The minimum wage jumped to $7.25 this week in what proponents say is a step toward economic justice for the working poor. But with unemployment nearing 10 percent and teen and elderly unemployment rates even higher, others argue the increase puts the most vulnerable at higher risk of losing their jobs right now.

What do you think? Is raising the minimum wage right now a moral, or immoral, act?

Rev. Brian Carpenter– Presbyterian Church in America, Sturgis
Well, I’m not sure “moral” and “immoral” are the appropriate categories. Perhaps “effective in bringing about the desired end” and “ineffective in bringing about the desired end” or “smart” and “dumb.”

This debate is a sterling example of how the general public could benefit from a basic course in economics. Last night, for instance, Alicia Garcia, a KOTA tv anchor, said that workers were getting a raise courtesy of the government. I looked at my wife and asked her if she had gotten any of that money from the government to give to our employees. You see, in addition to being a minister, I am also a small business owner. My wife and I own a food concession business. The business is marginally profitable for most of the summer and really only makes money during the Sturgis Rally. I can therefore provide a real life example of how the minumum wage works.

There is only so much money “in the business.” We do everything we can think of to maximize it, of course, and are endlessly tinkering and experimenting in order to do so. Out of that amount of money we have to pay expenses. When somebody raises the price of a product we need to run our business, we have several options. We can seek to cut expenses somewhere. We can take that increase in input costs out of the business and further reduce our profit, or we can pass that expense on to the customer in the form of higher prices. When our selling price goes up, the basic laws of economics decree that the demand will decrease to some extent. We will sell less product. At some point, we cannot sell enough product to be profitable, and we either expand the business in order to spread our input costs over a wider area, which is the model of American capitalism today, with all its mergers and acquisitions, or we shut down the business and walk away, throwing six people out of work (but making me much less tired and grumpy.)

When the government mandates a rise in the minimum wage, our expenses go up. That takes more money out of the business. We either accept lower profits (and we can’t go much lower, trust me) or we pass the cost increase on to our customers, thus further decreasing our sales, or we find a way to reduce our labor input costs. We hire fewer people and demand more work out of the people we do hire. Working for us becomes less pleasant than it was before.

It is axiomatic to the laws of economics that when the government intervenes to place a floor under the price of something, they artificially increase the supply, and when they place a ceiling on the price of something (like rent-controlled apartments in New York City) they artificially increase the demand and thus decrease the available supply. The minimum wage is an artificial floor under the price of labor. It draws people into the labor pool that might otherwise find other things to do. The best example of this is the teenager. She might rather do summer sports than work if she could only get $5.00 an hour for her labor. But she is willing to work instead of do summer sports for $7.25 an hour. So she tries to find a job. So do all of her friends. This increases the supply of labor relative to the demand for labor. When supply exceeds demand, the price always goes down. But since the government will not allow the price of labor to go down below $7.25 an hour, then the effect is a continuation of the artificially high supply of labor. That is the definition of unemployment, more laborers than there are jobs. For every dollar you raise the minimum wage, the effect is a small, but measurable increase in unemployment.

There is also a more pernicious effect as well. If we were able to keep those dollars in our business instead of paying them to the employees, we take very few of them out for ourselves. We would plow most of them back in to the business. We would buy things that most of you wouldn’t buy, like another ice shaving machine, or new linoleum for the trailer floor. We also might expand the business, and then we would need to hire more people, thus creating new jobs that weren’t there before. Or we would save it to carry us through the lean times, thus providing more money for the bankers to lend and further stimulate our economy. That is good for the manufacturers and retailers. If we were a large, international corporation instead of a Mom and Pop business, we would pay the excess money out to our stockholders in the form of dividends, which would be good for you if you own the stock in your IRA or pension fund.

But our high school aged employees buy consumable items, like gas for their cars to cruise on Saturday night, or IPods. If you have a bunch of teenagers with money in their pockets, most of them spend it. The working poor also are able to save very little, and spend almost every penny they make on consumables. When more people have money and desire to spend it, they spend it. This will, at least in the short term, cause inflation, which is more money chasing a fixed supply of goods. When everyone wants an IPod, the price of IPods stays high or even increases. When everyone wants a gallon of gasoline, that gallon of gas will rise in price. Raising the minimum wage has also been demonstrated to increase the price of basic consumable goods that we all rely on every day. Food, gasoline, used cars, etc. etc. increase in price. These price increases eat up the benefit of the increase in the minimum wage, prompting politicians to raise it again and start the process all over. When I was in high school, I worked for an Albertson’s grocery store for $3.35 an hour, the minimum wage in 1985. I could purchase slightly less than three gallons of gasoline with one hour of my labor. Now the minimum wage is $7.25 an hour and our teenaged employees can purchase slightly less than three gallons of gasoline with their labor. What’s changed? Nothing but the numbers involved.

If the government would stay out of the price fixing business and let the laws of supply and demand work as they always do, we would actually have less poverty and less inflation. It’s counter intuitive, I know, but it is true nonetheless.

