In Defense of the Middle-Class

The middle-class is a “common grace” good, a mindset worth fighting for, even as the upper-class and under-class assault it.

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Thursday, December 17, 2020

FIRST THINGS FIRST: DISTINCTIONS AND DEFINITIONS

First, let’s talk about some important foundational items before we get talking about the middle-class.

In his short essay, “Common Grace,” John Murray gives what is the best definition of common grace: “every favor of whatever kind or degree, falling short of salvation, which this undeserving and sin-cursed world enjoys at the hand of God.”

The relationship between God’s common and saving grace has been argued over across Christendom over the years, including in the Reformed tradition, with some even denying “common grace” as heretical. Without wading into all the points of controversy, this must should be clear— while God’s saving grace allows for the cultus of the Triune God to take place, God’s common grace allows for human culture to exist. Where you don’t have God’s saving grace, you don’t have something Christian. But where you don’t have God’s common grace, you don’t have something human.

Think of a few common grace “goods”:
-Legal protections for the unborn, so that their in utero murder (abortion) is criminalized.
-Safe neighborhoods and cities, where governors and the governed respect the rule of law.
-Literacy, such that people are able to read and write in a human language, and can develop a culture of literacy.

None of these is specifically Christian. But where you don’t have them, something really human is lacking. Where you do have them, something really good is present, and aspects of the Christian faith are actually enhanced and achievable (like Biblical literacy, that depends on literacy to begin with; hence the New England Reading Primers that taught children how to read by using the Bible). Within this framing, the middle-class is a common grace, a societal good worth fighting for.

Historically, the middle-class was a codification of certain aspects of Biblical wisdom that was hard to improve upon. I’m thinking especially of the middle-class in the United States, from the colonial period into the late 20th century (perhaps it would be better known in its early years less anachronistically as “agrarian republicanism”). Peoples and societies that follow the light of nature (however inconsistent) and the grain of God’s creation often prosper in many temporal ways. So, no—this is not, strictly speaking, Weberian sociology.

THREE CLARIFICATIONS
Before detailing what about the middle-class is worth defending, let’s clarify three points.

First, this defense of the middle-class is not oriented around cash (how much money you possess) nor credentials (how much education you’ve attained). For example, one can be part of the middle-class in a financial sense (belong to a certain tax bracket), but be plagued by elitist or under-class pathologies. There’s a ton of cross pollination between the classes. You may accuse the description that follows of never having existed in any given historical era but you will have missed the point. The middle-class is a mindset that has been variously approximated in different times and in different places.

Second, understand that the religion of unbelief is at war not only against Biblical religion but also against Biblical wisdom. The present war against the middle-class is not, then, just an economic calculation. This war contains aspects of spiritual warfare. It’s the Christianity that is represented by the historic middle-class that is repugnant to the spirit of the age.

Third, the middle-class is under attach by both the under- and upper-class. The under-class and upper-class have more in common than we’d like to think. Academia, think-tanks, news media, Big Tech, Madison Ave, entertainment, Wall Street (to name a few elitist centers) often issue base appeals to the under-class that circumvent the middle-class, seeking the erosion of the middle-class through the under-class adoption of upper-class sentiments. More on this below. The upper- and under-class mindset hate the virtue codified in the middle-class mindset. To them, it’s “regressive,” “white,” “racist,” “sexist,” “homophobic,” “classist,” or whatever label they can throw at it.

Don’t take what follows below as a detestation of the under-class or the upper-class in terms cash or credentials (wealth and education are not incidental but also not as important as we think— see the early Church), or a rejection of members in either group. The Church has always lovingly called all men everywhere— in whatever class— to repentance in Jesus Christ, and to help those in Christ grow in Biblical wisdom. What follows, however, is a wholesale rejection of the under-class and upper-class (or elitist) mindset.

Let’s begin.

THE MIDDLE CLASS MINDSET

Money
The middle-class mindset strives to earn and save honest money in order to use it for what it deems necessary for life, whether it be material goods and services, charitable endeavors, future retirement, or wealth that can be leveraged for influence or bequeathed to one’s children and others. It has a frugality and generosity because it delays gratification. The middle-class mindset is less likely to steal or burn a business or break into a car— it knows the value of sweat equity and what it’s like to work hard. It doesn’t want to rob others nor be robbed. It understands that money must be earned and not stolen, saved and not squandered, and used for good things, not what is frivolous or harmful.

Business
The middle-class mindset looks to start businesses out of a desire to bring to market an idea or service or product that can be useful to many. The middle-class not only starts most businesses in this country but maintains them with care and consideration in what are called “small businesses”. Small businesses are the heart and soul of our economy. They range from a local “mom-and-pop” store to a regional operation. The middle-class entrepreneur takes risks and tolerates a certain amount of market loss and failure, yet in the process employs many and contributes to their livelihood. Owners and managers are personally invested in a small business in a way the under-class is not (because they have neither started nor own a business) nor the upper-class (because they work for a gigantic corporation in which they’re highly dispensable). The middle-class mindset understands that a successful business must have a good and truly useful product, be oriented to the customer, and engage in honest and fair dealing with customers and the public.

