONE Declaration, wear a white wristband (the international symbol of the anti-poverty movement), and commit to regular MDG advocacy.

And where will this money be spent exactly, you ask? Well, I've been up and down the website and it seems to go rayther vague on this point. I've an idea this is because many of the problems identified are not of a nature that they can be solved simply by throwing money at them.

Take hunger, for example. The fact of the matter is that much of the worst of Third World hunger is to be found in countries whose own governments use it as a weapon against their populations (or undesireable portions thereof). As often as not, foreign aid rolling in winds up in the hands of the kleptocracies themselves, the better to maintain their own lavish lifestyles and feed their armies. One of the planned activities at our church is going to be having each family "sponsor" a goat or a chicken or a pig or the like, to be delivered to some deserving souls in Africa. That's swell, but what steps will be taken to ensure that the local bully boys won't simply swoop in and steal them as soon as our collective backs are turned?

Or take "empowering women." Sounds great, too. But how is money going to get round the tenants of radical Islam or local tribal custom? Are we going to start bribing mullahs and witch doctors to change their tune?

"Ensure environmental stability" is a favorite of mine and I'd like to be around when this is explained to some poor shmuck in, say, Chad. "Sorry you missed out on the Industrial Revolution, old fellow. We'd like to help you build a manufacturing infrastructure, but we're afraid it would be too pollutant. But never mind - here's a nice chicken for you."

Then there's the very circular "Develop a global partnership for development," a goal that sounds to me like something invented by the Underpants Gnomes.

Look, I don't mean to be overly caustic and snarky about all this. I think the Church is very well placed to deal with things like disaster relief - hurricanes and tsunami and the like - and I always chip in when calls are made for this kind of aid. The Church can probably also do great good in terms of some of the MDG's listed - getting health care and education to where they're needed, for example. So half a cheer there, anyway. However, the main problems identified here are systemic, and require not more Western handouts but fundamental changes in the very structure of government and society in large chunks of the Third World. What I find disappointing about this ONE project is that it doesn't even appear to attempt to address the issues on this level. Thus, I fear the whole thing is little more than an exercise in limousine liberalism.

So, Mr. Smartypants, you're probably saying, how would you tackle these issues? Well, I honestly don't know. But I think the first step is to frame the question honestly: Third World poverty isn't a function of Western greed (although erecting trade barriers to squash the import of African textiles or resisting the outsourcing of tech support jobs to India and the like doesn't help), it's a function of the lack of three paramount ingredients of economic success: private property, the rule of law and education. Without these, all the handouts in the world won't do any good. So how do we turn Africa into a continent of shopkeepers? Should we? Can we, even? Has anybody translated Adam Smith into Swahili? Those seem to me to be the real questions we should be asking. And as I say, it doesn't appear that anybody involved with this ONE business is doing so.

Well, you say, won't giving some money help a bit, even if it doesn't solve the larger problems? Possibly. As I say, I think the Church is a natural for dealing with some things, especially short term efforts like disaster relief. But the money would have to be watched very, very carefully. And for the reasons I cite, I'm afraid a good many of the programs that worm their way under the MDG umbrella are nothing more that futile boondoggles. (Speaking of which, the U.N. is involved in all of this somehow as well.)

Oh, and then there's the white wristbands. I hate causes that involve wristbands, ribbons, tee-shirts and the like. [CLARIFYING UPDATE: I don't hate the causes themselves. Rayther, I hate the ribbons, wristbands, etc., that go with them.] And here, at least, I'm on solid Biblical ground because even if nobody else does, I pay attention to the traditional Ash Wednesday gospel reading:

Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven.

Therefore when thou doest [thine] alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.

But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth:

That thine alms may be in secret: and thy Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly.

-Matthew 6:1-4

Anyhoo, these are the things that are banging around inside my head. We're having a bunch of guest speakers come in to talk about the MDG/ONE program during Lent. I suppose that I could ask them about some of these issues, but regular readers know I'm already in a certain amount of hot water for my views and one can stir up only so many controversies at a given time.