With all the Christian music in town this weekend for the Hills Alive music festival, what’s your take on music to praise God by?

Is the current crop of contemporary artists an improvement over the old-time hymns?  And what is the best hymn ever written, anyway?

Dr. Nicholas Wallerstein–religion, literature, and humanities professor

Though I am trained in theology, I’m also trained in aesthetics, since I teach literature. Contemporary Christian music has learned to use contemporary pop and rock and rap music very effectively for its rhythms and electronic sounds. Unfortunately, the lyrics remain pretty bad. As a teacher of lyric poetry, I find the lyrics of contemporary Christian music to be banal, insipid, jejune, hackneyed, vapid, and cliche. On the whole, they are an embarrassment. As an English professor, I teach some of the greatest Christian poets  in the history of the English language–John Milton, George Herbert, Edmund Spenser, John Donne, W.H. Auden, T.S. Eliot, and many others. The junk that passes for Christain lyrics these days would make all these Christian writers roll over in their graves. I defy anyone who listens to contemporary Christian music to find something that is even remotely close in aesthetic and intellectual brilliance to such a great lyric poem as Gerard Manly Hopkins’ “The Windhover: To Christ Our Lord.” It can’t be done.

Nonetheless, there are some Christian songwriters out there right now who are quite admirable. And I don’t just mean great bands with a Christian slant, such as U2. I mean singer/songwriters like the Canadian Bruce Cockburn. His album “Dancing in the Dragon’s Jaws” is a work of wonderful and mystical imaginings of Jesus, with lyrics of great depth, aesthetic qualities, and spiritual intensity. I recommend it to anyone who wants to hear Christian folk music at its very best.

Slightly edgier would be another highly gifted Christian singer/songwriter, Joseph Arthur, especially his first album, “Redemption’s Son.” Lyrics that are intimate, painful, and stunningly honest.

As for the best hymn ever written, I’m sure everyone has his favorite. But from an aesthetic perspective, Julia Ward Howe’s ”The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” adopted by the Union Army during the Civil War, is about the most itense you can find, and makes–through poetic displays unsurpassed anywhere–the Christian case for the abolition of slavery. Julia Ward Howe is the first great female poet in the English language. In the Nineteenth Century, only Emily Dickinson is better.

Rev. Brian Carpenter — Presbyterian Church in America, Sturgis
I have to agree with Dr. Wallerstein. Most of the poetry is abominable, but this is not an age for making poetry, so we ought not be surprised by that. I’m also humbled to remember that CS Lewis referred to the hymns (including, apparently, many I like) to “third rate poetry set to fourth rate music.”

My only caveat is that some of the old hymns are now being rewritten with more contemporary tunes, and I like most of those very much. There is also a movement towards writing new hymns, led mostly by a group of Irish and British musicians who have really done some nice work. “In Christ Alone” by the Gettys and Stuart Townsend is a good example that some might be familiar with. That song shows forth the purest gospel, and I love to sing it. I am also attempting in my own church (with little success) to revive the old Presbyterian and Reformed practice of singing the metrical psalms.

These contemporary songs are fine to listen to, and I enjoy many of them myself, but they are not really that useful for corporate worship. The music is heavily syncopated and irregular. The only people that can really sing them well are those who have heard them over and over on the radio. It is extremely difficult to teach them to a congregation, even for skilled worship leaders.

As for the best hymn, well, we all have our favorites. I personally love “Be Thou My Vision,” “A Mighty Fortress,” “Before the Throne of God Above” and “O The Deep, Deep Love of Jesus.”

Do mass evangelism events like the  Greg Laurie  Black Hills Harvest 09 crusade deliver what they promise? These events have fallen out of favor in recent times with many Christian churches, which favor a more one-on-one relational approach. Will there be any lasting effect on Rapid City from it?

Rev. Brian Carpenter – Presbyterian

We did not really promote the Greg Laurie Crusade in my church and neither encouraged nor discouraged anyone from attending.  One of my elders was on his local Board, and contributed financially to the work, however.  His literature was in the church, but not mentioned in the announcements.  Thus, I am not aware of any impact upon my church at all.

I am ambivalent about Crusade-style evangelism for four reasons.

1.  My understanding of what conversion is and how it happens.

2.  My understanding of the great danger of false conversion.

3.  Some reading I’ve done on the subject, particularly a book called Evangelicalism Divided by Iain H Murray.  Rev Murray explains the negatives in a very compelling way without dismissing the truth that God can use who and what He sees fit to use. 

