Is Stewardship Ethical?

This is a section of a larger chapter on the parable of the unjust steward. The full text is the third chapter of the following text. 

In 2010, I found myself presenting on Christian ‘wealth stewardship’ in Spanish. This was in Hendersonville, North Carolina as part of a regularly recurring conference of Latinx Episcopalians, an event conducted almost entirely in Spanish. I was there as a staff member of the Episcopal Church Foundation (ECF), an organization that produces resources to assist with congregational leadership and fundraising, and most of the attendees were clergy and lay leaders of Spanish-speaking congregations.

The purpose of my presentation was to make the case for the way the Episcopal Church understands stewardship and raises monies for congregations, the (condescending) theory being that most Latinx Episcopalians were coming from the Roman Catholic tradition and hadn’t been exposed to mainline Protestant congregational fundraising practices such as annual pledge cards and creating reserve funds for capital maintenance. 

I dutifully arrived that day with slides outlining the tenets and practices of how most mainline Protestant congregations do their annual fundraising, practices undergirded by a theology of stewardship - mayordomía in Spanish - in which all Christians are called upon to be stewards - mayordomos - of all that God has given us. Just a few slides in, however, I noticed that the small number of Latinos gathered appeared skeptical and perplexed. 

Eventually one of the men explained to me that the Spanish word I was using for steward - mayordomo - had many negative associations where he was from, that one wouldn’t ever want to be considered a mayordomo. Mayordomos were the people who exploited people like him and his family, the property/business manager-in-charge who squeezed every cent they could out from the blood and sweat of their workers. Failing to grasp the gravity of his statement, I thought at the time that the point he was raising was a matter of translation and so we began to discuss other words that would work instead. In the years since, though, I’ve thought much more deeply about the problematic history the role of the ‘steward’ - mayordomo - and have come to see this issue less as a matter of translation than as a more faithful memory of the kinds of characters mayordomos actually were. 

This gulf in perspective became especially clear as I began learning more about the history of mayordomos in Latin America. Across many parts of Latin America, on the vast colonial estates called haciendas, the mayordomo was just like Luke’s unjust steward in that he was the head administrator in charge of making the plantations, mines, and factories situated there profitable. Whereas the owners of haciendas typically lived in major urban areas, it was the mayordomo who lived on site and whose job it was to rend and report profits back to the patron. Mayordomos regularly used physical punishment, violence, and exploitation to attain this goal. Even into 20th century Bolivia, for instance, in studies on the labor practices of the hacienda system prior to 1952, there are examples of mayordomos whipping workers and threatening expulsion from the estate.1 The means by which this profit was made, and the disconnection and detachment of the owner from the lives of the people who were impacted by the decisions of ‘sound stewardship’ are key here.

Writing in the 1930s, the American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr named the problematic nature of mainline Protestantism’s idolization of the steward and stewardship, for the praising of the steward actually emerged during the industrial buildup between the two World Wars.2 In “Is Stewardship Ethical?”, Niebuhr critiques stewardship as an exasperatingly naïve framework that allows the Church to avoid asking about the sources of wealth, including the exploitative practices through which such wealth was made. Instead, stewardship does little more than “sanctify power and privilege as it exists in the modern world by certain concessions to the ethical principal.”3 Niebuhr gives the example of “the pious business man” who is both honest and fairly generous, two virtues which “give him the satisfaction of being a Christian.”4 Yet this pious businessman “regards his power in his factory much as kings of old regarded their prerogatives. Any attempt on the part of the workers to gain a share in the determining of policy, particularly the policy which affects their own livelihood, hours, and wages, is regarded by him as an attempt to destroy the divine order of things.”5 Niebuhr states that the proof of stewardship as an inadequate framework lies in how it does nothing to challenge this pious businessman to fulfill his broader moral obligations to his employees. “There is not one church in a thousand where the moral problems of our industrial civilization are discussed with sufficient realism from the pulpit to prompt the owner to think of his stewardship in terms of these legitimate rights of the workers.”6 Niebuhr challenges the Church to find a more realistic approach for engaging on issues of wealth, a theological vision that not only asks critical questions about sources of wealth but which also recognizes “how necessary and ultimately ethical are the restraints of an ethical society upon man’s (sic) will to power and his lust for gain.”7 

