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The following interview with Professor Susan Pace Hamill, the lawyer who has called Alabama's tax code sinful and immoral and who is challenging voters to apply biblical teaching to state tax policy, was conducted by R & E Editor Missy Daniel.
Q: What is it in your own background that drew you to this cause?
My professional background before coming to teach [at the University of Alabama School of Law] was almost exclusively in taxation -- four years of private practice in a big New York law firm, then four years in the IRS and an L.L.M. in tax from New York University. My main area is limited liability companies. I have spent most of my professional time on the side of business, with a heavy emphasis on taxation. That doesn't mean I was formed from the devil; what it means is that I'm coming at this as a pro-business moderate. We get tarred and feathered all the time by traditional Democrats and traditional Republicans, but we like to think that we're good folks, and we do care about justice. We also believe that good, healthy business growth that's ethical is very important to raising us all up. When you look at my background, I'm not some flaming liberal that came out of the socialist movement to destroy business in Alabama. There have been accusations along those lines. I come out of the business tradition.
To be quite honest, I didn't really notice how awful the state and local tax system was here. It didn't hurt me very much. That's not something I'm terribly proud of, believe me, but I've been very honest about it, because I can understand if I didn't notice for seven years, then it's not so hard to figure out how other people who are basically good folks wouldn't notice in a big way for a lifetime. Given all the background and education I had, I certainly should have noticed earlier. There were telltale signs: the high sales tax on groceries, the ridiculously low property tax on the house. Like most people, I was busily doing my own thing ... raising a family and the like, not noticing a thing.
My initial sabbatical plans were to finish a book on the evolution of United States business organization forms for a university press. I hadn't noticed the inequities right under my nose, but I certainly noticed that my areas -- tax and business broadly -- are in dire need of more ethics. Where do you find ethics? A seminary is one of many places. [I discussed] this with my minister ... anytime you have an interesting idea or something strange, if you are part of a church and you like the minister, you may talk to him or her about it. So it was really with the minister that together we cooked up this idea: "There's this place called Beeson. Yes, it's a seminary. It's different than what you're used to. It's very evangelical." I wasn't even that clued in to exactly what that meant. I was a member of a mainline Methodist church, which I still am. That just shows you how cloistered I was in the ivory tower. How could you not understand "evangelical" and be in Alabama for so long? Well, if you're mostly locked up in the ivory tower, there's a whole lot you may not see. ... I enrolled in a two-year Master's of Theological Studies degree program, which is not an ordination degree, but you take all the same academic stuff as anybody seeking ordination.
There was a little newspaper article in our hometown paper here in Tuscaloosa about the state income tax and the fact that it reached wages at $4,600 per year. I did a double-take when I saw it. My initial thought was, "That can't possibly be right ... it has to be a misprint." But instead of just brushing it off, I looked at it and decided to investigate. I had the library pull the source and a couple of other things. It took about five hours of my time to preliminarily conclude, with 99.9 percent certainty, that what I was sitting on was pretty darn awful. It was beyond awful. It was unbelievably awful. I couldn't imagine that you could put together something so unfair and so inadequate and so outrageous. Of course, naturally, I was stewing about it. How could I have missed this for seven years? I ended up talking to a couple of the teachers at Beeson about it. One in particular, the New Testament scholar Frank Thielman, who, by the way, is very conservative, took a resolution through the Beeson faculty unanimously supporting my work publicly. Beeson has come out front in this. They are not sitting on the sidelines. My question to Frank Thielman was: "We're in the Bible belt. It seems to me ridiculous that we could have something so horrible in the Bible belt, given that we have the right to vote and we're responsible for our government. It seems to me that what we're doing to the poor here is absolutely inconsistent with everything I have absorbed at Beeson." He said, "You're right" -- that I had an ironclad case against this based on biblical ethics. I'll never forget his next comment. Frank Thielman is a gentle man. He does not run over people. He does not tell people what to do. He said, "You should consider doing this for your thesis, because you're the only one who can." That, in a nutshell, is how the project was born.