Ownership
The middle-class mindset depends on neither old money (upper-class) nor government money (under-class). It scraps to work hard, gain honest money, and eventually own property. The middle-class does not believe it is entitled to anything beyond what its labor has earned, nor does it want to be coerced by government to give to what the under-class or upper-class may deem is a necessary societal good. It does not want to rent and be indebted to a landlord. It seeks to own property (real property, like land, and personal property, like a vehicle) because ownership opens up further possibilities of societal stability, and personal generosity, productivity, and creativity. Owning property introduces you to a life of responsibility, trust, foresight, and leadership because you, not the government nor another gigantic entity, determine what to do with your property.

Self-government and self-defense
When the middle-class mindset hears the word, “government,” they think, not of Washington DC or their state capitol, but “self-government.” That is, people must restrain themselves, exercise self-control, and govern their own affairs in order to make fruitful life possible. Government is first self-discipline before it is rule by politicians. Self-government must be found in marriage and sexuality, use of money and time, child-rearing, friendships, civic associations. In fact, self-government encompasses all of life. A people who cannot govern themselves is a people who cannot be governed.

Because there are some, even within civil society, who refuse to govern themselves, who seek to exploit others by force, and who threaten, kill, steal, and seek to usurp God’s power, prerogatives, and attributes, the middle-class mindset seeks to defend itself against attacks on its life and property (historically, property was considered an extensions of one’s person). It does not outsource self-defense by relying solely on the police (under-class) nor on the security it can hire (upper-class). The middle-class mindset takes steps to prevent loss of life. When it does use lethal force, it does not do so recklessly nor wield it indiscriminately. Self-defense is for the purpose of defending the life that God has given, the liberties God has given, and the property and livelihoods that God has given. To refuse self-defense on principle is to squander and un-steward what God has given.

Marriage and Sexuality
The middle-class mindset understands that to get anything done and build anything of worth, you need a team with a hierarchy and a mission. This is what marriage is. It is lifelong union with one husband and one wife. The two become one so that they can, in time, become two, three, four, or five, however many children God is pleased to grant. The husband is the leader of the home, his wife is his helpmeet. Children, born naked in this world, are trained to become adults, invested with trust and responsibility, under the leadership of father and mother. This training has as its goal, essentially, that boys become men, husbands, and fathers, and girls become women, wives, and mothers.

Because children require stable homes if any of this training is to take place, fathers and mothers must remain married and be faithful to one another. Until recent decades, the middle-class mindset has categorically rejected promiscuity and every sexual deviancy as harbingers of societal fragmentation and implosion.

Children
The middle-class cares about their own children’s upbringing. The middle-class mindset wants to see children succeed in matters of character and comprehension of content. A child’s upbringing cannot be outsourced to some government bureaucrat (under-class) nor the modern, American equivalent of a governess (upper-class). The middle-class mindset builds schools outside of government control (because, let’s face it, what does the government do well?) where parents are heavily invested as donors, teachers, and administrators, often wearing multiple hats. In the rare cases where children do attend government school, the middle-class mindset will not neglect them for 12 years, only to harvest the fruit of government indoctrination when they’re 18 years old. “Self-government” involves “family government” which means that in the most important issues, like a child’s upbringing, parents are directly involved in teaching their children.

Association
The middle-class mindset understands that a good society must be able to associate freely outside of the parameters of the government or the internet (wherein associations are regulated and monitored). A just society depends on marriages, friendships, churches, bowling leagues, little leagues, reading clubs, pick-up basketball games, rotary club, neighborhood clean-up groups, community-patrols, block associations, friends-of-park associations, Boy Scouts, charitable organizations that welcome donations and volunteers, volunteer groups, and other innumerable associations that help foster and strengthen civil society.

Unlike the upper- and under-class that can be very homogenous in their interests, interactions, and people they rub shoulders with, the middle-class mindset has a willingness to know a wide variety of people which is correlative to its willingness to freely associate with others. Middle-class neighborhoods are full of people of diverse backgrounds. The middle-class go to church with people of varying cultures and socio-economic status. They marry persons of different ethnicities. They shop, work, and work-out alongside people from all over the spectrum.

THE UNDER- AND UPPER-CLASS MINDSET
More could be said about the middle-class mindset that is worth defending. I trust you can see that what is detailed above is the outgrowth of the Christian faith and further strengthens civic virtue (or civil righteousness, as the Protestant Reformers put it).

I trust you can also see that the middle-class— not the middle-class in terms of wealth nor educational achievement— but the middle-class, as a mindset outlined above, is attacked today by both the upper- and under-class mindset.

The upper-class and the under-class complement one another. Elites want to solve people’s problems and have the governmental, institutional, and corporate power to be do-gooders. The under-class mindset wants its problems solved for it and accepts this paternalistic arrangement.

