The Churches' Dual Standard on Working Wives and the Welfare State

Gary North

Oct. 27, 2010

Pastors for almost 2,000 years have preached against sin in general. Preaching against a specific sin can get a pastor in a lot of trouble if any of the church's leaders commit this sin regularly. Pastors who preach against specific sins preach against those that are not common in their congregations.

This is why pastors do not preach against practices that are widely accepted in the culture or region in which the church is located. Pastors know that many of those inside their churches are also participating. Only when self-consciously not practicing something is part of the denomination's tradition that defines it do pastors preach against it. A classic American example is the Amish practice of bringing under discipline any man who uses a zipper, which is considered "modern." They also preach against participating in the Social Security System. This deserves some attention.

Before World War II, wives in the West did not work for a living outside the home. Farmers' wives worked long and hard, but they worked at home. This was best for the children, but as taxes rose, wives were forced to work outside the home to pay them.

I have never heard a sermon on the evil of high taxation because it forces wives to work outside the home.

I am told that there are still denominations that preach against wives working outside the home. But these denominations do not preach against Social Security and Medicare. Yet these two programs make most retired people wards of the state.

If a husband does not earn enough money to pay all of the modern state's taxes and also build a retirement portfolio that will sustain him and his wife in their old age, they will be left to the tender mercies of the state. If it requires a wife in the labor force to build up such a portfolio, why is this wrong?

Letting the wife contribute to the family's income is a case for having a home-based business.

To preach that wives should not work outside the home places a burden on the preacher to preach the requirement of a home-based business. If he refuses to preach this, then he owes it to his flock to preach a household savings rate of at least 20% after the tithe. Anyone who does not save at this rate will be impoverished in old age.

If he refuses to preach the moral requirement of a home-based business or above-average thrift, then he must preach against retirement. He must teach husbands to run the numbers so that the men can see that they will not be able to retire. They will not have enough capital to leave to their widows to carry the widows through to death.

If a pastor refuses to preach any of this, then he must preach on the moral necessity of members' becoming dependent on their adult children when they retire. Otherwise, they will be dependent on the state. But I have never heard a sermon on this. It would not be appreciated by members who say, "I do not want to become dependent on the charity of my children." They do not also say, "I do not want to become dependent on the state," meaning the taxes extracted from their children and other families' children.

Pastors never preach such sermons. If their denominational tradition favors stay-at-home mothers, they preach this occasionally, but they refuse to preach the ethical corollaries to this doctrine: home-based businesses, highly disciplined thrift, dependence on adult children, or the moral obligation not to retire.

Any church that teaches that wives should not work outside the home after they become mothers is preaching half a gospel if they do not also preach the moral necessity of not becoming wards of the state in retirement. If the church refuses, it is preaching this:

God is honored by families that keep mothers at home. However, God is in no way dishonored by families that become economically dependent on the state. Compulsory state welfare is a good thing, biblically speaking, because it relieves the church of its Bible-mandated obligation to support indigent members (I Timothy 5). The state picks up the tab, so we don't have to. Praise God! Hallelujah! This is is especially true of retired church members.

So, wives, don't work outside the home. So, husbands, don't worry about going on Social Security. God is honored when His people become wards of the state.

Pastors never spell it out in this way. That might get them fired.

Pastors are allowed to opt out of Social Security during the first 18 months of their ordination, if they do so for moral objections. Only the Amish and other Mennonite protesters are allowed this liberty. But no denomination recommends to its new ministers that they do this. That would mean taking a moral stand against Social Security. So, very few ministers opt out.

In 1957, Rev. Francis Mahaffy's article against entering into the Social Security system was published in The Freeman. It was titled, "A Clergyman's Security." It is online here. It is still as valid today as it was then.

The modern church is blind to the moral evil of state-imposed welfare programs. Members are not taught about the great threat of dependency on the state.

When the day of reckoning comes, and the modern welfare state goes bankrupt, churches will discover how expensive it is to follow the requirements of I Timothy 5. They will have far more indigents on their roles. There will be a stream of oldsters, hats in hand, who say: "No one in our pulpits ever taught us to plan for our future in order to avoid dependency on the state." They will be telling the truth. No one ever did.

Nobody teaches them that they have a moral obligation to tithe. Nobody teaches them that they have a moral obligation to save and avoid consumer debt. No one teaches them that the voters are sinning when they vote to establish programs of tax-funded charity. "That's politics," pastors say. "We don't get mixed up in politics." Oh, yeah? They get mixed up in politics the day they send an indigent member to the state for tax-funded care.

So, who will teach the younger members that they must pay for the oldsters whose families will not help them financially, after the state goes belly-up?

"I see that hand!"

No, actually, I don't.