Q: What about the influence of your Methodist background?
What kind of United Methodist was I when my minister and I were talking about sending me to seminary? I would have to answer: a pretty typical United Methodist. You go to church. You do your best -- kind of half asleep, to be honest. Maybe I can put it in a better way. I would say that, as a practicing United Methodist, I was fairly typical of many -- not realizing my full potential as a United Methodist. "Half asleep" is a colloquial way to put it, but it really means the same thing. Many people who are faithfully part of a church have not yet realized their full potential. Part of a minister's job is to try to further awaken the congregation. I was no more fake than many other people, but I certainly was nowhere near realizing my potential. I certainly did not fully understand the commitment to being a United Methodist. I didn't have a clue what my commitment was supposed to be -- the moral obligations that go with being a United Methodist, being spiritually connected with them, which is the same as being spiritually connected with your beliefs. [I was] really a well-intentioned but a sleeping United Methodist. As you can see, I was a pretty sleepy tax lawyer, too. I was pretty much stuck in my own cocoon, focusing on my own thing -- my own writings and promotion and tenure and my children. Not that these are bad things, just [that] my mind and heart and ears and eyes were not fully focused. That happened at Beeson. There's no question about that.
Was I aware of social issues? Sure, I was -- probably more aware than most. My parents were very sensitive to those things and to justice. What I was not aware of is: "Where do you fit in with that?" I was sitting here in the state of Alabama, as a professor at the state law school, highly talented in the area of tax and business, highly educated, highly privileged in my position. In other words, in the words of Luke, "Much had been given." And I was not at all focused, connected, or aware of what was required. It's not enough to just be aware of issues and say, "Gee, I think we need to do something about that." You've got to find out what are you supposed to do. Sometimes you can end up doing the wrong thing, given your talents-wrong in the sense of not making the highest and best use of what you can do. In other words, sending me to a demonstration with a sign "Demand tax justice now!" is not the best way to utilize me.
I'm concerned about poor people, because tax justice has a great effect on poverty. Is the right thing for me to do to spend my weekends baking cookies for the bake sale for charitable contributions? That may be the right thing for somebody else. We all have limited time and energy. Unfortunately, the Lord has not given us more than a 24-hour day and limited years. So part of this realization is not just being aware of what you care about, but it's being aware of how you need to put your feet to the gospel and in what form it would have to come. Obviously, I was pretty clueless. The work being born was a way of becoming aware. Now, I didn't become aware overnight. I was focusing on this thesis I had to do. This certainly seemed like a better use of a thesis than what I was envisioning. I was at least that much aware. I went to work and got it done. I had a research team in the library. What it took to put that together was enormous. The energy that went into it was enormous. I'm kind of amazed that I had the energy. Of course, my friends and teachers at Beeson say, "Haven't you learned anything? It's not your energy. It's the power of the Holy Spirit." That has to be true, because when you look at that work, I essentially completed the work with the course. I had six research assistants. The library staff helped out. I built a case on the tax side with 10 witnesses and DNA. I mean, I have indicted big timber with statistics: I put together my own study with statistics that prove that that group pays less than two percent of the property tax -- meager as it is -- despite owning 71 percent of the land. That is an indictment. Then we connect those property tax trends with the most horrible of the horriblest schools in the state. Then the theology -- over 100 biblical commentaries of the finest evangelicals.
[The law review article] didn't come out in published form until January of 2003, for all practical purposes. But Sam Hodges called me up in the dead of summer -- he was with the Mobile PRESS REGISTER at the time -- [and said], "I understand you're working on this project." He convinced me, given that the governor's election was coming up in November, to let him see the August draft, and he wrote a story about it. All of a sudden, everybody wanted a copy. It was like getting thrown out of Kansas into Oz. The governor candidates responded to it with questions. It was a hot potato for them, I imagine.