One group inherits money from previous generations who had a middle-class mindset, the other receives a handout from the government. Both groups believe in easy money, spend it lavishly, and don’t mind flashing it. How many times growing up did I see knock-off luxury handbags and real Jordan sneakers flaunted in my face in my high school of inner-city students? I couldn’t figure out if my classmates were rich or poor. The mindset of both the upper- and under-class precludes them from knowing the weight of hard-earned money.

Consider other examples: the upper-class deride the Christian faith and push anti-Christian propaganda in their messaging. The under-class learn to deride their native Christian faith through this constant anti-Christian catechesis.

Or consider how the upper-class attacks the right of self-defense and the under-class seeks to defund the police. The ironies are rich— on the one hand, a strong police force can often times stabilize an under-class community in good ways. On the other hand, the upper-class can afford to hire their own small army if firearms were banned. Mayor Mike Bloomberg wants to prohibit you, not his own security detail, from using fire arms. Good for thee, but not for me.

Or consider that materially successful rap artists are born and raised in affluent suburbs pursuing the kind of middle-class mindset that will ensure temporal success, not engaged in the socially pathological behavior their music glorifies. Nevertheless, the three music companies that own all the world’s commercial music (Sony, Universal, and Warner) are all to happy to have this illusion of the “gangster” rapper projected to the underclass.

Or consider how, as British psychiatrist Theodore Dalrymple notes, the upper-class publicly reject monogamy while maintaining it in their personal lives. The under-class, in turn, buy the elite’s message of promiscuity while oblivious to their hypocrisy.

Or consider how elites congratulate themselves for building abortuaries where brown and black unborn babies are murdered. More black babies are murdered in NYC than born alive. Black lives matter except those of the unborn.

Or consider how, before they scrubbed it from their website’s “About” page, Black Lives Matter wrote that they sought to “disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure.” As if father hunger was not already a pandemic in the black community.

Or consider how, similarly, the corporate world ran to support the riots in American cities in the summer of 2020, motivated supposedly by a concern for “Black Lives Matter.” The net result of the riots was that the under-class ended up destroying many of the small businesses that were stabilizing pillars in their own communities and cities. All this because of the messaging, funding, and organizational support from elites that said riots were good.

I could go on and on. The sum of the matter is that the upper-class mindset projects a picture of sophisticated debauchery, sexual and otherwise. The under-class mindset eats this up and covets a lifestyle it can hardly afford. The under-class believe that they, too, can accept the hollowing out of the middle-class and still land where the upper-class is. They do not understand that elites enjoy their success in spite of, not as a result, of their present ideological commitments. In turn, elites, having followed a middle-class mindset that vaulted them into material success, grow decadent and forgetful about why they prospered in the first place. Loving the lies they tell themselves about why they’re successful, they pull up the ladder behind them. When you begin to understand these dynamics you will begin to understand why the upper-class is eager to have lockdowns and a “Great Reset” which they have convinced the under-class to eagerly accept. While small businesses have greatly suffered, Amazon has continued to turn a profit.

But the middle-class rejects the upper- and the under-class mindset. It does not want to be enslaved to the government or any other sector of society. It does not want handouts. It wants to do those things that truly make for a just society flourish. It wants to help others be able to stand up and become productive, responsible, self-disciplined members of society. The middle-class mindset does want to work for you; it wants you to know the joy and discipline of work. It does not want to give you things through the government (a process which, ironically, ends up helping government pencil-pushers more than the people in true material need). It wants to help you get to the point in life where you can be productive and generous with your time and money.

A TWOFOLD WARNING
Beware of attacks upon the middle-class that come from the world, of course, but also from professing Christians that are in bed with either upper-class (elitist) interests and/or that seek uniformity for all on the bottom rung (i.e., we should aspire to poverty and the under-class mentality). That some in the evangelical establishment (or, Big Eva) believe that “government welfare” is actually a legitimate sphere of government involvement signals their indifference to the under-class and to the common grace that is the middle-class.

Also, beware of attacks on the middle-class that are cast in racial terms. Nothing I’ve said about the middle-class is exclusive to white, brown, or black America. The middle-class is not a dollar figure nor a college degree. It certainly is not a race or an ethnicity. The middle-class mindset is open for all. It’s common grace.

CONCLUSION
In earthly terms, the middle-class makes for a stable society: everyone owning and managing some kind of property, faithful to spouse, directly involved in the upbringing of their children, fearing God, curious about life and God’s creation, respecting others and their property, generous not with other people’s money but with what God has entrusted to them through their hard work and industry, and governing their affairs as they see best within the bounds of lawfulness.

The Church can give a full accounting, and should, of why these middle-class values are good and true, just like it can explain why protecting the unborn, promoting literacy, and advancing the rule of law are virtuous according to God’s Word. My point is to show that the Church should be able and willing to co-sign the virtue and common grace that is the middle-class mindset as outlined above.