4.  My own experience with the Billy Graham Crusade in Cincinnati in 2004.

Crusade style evangelism grows out of the theological heritage of a 19th century Presbyterian minister named Charles Finney.  Finney invented the Crusade as we know it today.  Finney is a hero to the Evangelical movement, primarily because they do not understand what the man believed and how his methods grew out of his theology.  His theology was terrible.  He was actually a heretic, embracing an ancient heresy called Pelagianism.  Pelagius was a British monk who was a contemporary of St. Augustine, and was the main and most powerful opponent of Augustinian theology.  Augustine’s disputes with Pelagius and his followers are still available today in a work called Against Pelagius. Augustine was very successful in his arguments, and Pelagianism has been rejected by literally every segment of Christendom over and over again throughout history.  It is one of the few things we all agree on.  It keeps popping up, however, because it fits perfectly with how sinful man prefers to see himself and God.  It is a kind of endemic nonsense that humanity is prone to blunder into over and over again.

19th and 20th century Evangelicals thought they could adopt Finney’s methods either in total ignorance of what he believed, or in the mistaken belief that they could separate his methods from his theology.  But they can’t, and the absolute circus that is contemporary Evangelicalism is the result.

I don’t know Greg Laurie’s statistics, but I do know Billy Graham’s statistics.  I imagine Greg’s are similar.  In one year after coming forward to profess faith in Christ, if memory serves, a full 90% of those having done so are exhibiting no life change whatsoever.  They are not praying, not reading their Bibles, not going to church, not hating their sin and moving toward loving God with their whole heart and mind and their neighbor as themselves.  They have not been truly converted.  But if you ask them if they have been saved, they say, ‘Oh yes!  I went forward at the Billy Graham Crusade and prayed the prayer.”  In my belief they are still on the path to hell, but are now clothed in the finest armor against seeing their sin and their need of a Savior that I know of.  Jesus described the psychology of true and false conversion perfectly in the Parable of the Sower in Luke 8:4-15.  God’s grace inexorably produces results if it is truly present.  The truly saved bear at least some measure of visible fruit and are known by their fruit.  If there is no fruit, then there has been no salvation.

My own experiences mirrored Billy Graham’s statistics perfectly.  I was an Evangelism Coubsellor, a Team Leader, and an Area Follow-Up Director for the Cincinnati Mission.  I was given ten names to contact and to go through a followup Bible study with.  It was a good study and gave good basic info for the living of the true Christian life.  Of the ten I was given to contact, only one man showed any interest whatsoever.  We met weekly for several months, and he was a different man.  I watched him be changed and grow in a very discernable way in that time.  I spent several weeks trying to follow up with the rest, but could not even get them to meet with me one on one.  I do not believe any of them were soundly converted.  When a man is truly born again, he knows certain things because he has experienced them, the way a woman whose had a baby knows more about childbirth than any male OB/GYN ever could.  She speaks with a confidence and a quiet authority when she speaks on those things.  Anyone who talks with her can tell that she has had this experience herself.  It’s the same with spiritual birth.

So then I did a little math.  We raised and spent several million dollars to put on the Crusade (I forget how much), not counting man hours and the things they had us purchase on our own in the months leading up to the Crusade… things like thousands of cases of Coke and Pepsi to give away on street corners all around the city.  I’m sure the soft drink bottlers were big fans of Billy. 

I took the number of decisions recorded and calculated 10% of that number, figuring that was the rough estimate of the true conversions.  Then I divided it by the millions of dollars we spent.

Basically, the Church could have just evangelized each of these people for free, as they are commanded to do in the Bible, and then we could have taken all the money we raised and bought each new convert a brand new Toyota Camry.  That’s a lot of money to spend just so the 95% terrified Christians who never share the Gospel with anyone can continue to be disobedient to their Lord.  It was an utterly sincere waste of God’s resources motivated both by fear and insecurity, and by a sincere desire to do good to the people of Cincinnati.

I see no reason to think any differently about the Greg Laurie Crusade.  Sure, some were truly born again.  But the invisible bad effects of this method far outweigh the visible good effects.  That’s a hard case to make to pragmatic, impatient, shallow, superficial, anti-intellectual, visible-results-oriented American Evangelical Christianity.

 Father Thomas Williams - St. John’s Orthodox Church

It would be difficult for me to present any significant information on this topic. Rev. Brian Carpenter covered it well. I would, though, offer that Pelagius is often shaded a bit too darkly in the West, while Augustine is seen too much the hero. But that’s another issue.

Crusade-style evangelism possibly may have seen its day, but in these Godless times in our country any public exhibitions, or mass meetings that aim to stir thoughts about Almighty God and have us look into our hearts and, perhaps, still the noise of the marketplace, even for just a few moments, is a wonderful thing. There had to have been some positive effect here in Rapid City. And that’s a good thing.

A few days after Pope Benedict issues the third encyclical of his papacy — “Caritas in Veritate” — which addresses the current economic crisis in light of Catholic social teaching, he will meet with President Obama at the Vatican.  Obama will be in Italy for a meeting of the G-8 summit.

Does the invitation to a private audience with the Pope on July 10 mean that, despite Obama’s reputation in many Catholic camps as “the most pro-abortion president in history,”  the Pope feels Obama’s economic policies have plenty in common with Catholic social justice teaching  on other issues?