Once I got all these requests, the newspapers were all over it with editorials. In consultation with the ALABAMA LAW REVIEW, I said, "We've got to post this on the Web. I can't send out ten copies every day." That, of course, got THE WALL STREET JOURNAL down here. Things just snowballed. And the WALL STREET JOURNAL piece got the Books-a-Million folks interested.
Q: You've been speaking in church basements all summer and leading workshops on tax reform. What are you saying to church groups, and what are they saying to you?
I've been in all kinds of churches, probably more United Methodist churches than any other single kind by far. The United Methodists have gone out full-barrel with public resolutions on tax reform. Then they did it recently with the Riley plan [Republican Governor Bob Riley's tax reform plan, shifting the state's tax burden from the poor to wealthy individuals and corporations, passed by the state legislature], so I'm proud to be a Methodist at this moment. The Episcopalians have been pretty strong, too, but there just aren't as many of them. The Baptists, we're still working on.
For civic clubs, I emphasize the scriptural basis of justice, developing it from the Old and New Testaments. I've come up with two fundamental principles that are relevant here. One is, "Thou shalt not oppress the poor," and "Thou shalt make sure that the poor enjoy at least a minimum opportunity to better their situation" -- as one pastor recently put it, "a leg up." I have developed [these] through very careful -- in biblical scholar lingo, what we call exegetical and hemeneutical -- techniques, using the finest evangelical scholarship.
At Beeson, you've got conservative, very conservative, and super-size conservative. This is not liberal stuff. This is basically reading the Scripture honestly, reading it fully, using divine command ethics, which is the most conservative approach you can have, based on inerrancy of the Scripture. The question is not what does it say, because what it says is clear; the question is, what does it mean to us today, which certainly has to be developed. What I develop is that these principles are ironclad -- that you can't abuse the poor or your community is not godly; it's something else. It's based on Mammon, based on market values that only value money, based on values that are not Christian. If your community basically has an infrastructure where the child born poor has no chance, you are not consistent with the values in the Scripture. Those are ironclad principles that cannot be disputed by any person who's being honest. I have even the super-size conservatives at Beeson behind me.
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I take those principles and apply them to what we are doing in Alabama through our system of taxing and funding. We are absolutely crushing the poor with our regressive tax system. The fact of the matter is, the schools are so poorly funded. We are below any minimal acceptable standard where "the least of these" have a chance. Now, you might say, why is that relevant to a state, church versus state, etc., etc.? That's all very true. But, you see, we're talking about a state made up of voters, where most of them are claiming [biblical] values to be their own. That's why I'm coming at this from the bottom up. We have the right to vote. We are responsible for our government, whether it's okay or whether it stinks, basically, because we have a say in it. If 93 percent of our population has said these [biblical] values are their moral compass, then why in the world are we abusing the poor on both moral principles, given that we don't have to? Why are we tolerating this? My argument is we can't tolerate it anymore. There's a gap between what we say we are and what the mirror says we really are. The Bible is full of examples where this gap has existed. That's why we have prophets. So what is the response? The response is, we've got to close the gap. The response is, we have gone off course, we are in the wrong, [and] we've got to get it right.
I make a moral argument on biblical values. If the biblical values have not been adopted by the people, then you need to make a different moral argument. Now, it just so happens that I firmly believe -- although I have not proven yet -- that those two moral principles, which are not exactly earth-shattering in their requirements, I don't think there is any reasonable ethical model, except maybe objectivism, but even then, with the long-term selfish interest, I don't think there is any reasonable ethical model that exists that could, with a straight face, tolerate abusing the poor in a community where, if you're born poor, you have no chance, tough luck. Think about it.
