A Review: Eric Atcheson's ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN: A Faith-Based Toolkit For Economic Justice

Eric Atcheson

“Each generation sees themselves living in a moment of unparalleled importance in world history, whether or not they are… However, I do believe in each generation rising to meet the challenges unique to its particular epoch of time.”

So Eric Atcheson begins ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN: A Faith-Based Toolkit For Economic Justice.

For (mostly white) Christians living in America, he makes the point that when “we are willing to revise Christianity to justify our comfort with injustice… We no longer worship God as revealed through the scriptures so much as we worship the scriptures. We do not learn from history so much as we revise and reframe history to see what we want to see.”

Misinterpretation of scripture helps contribute to the propagation of myths. “We have manufactured a great many myths about the work ethic of the poor that brand them as undeserving of our help.”

And so, it should come as no surprise that, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2016, a combined total of 7.4 million full and part-time workers were classified as being the “working poor.” Atcheson points out this figure doesn’t include children or any people recently laid off. This was before the recent Covid-19 pandemic wreaked havoc on the world’s economy, including those in America.

Atcheson refers to scripture for a standard of social justice, citing the examples of Hannah (mother of the prophet Samuel) and Mary (the mother of Jesus). “Both women lived in lowly social stations… Both women sang of a God whose justice involved the reversal of circumstance, but Mary specifically applied that reversal to economic fortunes: the hungry were filled and the rich made empty-handed.”

After offering this comparison, he asks the question: “What if that were the church’s Christmas message? What if the church were to take seriously the economic reversal of which Mary sang?”

As Atcheson sees it, one major obstacle to this happening is the church itself. He cites Jesus’ interaction with the rich young man who asks what he must do to get into heaven, and Jesus’ answer to sell everything and give it to the poor. “Christians who say they believe that the Bible is either without error or the literal Word of God are just as eager to do hermeneutical somersaults to get out of Jesus’ command to the rich man… As a result, we end up looking to scripture to affirm our preconceived ideas.”

In a nutshell, “One Bible lesson that gets cited over and over may not add to the totality of the Bible’s overarching message while another, less frequently cited passage, does.”

The [White] Protestant Christian church in America, in particular, “might look toward scripture at the expense of historical and/or contemporary experience, it is critical not to force scripture to exist in a vacuum.”

Part of this misinterpretation of meaning (especially among white evangelicals) leads to the strong focus in the American Christian church, on individual sin, but not systemic sin.

From here ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN incorporates a historic overview of the American [mostly white] Christian church’s complicity in fostering enormous economic inequity. Atcheson traces this complicity’s roots as far back as the Middle Ages, when Feudalism, Imperialism and religious exceptionalism fostered the church-approved doctrine that became known as Manifest Destiny.

For Atcheson, this historical chain-of-events led to dire consequences in America. “The expansion of slavery and the extermination of indigenous people were economic actions as well as militaristic and supremacist ones, and the Christian theologies formed to justify them left profoundly harmful legacies.”

“To take a peoples’ land or freedom is deeply sinful,” he points out. “But such theft of home and liberty was not an end in itself; it also served as a means of vast economic enrichment for a select few.”

Hence the seeds of inequity bore their bitter fruit into the 21st Century, most especially in the marriage of right-wing politics/nationalism with white, protestant, evangelicals. Atcheson observes: “No matter how much Christians claim to the contrary, we are not immune to the winds of popular belief, and the emphasis on individualism at the expense of the common good…”

His own experience with the labor movement led Atcheson to believe that “If you are able to hear from lower-wage workers and poor – and perhaps count yourself among them – in your context, there are important ways in which the presence of faith-based allies can help. Specifically introducing the language of morality is a vital aspect of this work that is fundamentally economic, but cannot be framed only in economics.”

In making his argument for a faith-infused focus on economic justice, Atcheson writes: “Being honest about our history teaches us to defer to the narratives of those who have been harmed, repair credibility and relationships both inside and outside of the church, learn from our past to help shape our future, and most of all, uphold the innate value taught by Jesus that the truth can set us free.”

In the final chapters of his book, Atcheson solidifies the link between racism and economic inequality. “To dismantle racism is to dismantle the primary justification for centuries of economic exploitation.”

Atcheson writes: “[T]he history of white American Christianity is deeply interwoven with efforts to resist the integration of schools, and the advancement of civil rights and economic opportunities for non-whites more generally.”

Eric Atcheson’s ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN is a clarion call for the American church to become a critical part of the move for social and economic justice.

SIDENOTE: As a bonus, ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN contains questions related to each chapter to facilitate group discussion.