The Gospel of Luke’s parable of the unjust steward (Luke16:1-13) is a portrayal of a mayordomo that would be familiar to both first century Christians, the small group of Latinos gathered in 2010, and Reinhold Niebuhr writing in the 1930s. This parable focuses on an owner and his steward who pressed workers into such exploitative debt that workers could barely survive. The true tendency of the steward is made plain by this parable: stewards are willing to maximize gains and returns no matter the costs. Tellingly, it is only in an act of anti-stewardship, a transformative repentance and living into God’s proclamation of good news for the poor, that salvation is ultimately found. 

"Nearly all 50 states have filed lawsuits
 against Purdue and Sackler family members
 for their alleged roles inthe opioid crisis." 

It is telling that even as cultural institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art will no longer accept donations from the Sackler family (rightfully shunned for their role in America’s opioid crisis), and colleges and universities across the nation are divesting themselves from fossil fuels, the Church’s commitment so-called stewardship prevents it from having a serious discussion about where wealth is coming from and at what great cost.8 Let’s be clear: we are the unjust stewards in this scenario. Further, in patterning ourselves on the steward’s primary concern for income and maximizing return, we ignore the many other possible models presented within the Gospels. For in addition to the stories of the three rich men detailed above (the parable of the prodigal son, that of the unjust steward, and the rich man and Lazarus), in the Gospel of Luke alone, there are the stories of:

• The Good Samaritan, who used his wealth to care for a stranger despite inconvenience and even danger to himself (Luke 10.25-37)
• Jesus’ parable of the rich fool who builds larger and larger barns to store his growing amount of grain and possessions. But he can't take all that wealth when he dies! Luke 12:13-21
• Jesus’ telling the rich man to “Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Luke 12.33-34
• Jesus’ parable of the Great Banquet, in which a frustrated rich man eventually throws open the doors to invite “the poor, the maimed, the blind and the lame” Luke 14:15-24
• Jesus’ words to the rich ruler who asks Jesus what he must do to earn eternal life. “Sell all that you own and distribute the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.’” Luke 18.18-30. 
• Zacchaeus who said to Jesus, “Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.” Luke 19:8-99

Any of these characters and stories would be a far better focus - and far more faithful representation of Jesus’ message on wealth - than the harsh and effective steward who manages property and goes about collecting debts from tenant farmers and slaves on behalf of an absentee landowner. September Stewardship Season makes as much sense as Overseer October, Middle-Management March, and Debt-Collector December. What were we thinking? Ironically, it is the mainline church that has been incredibly poor stewards of the Gospels' surprising messages around faith and wealth. 

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1 Smith, Stephen M. “Labor Exploitation on Pre-1952 Haciendas in the Lower Valley of Cochabamba, Bolivia.” The Journal of Developing Areas, vol. 11, no. 2, 1977, pp. 227–244. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/4190461. Accessed 23 Oct. 2020.

2 King, David. “Beyond Abundance: Is Stewardship Ethical?” Word & World Volume 38, Number 3 Summer 2018. 

3 Reinhold Niebuhr, “Is Stewardship Ethical?,” Christian Century 47 (April 30, 1930): 555

4 Reinhold Niebuhr, “Is Stewardship Ethical?,” Christian Century 47 (April 30, 1930): 555

5 Reinhold Niebuhr, “Is Stewardship Ethical?,” Christian Century 47 (April 30, 1930): 555

6 Reinhold Niebuhr, “Is Stewardship Ethical?,” Christian Century 47 (April 30, 1930): 556

7 Reinhold Niebuhr, “Is Stewardship Ethical?,” Christian Century 47 (April 30, 1930): 557

8 A charming profile of America’s 30th wealthiest family, the Sacklers, Forbes notes that “Nearly all 50 states have filed lawsuits against Purdue and Sackler family members for their alleged roles in the opioid crisis.” https://www.forbes.com/profile/sackler/?sh=615973da5d63

9 This list of references to wealth in the Gospel of Luke is adapted from Longenecker, Bruce. Remember the Poor. Page 124