I haven't gone that far with my work, but obviously people who have not chosen biblical values as theirs, there are lots of other ways to look at Christian ethics besides divine command and inerrancy of Scripture. You've got Catholic theology. Even certain parts of virtue theory work with it. But my sense is that I have captured the broadest common denominator. I think these principles are universal, if we're talking about any community that has any ethics at all. I chose the approach I chose because that's the approach that brought me up with Beeson. What I'm coming into is steeped in all of Beeson's values. It just so happens to more closely reflect most of our people.
You know, the Catholics and the Episcopalians, who certainly don't use divine command as the be-all and end-all, they're all over this. The bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Alabama wrote a magnificent letter in favor of tax reform. He was expressing the principle in his words, but they're not going to quibble with me and say, "We don't agree with you because you're relying on divine command, and we think that's old-fashioned."
Q: What's wrong with some of the arguments being raised by members of the Christian Coalition in opposition to tax reform in Alabama? They cite Bible verses such as "Render under Caesar what is Caesar's," for example, and say that instead of cutting just the taxes of the poor, everyone's taxes should be cut.
The Christian Coalition makes me angry because they are taking the Word and distorting it. First of all, they have fastened on "Render unto Caesar. ..." All that means, basically, is that taxes are not unlawful or immoral per se. You cannot say, "I'm a person of God; therefore, I don't have to pay my taxes." Jesus was not commenting at all on whether the taxes were fair or unfair. That passage does not in any way obliterate the requirement to work for justice, if in fact you have anything to say about justice. So the Caesar thing is almost a red herring, or at least it doesn't get to the heart of the matter, which is, given that we have to have taxation to run our state, you cannot run a state or community based on voluntary contributions; we're too greedy for that. The question is, okay, then it better be fair, since it's legally compelled. Is it fair? Do we have justice? That's the question. The Caesar thing doesn't help you there.
Another thing the Christian Coalition has said, which has really been irritating, is that this is all about charity, and it's up to the churches to give charity, to worry about the poor. The Bible does command charity and beneficence. Whether or not we're doing a good job of that in Alabama, well, there's a bit of a dispute that I'm not into, because my purpose is justice, not charity. But I will say this: even if you get an A+ in charity, if your churches are doing a wonderful job with the soup kitchens and everything else, an A+ in charity does not in any way mitigate an F in justice. You can't average the two out to be a C. When I talk about this in church, I say, "I'm going to assume for argument that, in the state of Alabama, we get an A+ for beneficence and charity, that we are really good at it, with our 8,000-plus churches." Some people say that's not a valid assumption, that we've got too many building campaigns. But I say, "Just assume that for a minute. Does that somehow excuse an F in justice, excuse that we tax the poor on wages into poverty, excuse that the public schools, especially in the rural areas, are substandard? Can we use an A+ in charity to say we don't have to be concerned about this injustice? No. The Bible commands both. They are separate. They are equally important, and one cannot replace the other." What the Christian Coalition is doing is confusing the two. If charity could establish justice, if they didn't have to be separate, then don't you think with our 8,000-plus churches and all the Christians we would be the shining light of the nation, instead of at the bottom in this area? Think about it. Just looking at Alabama is proof that charity cannot replace justice.
Q: Do biblical ethics have consequences for where Christians stand on other social and political issues, too -- on universal health insurance, on the death penalty, on other issues?
The short answer is yes. If a person uses the Bible as his or her moral compass, then biblical ethics have something to say about everything. Many issues of the day are complicated, and biblical ethics do not render quite as clear an answer as they do in the case I'm building. Let's take the death penalty for a minute. You are against the death penalty, and you believe that biblical ethics back you up. You can also passionately believe that you are for it and you believe that biblical ethics back you up. My view is that reasonable minds can disagree on that point. But not on Alabama's taxes. I know that's going to come across as a little arrogant, but there's no defense to what we're doing here. We're not in one of those gray areas. There are many issues where reasonable minds can disagree, even though you firmly believe your approach is right. So what do you do? You do your homework. You pray. And you try to come to your answer as reasonably and as spiritually as you can.
Yes, the Bible is relevant for many things. In the conclusion of my book, after the article [on tax reform, I ask], do these principles speak to anything other than taxes? I think that maybe they do, although clearly I haven't developed that. I don't mention health care, but I do mention immigration. I do mention criminal justice. The fundamental doctrine that "the least of these" cannot be oppressed and they have to have some kind of minimum shot I do think applies universally to more areas of concern than just taxation. But I haven't developed that yet.
Q: You've written that this is not just about social reform; it's about the "spiritual renewal" of Alabama. What do you mean?
Alabamians are, or at least claim to be, a Christian people. By choice, that's who we are, that's who we say we are. You look at our pattern -- our churches, our people. We are Christians and a few Jews. The Judeo values on this issue are no different. On other issues, there are differences. But when it comes to issues of justice, there really are no differences between Christians and Jews, unless you believe the New Testament expanded the Old Testament, which some Christians do, but I didn't go up that path. So given who we are, in my mind -- and I defend this to the hilt -- just given how we treat the poor among us, that we crush them in the taxing and by the infrastructure of the community, we invest so little in the common good that they are condemned to remain poor under any reasonable chance of life. There's this enormous gap. We have strayed far off course.
I am not questioning the sincerity of Alabama's Christians. I am not saying we're a bunch of hypocrites and I have revealed us to be hypocrites. I think that most Alabamians are absolutely sincere about their faith. I believe that. I have been on the stump now going on a year. I have been off the beaten path to rural places, not just the cities. And I believe that most of us are sincere. The problem is that we have been sincerely wrong on this count. We're off track. We need to get back on track. That's what spiritual renewal is all about. It's about getting back on track and getting into your spiritual roots. In this case, we have to get right again. And we can, because we have rights to vote, to free speech. We do not have to tolerate this injustice, if the people demand justice.
There are a lot of impediments. The 1901 Alabama Constitution enshrined every bit of this. This is not an easy thing. We have had a hundred years of injustice and a hundred years of legal and other infrastructures that have made darn sure that the injustice is hard to challenge. It's going to take an enormous populist renewal effort to defeat this injustice. The Riley plan, assuming it passes -- and, believe me, that is an uphill climb -- is only a first step. It's a good first step. I'm behind it whole hog. There is no other right answer than to vote for this. That's pretty bold. But that gets us on first base. It's going to take enormous effort and renewal to really close this gap on the justice front. But it can be done. That's really my point. Spiritual renewal is not about finding faith; it's about a renewal of the faith we have, because we've gotten off track. The good news -- this is all part of the faith -- is that you can get horribly off track. There is no limit to how far off track, and how much damage and bad things you can do. But assuming you really embrace the faith, which is about forgiveness and about renewal and about starting over and getting it right, then no matter how bad you were in the past, all is forgiven and you go forward and get it right.
We've really gotten off track, but Jesus didn't die for nothing. If we just wake up and get it right going forward, then all that awfulness of the past is forgiven. This is not about revenge; this is about getting it right going forward. In order to do that, you've got to wake up and see the wrong, the gap. That's where the real hope is here, because that's where the people are.
I've been taught a lot of lessons, believe me! When I get up and talk in church, I am very honest about how I'm just as guilty as everybody else. It does help open people up a little. You don't want to come down on them, just totally judgmental, this high-and-mighty academic who's going to show you the right thing to do. That wins you over nothing. But the truth is that I do have a certain culpability. I had no idea of the worst injustice, right under my nose, right in my area of expertise as a professor at the state law school. I am among the guiltiest in the state; maybe not the guiltiest, but there's a crowd of us that are up there, and I'm up there. That's what I tell people.
My hope is that we can seriously get off the bottom over the next five or 10 years, as opposed to going another 30. That's my hope. [The public referendum on] September 9th is a battle. We're either going to win the battle or we're going to lose the battle. Either way, the war is not over.
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